volume restiction?

[klav]

hi

i just bought 4gb d2.this player is really fantastic.but i have a question.my brother has a x5l player.when i compare volume levels with same song they are all same volume level at max vol .is there a volume limitation ? i downloaded usa version firmware..plz help.thanks in advance.

[BioMarco]

Hi

Yes, there might be a volume restriction. If I can trust the german Cowon webpage, you'd have to delete the PARAM.CFG file in the system folder to switch it off. After a restart everything should work fine for you.
I listen my D2 with in ears (Sennheiser CX300) with volume set to 5-8 (out of 50!) - so I never saw a reason to test this on my own


Marco

[grand21cw]

volume depends on two other things, too.
impedance and efficiency of your headphones, so compare with the same headphones if you do

[Mr. Black]

I doubt it's limited

I had two D2's, one from the UK and one from the states, but were equally as loud as each other

[BioMarco]

Originally Posted by grand21cw

volume depends on two other things, too.
impedance and efficiency of your headphones, so compare with the same headphones if you do

Well, nobody compared anything
I just said that I did never try to unlock a possible volume limitation because with my headphones the factory settings are more than sufficient. Its just the reason why I did not try it, nothing more

Originally Posted by Dominic

I doubt it's limited

I had two D2's, one from the UK and one from the states, but were equally as loud as each other

And why do you think Cowon-Germany is giving a description on how-to-remove such limitation (click here)??? Well, its in german, but you can trust that I'm pretty much able to understand what is written there...

And please read my post again: I never said, that there MUST be a volume restriction/limitation. I said there MIGHT be one in the case of klav which means that basically a volume limitation in the D2 is possible.

I read a couple of reviews where people complained about too low volume output of the D2. It is quite likely, that at least somewhere in the past such volume limitation was really implemented. Maybe it is not there anymore due to new firmwares. I don't know. Anyway, if klav is having problems with too low volumes, he might try to remove such possible limitation. If it does not work - bad luck, he has to look for other reasons if he can't live with ist. But if it works it was cheaper than buying new headphones.

[Mr. Black]

I imagine it MAY have been added in a later FW. But I am 100% positive, without a shadow of a doubt sure that my 2 d2's reached the same level of output, this I will not even debate because I know they reached the same level, heck I owned the 2 of them.

[BioMarco]

I have never heard or seen your D2s nor did I try to tell you anything about them - with whom you don't wanna debate this? Nobody wants...

The point is: If somebody has the feeling there could be a limitation of volume, it must not be a problem of headphone etc. but COULD also be a real limitation by hardware/firmware. That's it, there is even a detailed description on an official Cowon website how to remove such limitation. Why are you so strict against the possibility of such a limitation? If the description is there, it seems to me that this is a common thing.

Well, I googled a bit and it seems that ALL mp3-players sold in the EU should have such a volume limitation due to some EU directive. At least I get tons of hits about this concerning the ipods and descriptions how to unlock them.
Maybe you were lucky and you got a D2 without this volume limitation? Maybe in the UK this EU directive is not (yet?) transposed to national law? Who knows???

[Mr. Black]

dude, either you have personal issues or your grasp on the english language is not all that good... I am not "so strict against the possibility of such a limitation", I am giving my own personal experiences with the US model and the EU model.

It really seems to me like you feel I am arguing with you, however that is not the case. My first post was for the OP, not you. The second post was to answer your questions.

[Blackroom]

The law you mention originates from France. It is not valid in Sweden atleast. Apple choosed to implement only one OS for the entire EU region and therefor they also have to implement the sound limitation in that OS. I have personally tried out almost all different OS's from Cowon for the D2 and I have yet to discover any volume limitation. The Swedish distributor also stated that there is no such limitation for the D2. But as you point out, the setting could be hidden in the settings file for some players. None that I have heard of though.

[extc]

I think the restriction activates when you set Germany as your location when you turn the player on for the first time. I just tried the "db Kill Info" that BioMarco linked and I had set the location to "other european countries" or something like that (since I live in Finland) and there was no difference. BioMarco have you tried to de-restrict your player? No one has said there wouldn't be any volume restriction, but I think it's only an issue if you set your location to Germany.

[BioMarco]

@Dominic

Well, my english is for sure not as good as yours but its enough to communicate in the scientific community which is my profession . It seems that I indeed misunderstood your intention in your first post. Imagine I did post that there is an offical remark on the Cowon website to remove such a volume limitation - I consider this as a fact that such a limitation is existing in at least some D2s - and then you are coming and saying you doubt its limited. This is in my opinion not so far from arguing with me. If I misunderstood - I'm sorry for that.


@extc
It's difficult to say if my D2 has a restriction at all - at least with my in-ears (not the original Cowon headphones) I can raise the volume to max. 20 and then I better take out the headphones because it would be simply too loud (because of the natural properties of in-ears I can listen conveniently at level 6 without being disturbed from background noise). I could try to de-restrict my D2 (yes it's set to germany from the beginning) but how shall I test it? I would be even afraid of damaging my in-ears when I raise to volume too much. I have no experience with such tests and somehow I don't want to try
Considering the reviews complaining about a low volume level (in renowned magazines and websites, but all of them german) I suspect that the restriction by Cowon might have been extremely overdone in the beginnig. The restriction counts for any producer and by this the max possible volume should be somehow a kind of standard and nothing to complain about: everybody would have to restrict the volume to a similar level.
I can imagine with newer firmwares the restriction was either completely removed or changed to a more reasonable level - complaints by reviewers are bad for selling. It would be a logical conseuqnce on the reviews to improve the volume restriction.

I could install very old firmware to test this but somehow I'm not keen on that

[extc]

I tried it out myself: No difference when choosing location to Deutschland (Germany) and I have fw 1.25. So maybe there was a restriction in the older firmware but not in the newer any more.

[blackworx]

I own a UK D2 and have tried various geographical settings. There is no UK-specific setting, but in my experience (fw4.51) there is no difference in maximum volume between European, North American, East Asian or indeed any other regional setting.

I listen with very sensitive in-ear monitors and care very much about sound isolation, to the extent that my earphones are (I think) effectively 'driving' my eardrums. If I wanted to cause myself the level of fatigue or indeed pain which BioMarco describes, I would have to turn the volume into the high 40's. At these volumes, my D2 begins to clip. This is a sign that the D2's battery/amps have reached their maximum current supply capacity and that transient peaks in the music are beginning to distort audibly. This is the source of the listening fatigue/pain.

From my admittedly limited knowledge of audio I know that, even at dangerously high volumes, a clean non-distorting audio signal will not cause the same physiological pain reaction as a signal which is distorted.

So: either I have a strange alien physiology which is particularly unsusceptible to the monstrously high volumes the D2 is PHYSICALLY capable of, or BioMarco is at the very least exaggerating.

The D2 has a fairly high maximum power output for a portable player, but is not so far above other players in output levels as some people would have you believe. As a rule of thumb: if you can't hear yourself speak, it's loud enough.

[Lupentaucher]

Originally Posted by BioMarco

And why do you think Cowon-Germany is giving a description on how-to-remove such limitation (click here)??? Well, its in german, but you can trust that I'm pretty much able to understand what is written there...

The text on the german website says that you have to delete the file PARAM.CFG from the System folder, restart the player and change the country setting to USA. To change the country ONLY does not have the desired effect.

Dominik.

[BioMarco]

Originally Posted by blackworx

I own a UK D2 and have tried various geographical settings. There is no UK-specific setting, but in my experience (fw4.51) there is no difference in maximum volume between European, North American, East Asian or indeed any other regional setting.

As Lupentaucher wrote: to compare regional settings it is not enough to just change the settings. You should delete the param.cfg file in the system folder. Anything else has simply no effect...

Originally Posted by blackworx

So: either I have a strange alien physiology which is particularly unsusceptible to the monstrously high volumes the D2 is PHYSICALLY capable of, or BioMarco is at the very least exaggerating.

Maybe you don't have an alien physiology but it could be just an ordinary hearing damage?
No, your and my descriptions about what is too loud and what are not objective at all, so every trial to explain is just speculation. You wrote

Originally Posted by blackworx

As a rule of thumb: if you can't hear yourself speak, it's loud enough.

which shows me that your subjective demands on volume is quite different from mine. For me it's sufficient to not hear other people speaking, which is - from point of hearing physiology - something quite different. And usually I don't speak when I'm listening to music so maybe that's the reason why I have never seen the necessity to raise the volume that high?

Apart from that, somebody was writing above that volume output of headphones depend on impedance and efficiency of the headphones - and I completely agree. One can not compare the volume settings on the device if two different headphones with unknown and thus not comparable parameters are used.

Anyway, I never tried to compare my settings with anybody. I just gave an explanation why I never tried to unlock a possible volume restriction on my D2. If other people are jumping on that and speculate why they experience something else, it's not my fault. Maybe just another misunderstanding due to my bad english