[APP] Nook Color Tweaks

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dalingrin

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 6, 2007
1,433
2,756
Want to try to overclock to 1.3ghz+?
Tired of the speaker not being loud enough?
Tired of hiss and noise with your high sensitivity headphones?​

What is this?
I have made a free app in the Android market to tweak a few things I've added to the Nook Color kernel. I hope to add more features to this app later. For now you can adjust:
*CPU speed per stepping. Allows you to overclock as much or as little as you want.
*CPU voltage control. Undervolt for better battery life and/or overvolt for better overclocking.
*Headphone analog gain
*External speaker analog gain
*DAC gain
*USB Host control(requires OC kernel 06/18/11+)
*U-Boot control(courtesy of FatTire)​

What can I do with this?
The CPU settings allow you to customize the CPU clock rate. With my overclock kernel the OMAP CPU has 5 OPPs(steppings) available. This app allows you to change the clock rate for each of those OPPs at runtime. Want to try to overclock to 1.3ghz? This app allows you to set the clock rate of your choosing.​

You can also use this app to help get rid of hiss and noise on your headphones. I have sensitive headphones and I find the hiss and noise to be downright abnoxious on the Nook Color. With B&N default settings, I can only turn up the "Android media" volume to 25-35% before its too loud. This means the volume difference between the noise floor and the audio is very small which makes the noise noticiable. To partially fix this issue you can either turn down the DAC volume in this app or turn down the headphone analog gain. I prefer to just turn down the headphone analog gain until I can increase the "Android media" volume to 85-90% for comfortable listening levels.

If the external speaker is too quiet you may need to increase the DAC gain. Note that this will also increase the headphone volume so you may need to subsequently decrease the headphone analog gain.​

Why use this app and not the other apps in the market?
The primary advantage to using this app versus other more generic apps you might find in the market is that this app makes low level changes in the driver to increase volume. Other apps must make these changes in software to be hardware agnostic. This leads to reduced audio quality versus hardware level changes.​

Note: This app requires kernel support. For audio settings you will need a newer 2.6.32 kernel found in CM7 Nightly 88+ or my(Dalingrin) overclock kernel for B&N Froyo 1.2 and CM7.
For CPU settings you will need a 2.6.32 overclocked kernel from 06/09/11 or later.



 

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Last edited:

bugeyed1

Senior Member
Dec 24, 2010
265
15
Conroe, Tx
I am running CM7 5252011 #87 nightly & this app notifies me that the kernel is not compatible & I need a later ver of CM7. What am I doing wrong. BTW thanks for this app. It is a big deal!!!!

Thanks,
kev
 

seth.i.simmons

Senior Member
Apr 13, 2011
364
68
Lynchburg, VA
Just tried messing with the settings for the headphones, and wow, its so much clearer now! Awesome app, really makes the NC that much better.

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
 

don_ernesto

Senior Member
Nov 19, 2010
134
25
two good things happen with this apps:

first, it really reduces hiss in the headphones to levels i cannot hear

second, finally it has a link to donate to the person who contributed the most in making the nook the great device it is now
 
A

ace7196

Guest
Last edited:

thefamousmoe

Senior Member
Sep 22, 2010
66
4
I am actually having some problems with this app. I can increase the DAC a little bit, but if I even touch the external speakers option the sound goes out which requires a reboot. I am running nightly 87, with the oc kernal of 5/23. Any ideas? Great app by the way, I can tell from increasing the DAC that it helps a lot.
 
A

ace7196

Guest
I am actually having some problems with this app. I can increase the DAC a little bit, but if I even touch the external speakers option the sound goes out which requires a reboot. I am running nightly 87, with the oc kernal of 5/23. Any ideas? Great app by the way, I can tell from increasing the DAC that it helps a lot.
Lol. I thought I was the only one!
So, increase the DAC, then if you open the speaker or headset, the sliders go mute by default. So open it and just slide the sliders over :)

A bit confusing. I even did a restart because I thought I broke something...
 

ansleyj44

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2011
72
13
Lol. I thought I was the only one!
So, increase the DAC, then if you open the speaker or headset, the sliders go mute by default. So open it and just slide the sliders over :)

A bit confusing. I even did a restart because I thought I broke something...

I am probably missing something really simple, but for the life of me can't figure out how to fix this without a reboot.

I increased the dac slightly, then I increased the external analog gain slightly, and it stopped playing... or i thought it did.

I checked my speaker volume through the main settings and it was all the way up. I checked it in the cm7 settings and it was all the way up. Then i went back into this app and increased the dac about halfway and could hear what was playing, but barely. And when I increased the gain more it did get a bit louder, but not loud enough to listen to from more than a couple inches away.

Story for the trouble, i know I'm just missing something. Thanks for any help


Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
 

dalingrin

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 6, 2007
1,433
2,756
I am probably missing something really simple, but for the life of me can't figure out how to fix this without a reboot.

I increased the dac slightly, then I increased the external analog gain slightly, and it stopped playing... or i thought it did.

I checked my speaker volume through the main settings and it was all the way up. I checked it in the cm7 settings and it was all the way up. Then i went back into this app and increased the dac about halfway and could hear what was playing, but barely. And when I increased the gain more it did get a bit louder, but not loud enough to listen to from more than a couple inches away.

Story for the trouble, i know I'm just missing something. Thanks for any help


Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk

This issue is fixed and the app is updated.
The problem was that the gain settings were defaulting to 0 on first run. This should not require a reboot to fix. All you need to do is turn up the speaker analog gain. I would turn it all the way up. You should have no problem hearing the speaker at this point and it will no longer default to 0 once you adjust the gain.
 
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ansleyj44

Senior Member
Mar 5, 2011
72
13
This issue is fixed and the app is updated.
The problem was that the gain settings were defaulting to 0 on first run. This should not require a reboot to fix. All you need to do is turn up the speaker analog gain. I would turn it all the way up. You should have no problem hearing the speaker at this point and it will no longer default to 0 once you adjust the gain.

Perfect! Thanks, this is great!

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
 

boxcar8028

Senior Member
Mar 15, 2011
955
220
Seattle, WA
yeah, im going to download this as soon as i get home tonight, this is awesome, thanks. :)

hay, dalingrin, do you think this will be merge with cm in the near future? this with cyanogens DSP Equalizer would be a great combo.
 

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  • 47
    Want to try to overclock to 1.3ghz+?
    Tired of the speaker not being loud enough?
    Tired of hiss and noise with your high sensitivity headphones?​

    What is this?
    I have made a free app in the Android market to tweak a few things I've added to the Nook Color kernel. I hope to add more features to this app later. For now you can adjust:
    *CPU speed per stepping. Allows you to overclock as much or as little as you want.
    *CPU voltage control. Undervolt for better battery life and/or overvolt for better overclocking.
    *Headphone analog gain
    *External speaker analog gain
    *DAC gain
    *USB Host control(requires OC kernel 06/18/11+)
    *U-Boot control(courtesy of FatTire)​

    What can I do with this?
    The CPU settings allow you to customize the CPU clock rate. With my overclock kernel the OMAP CPU has 5 OPPs(steppings) available. This app allows you to change the clock rate for each of those OPPs at runtime. Want to try to overclock to 1.3ghz? This app allows you to set the clock rate of your choosing.​

    You can also use this app to help get rid of hiss and noise on your headphones. I have sensitive headphones and I find the hiss and noise to be downright abnoxious on the Nook Color. With B&N default settings, I can only turn up the "Android media" volume to 25-35% before its too loud. This means the volume difference between the noise floor and the audio is very small which makes the noise noticiable. To partially fix this issue you can either turn down the DAC volume in this app or turn down the headphone analog gain. I prefer to just turn down the headphone analog gain until I can increase the "Android media" volume to 85-90% for comfortable listening levels.

    If the external speaker is too quiet you may need to increase the DAC gain. Note that this will also increase the headphone volume so you may need to subsequently decrease the headphone analog gain.​

    Why use this app and not the other apps in the market?
    The primary advantage to using this app versus other more generic apps you might find in the market is that this app makes low level changes in the driver to increase volume. Other apps must make these changes in software to be hardware agnostic. This leads to reduced audio quality versus hardware level changes.​

    Note: This app requires kernel support. For audio settings you will need a newer 2.6.32 kernel found in CM7 Nightly 88+ or my(Dalingrin) overclock kernel for B&N Froyo 1.2 and CM7.
    For CPU settings you will need a 2.6.32 overclocked kernel from 06/09/11 or later.



    5
    App updated with voltage control.
    Requires OC kernel from 06/30/11+
    3
    I have been using the conservative governor for some time now, about 2 months and it has been vary stable and good battery life. recently I have switch to interactiveX and it has been awesome. this governor is great, super smooth no lag and so far battery life has been vary good, over night 7hrs and only 1-2% used. the ramping is responsive and performance with video and games has been great.
    3
    For those wondering, CPU steps are available clock rates to the CPU governor. In our case we are using the Conservative governor. By default the governor will idle at the lowest stepping and ramp up to steppings 2-5 depending on the CPU load.
    The ramping is determined by CPU usage. If a task is using 85% CPU at your lowest stepping clock rate(300mhz by default) then the governor will start to ramp up the clock rate by going to the next stepping and so on.

    Additionally you can choose the maximum stepping in Cyanogenmod performance settings.


    Oh, and NEVER set the changes to automatically set on boot until you are absolutely positive its stable.
    2
    FYI, CM7 nightly 87 does not have kernel support for this app yet. You will need to wait for the next nightly or you can use the OC kernel now.