LG Shine KE970 Review - Audio Quality

Richard Baguley
Published on April 25, 2007 Comment on this

Having the world’s coolest looking handset is no use if the sound quality makes you sound like a chipmunk when you call someone to tell them about it. To examine this aspect of a cell phone’s performance, we do extensive testing on the sound quality of the cell phones we review using a combination of software and hardware: the software is a professional audio analysis package called SoundCheck (from Listen, inc) and the hardware is a Head and Torso Simulator (H.A.T.S) from Brüel & Kjær. Both of these products are used by many of the cell phone manufacturers themselves to test their products. For more on how we test, see here. We test the phones in use as a handset (held to the ear), and we’ll be adding more tests soon to examine the performance of the speakerphone and the headset. For more details on our testing procedure, see here.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.37)

The KE790 had a rather curious frequency response for the sound it received; the curve (shown by the blue line in this graph) is mostly within the limits that the standard we use calls for (indicated by the red lines), but it does wander outside at some points. The frequency response for the lower frequencies (on the left side of the graph, where the blue line drops below the red) is somewhat muted, while the higher frequencies around 4000Khz are very high. This isn’t necessarily a huge problem (the standard we use looks for a higher response at these higher frequencies), but the KE790 takes this a little too far; voices will sound overly high-pitched as the higher frequencies overwhelm the lower ones.

Sound Send Frequency Response (5.83)

The frequency response for the sound that the KE790 sends (shown by the blue line on this graph) is also problematic; the standard (indicated by the red lines) calls for a pretty flat response up to 1Khz, but the KE790 is nowhere near this. Instead, it climbs quickly, peaking at just over 1Khz then dropping off rather too quickly. What this means is that your voice will sound overly bassy and won’t have much of the high frequencies.

Handset Side Tone (6.62)

Side tone is how cell phones let you hear your own voice; you can’t hear yourself speak because the cell phone is blocking your ear, so what they do is to play back some of your own voice so you don’t speak too loudly and annoy those around you. The standard we use calls for a phone to have a side tone of around -18 decibels, and the KE790 wasn’t too far off from this: we measured the side tone at -21.38 decibels. That’s a little low; the consequence might be that you talk a little louder than you need to. But it’s only off by a very small amount; you aren’t likely to find yourself yelling into this phone (unless you really feel like it).

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