The HTC One M8, unarguably, delivers the best music quality among all the flagship Android devices released this year, even though it lacks Beats Audio this time around. To please audiophiles even further, HTC released a special edition of the One M8 — the Harman Kardon edition — for Sprint users in the United States, which further improves the audio quality.
While the Harman Kardon and the regular HTC One M8 share the same internals, there is a noticeable difference in audio quality between both these devices. If you have already got your hands on the regular HTC One M8, worry not as you can still get the Harman Kardon audio effects — Clari-Fi and LiveStage — provided you are ready to tinker around a bit with your device.
The steps below will work on the international as well as the carrier variants of the One M8. In case you are already rooted with S-OFF, directly jump to step 2 and flash the ZIP file in recovery.
Step 1: You will first need to get S-OFF on your One M8 and then gain root access on it. Check out theroot.ninja for SunShine, which will S-OFF your One M8 without unlocking the bootloader, but you will have to shell out $25 for this.
There are many other advantages of gaining S-OFF on an HTC device including the ability to convert it into a Google Play edition device and more.
Step 2: Once you have gained S-OFF, install a custom recovery like TWRP or CWM using their respective apps. Then, download and flash this ZIP file in recovery. It will automatically update the DSP’s firmware and other neccessary system files required for the Harman Kardon audio effects.
Step 3: Reboot your device and then head over to Settings. You will notice that the BoomSound option has been replaced with the Harman Kardon audio settings, from where you can enable or disable the Clari-Fi and LiveStage features. Keep in mind that the latter is only available while playing music via earphones while the former is for the front facing stereo speakers.
Personally, I noticed an increase in clarity while playing music via the front-facing speakers as well as on the earphones after installing the Harman Kardon audio files. What about you? Did you notice any difference? Drop in a comment and let us know!
Credits to Baadnewz for the original mod!
