"unofficial" firmware with volume limitation removed

Hi Philips,

To make the story short, I'll just say that I have natural wax plugs next to my ear drums and for certain medical reasons I cannot remove them (it's perfectly safe however, to live with them). The only problem is that my hearing is affected.
So, for example, if someone listens something at normal volume, I hear the sound only I hear it much lower.

This wasn't a problem with my old mp3 player, as I increased the volume as much as I needed to. The high volume doesn't affect my ear drums as the wax plugs protect them.

I know that there are some EU regulations that prohibit launching mp3 players with firmware that allows the volume to be turned up to dangerous values. However, these may apply very well for normal people, but I need the volume to be much higher so that I can enjoy music.

So.. can you please release an "unofficial" firmware that removes the current 31 limitation for the volume? I think that a new max value of 50 would be great and it should be fine with my ears.

Thank you and I expect an answer or I will be forced to go back to the store and return the product.

My product is GoGear Raga 2 GB ( sa4rga02kf/12).

31 is the max volume in this series. On the other hand, I don't suppose any company would go against EU regulations on that one...

Thank god the guys from the shop where I bough this piece of crap were nice enough to allow me to return it and receive my money back.

This is outrageous. I would have closed my eyes on all the other problems if at least i could have actually hear the music at a decent level. But no. Philips loves UE regulations. For example, Sansa has the option to change the region to "Rest of the World" so at the same time it stays cool with regulations AND offers the buyers the possibility of unlocking the volume limit. Now that's not even smart, it's DECENT. However, decent doesn't apply for Philips.

You push any button and the image is refreshed after.. 2 seconds?! How on earth did this pass the QA team? It's really hard for me to believe that this were the specifications. Because if they were, Philips can successfuly be pronounced as the worst mp3 player designer in the world.
The hell, 3 years ago I designed a game that was running on a 16 Mhz proccesor. The image was displayed on an LCD display. The refresh rate wasn't that great, but it was 2 or 3 times faster than this Philips mp3 player. How on earth is this even possible.. beats me.
With this 2 seconds lag, you cannot practically browse through a list of .. 50 songs. But an average listener has.. 300 songs at minimum. How can you search for a specific song? You can't.
Not to mention the glorious "Shuffle" option that "shuffles" the songs in the same order every time. Did Philips programmers ever heard of srand function in C/C++?

My conclusion: run away from this mp3 player, you'll only get frustrated and find a way to return it.

Thanks Philips, really ruined my week. I'll never buy anything from you again. Shitty products. Shitty QA team. You should fire them as quickly as possible.

sadly, i got the same problem, but i couldn't get my money back. and i tried mailing the philips support team from my region about the problem (the region is Romania) they replayed after 10 days (mainly because i have sent another mail asking if intend to replay) saying something like "if you believe the device is broken, send it to the service". As if this weren't enough, the message also had some grammar errors that would make a 5th grader facepalm (for those who understand Romanian, here's the original message: "Daca Dumneavoastra carede-ti ca este o problema va puteti adresa servisului local sa verifice."). I tried to fix this problem by updating the firmware (through Songbird as that seems the only possible way), but I also encountered difficulties here. The device's firmware version appears as unknown. Tried the repair device option (tools->repair device). I followed the steps and got a message saying: "there was an error while checking for new firmware. please verify your network connection and try again"

I wonder if philips is going to take the example of the other larger (and more professional) companies and do something to fix these problems and compensate the customers for wasting their time, money and the fact that philips abused their trust.

and by the way philips. according to oxford dictionaries, random means odd, unusual, or unexpected;
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/random
please refrain from adding functions that you cannot implement, just to get people to buy your products.

Codx, I'm very sorry you weren't able to get a refund. I consider myself pretty lucky, as I bought this mp3 player from Media Galaxy, a retail store well known for refusing returning and refunding of products.
I encourage you to try and sell it on okazii. You can post the same youtube video philips is using to promote this product. After all, it's not like you cheat anybody. If it's someone, it's Philips..

Hi All,

Thank you for your constructive feedback. I have passed your suggestions to the Philips Development Team which is working on improving our products.

Your opinion is much appreciated.

Thank you,

Kind regards,
Joanna

Hello everyone..i have come up with anew problem..i have bought philips gogear sa4act04kn/97..i updated its firmware and its voice feedback changed from english to chinese..i want to change it back to english..please anybody who has solution regarding my problem kindly help me!!!

Hi Shivam! I found an FAQ on how to repair your unit. Yo need songbird installed on you PC, but it should do the trick!:)

http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/c...w_partial.html

hey teddy...thanx for telling me some solution..but still m not getting what to do..it wil b so kind of u if u elaborate me wht to..n whats d trick ...plzzzz..i hope u wil help me..:(

Hi, I looked in the manual, and on page 13, you will find instructions on how to change the laguage. I hope this will be more helpfull:

http://download.p4c.philips.com/file...97_dfu_eng.pdf

Hey,

Did you manage to change the language?

volume regulation is really a bad joke.... is this player just crap or is it possible to create a firmware to make this player usable ????

What exactly is wrong with the volume control on your device?

not loud enough...player has no power compared to other ones on the market.

Have you tried to raise the volume limitation?
Or your device is damaged, or your headphon isn't good...

With my GoGear Raga 2 GB ( sa4rga02kf/12) I don't have any problem with volume, on the contrary it is too loud! When the room is in silence, I have it regulated on 6 with mp3, and 3 with FMRadio!

Problem are with other things .... playlist, continuos playing, etc...

Bye