Hacking Your Odyssey: Increasing Speaker And Microphone Volume

By Michael Wong

So it’s been several months now since I bought The Odyssey CVDQ-M56 phone. I’ve been very pleased with it to say the least. Last weekend, I was bored and long story short I started hacking my Odyssey.

THE RESULT: I managed to increase my microphone AND speaker volume.

Read on if you too would like an overall volume increase – but be warned. What we are about to do involves playing around with the phone’s Engineering Mode. Be very careful and only make the changes suggested in this blog post.

Changing other settings may have consequences beyond your worst imaginings. We’re serious we’re talking human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria here.

So lets get to work on improving the sound quality of your phone. (PS to see a larger version of the pictures just click on them and you will see the pictures in high resolution)

From The Odyssey’s touchscreen dial pad, enter the following sequence:

*#3646633#

The moment you enter that last pound symbol (the tic tac toe sign), you will be shown the Engineering Menu.

From the main menu, press the 3rd option labelled AUDIO.

Once you are in the AUDIO menu, press NORMAL MODE.

To change the speaker volume, from the NORMAL MODE menu, press item #2 SPEECH.

Click on item #7 in the SPEECH menu for the highest volume. The number 192 will be displayed in the middle of the screen. Press the SET button on the upper right side of the screen to save this setting.

You will be ushered back to the SPEECH menu. Now press item #8 labelled 16 LEVEL SETTING.

Change the MAX ANALOG GAIN to 255 instead of what the default level is.

Press OK.

Congratulations! Now you will be able to hear your caller much better.

To change the microphone volume, from the NORMAL MODE menu, press item #6 MICROPHONE.

Click on item #7 in the MICROPHONE menu for the highest volume. The number 168 will be displayed in the middle of the screen. Press the SET button on the upper right side of the screen to save this setting.

You will be ushered back to the MICROPHONE menu. Press item #8 labelled 16 LEVEL SETTING.

Change the MAX ANALOG GAIN to 255 instead of what the default level is.

Press OK.

Now your caller will be able to hear you much better.

Let’s say you like listening to your music loud. Who doesn’t? Allow me to show you how to increase the maximum volume for playing MP3 files through your Odyssey’s built-in speakers.

From the NORMAL MODE menu, press item #4 MELODY.

Click on item #7 in the MELODY menu for the highest volume. The number 128 will be displayed in the middle of the screen. Press the SET button on the upper right side of the screen to save this setting.

You will be ushered back to the MELODY menu. Press #8 labelled 16 LEVEL SETTING.

Change the MAX ANALOG GAIN to 255 instead of what the default level is.

Now you will be able to play your music LOUD!

To leave Engineering Mode, simply press the red END CALL key as you would do if you want to hang up on a call.

There you go, have fun hacking your Odyssey M56 phone so you can hear your caller better, your caller can hear you better, and you can wake the neighbors with your music.

Don’t forget that you can make some serious irreversible changes to your phone in engineering mode so make sure anything you do in there is done with care and consideration.

If you know of any other phone improving tweaks please leave a comment below and help out your fellow Odyssey owners. Because it’s cool when you can make a great phone even better.