Android USB Host for audio devices #FAIL and what we can do about it. People who, like, use their phones for listening to music need your help!

Meet the FiiO E17, one of a number of self-
powered USB Digital Audio Converters,
we should be able to use these to enjoy
awesome audio quality with our Droids,
but we can't. Yet. Can you help?

Sometimes, with enough voices, you can be heard. I'm hoping this is one of those times.

You see, I have an issue with Android devices. For me, and others, it's a major issue. I want great audio quality out of my Android devices, but for the most part I just can't have it. But it doesn't have to be this way. 

Let me explain:

Right now, the audio quality of your device is determined by whatever Digital to analog converter  (DAC) the device's manufacturer has seen fit to ship it with. Guess what? They're mostly shipping with DACs that are average, at best. 

I can actually understand that from the manufacturer's point of view to be honest, they shave a few dollars off the devices unit production cost with a compromise that the majority of users actually won't care about a great deal in the overall scheme of things (providing audio is good enough for most). I was probably one of those people up until I installed Voodoo Sound on my Galaxy S, and discovered just how good music can sound when it isn't hobbled by terrible hardware and/or terrible software.

Like others I was really looking forward to ICS and it's USB Host functionality;  it offered a potential way forward for those of us who do care - USB DACs. You can think of these as an external sound card if you like, they take over audio processing duties from the connected devices sound hardware. These are a particularly attractive offering because for a one-off investment you can ensure that all your Android devices now and in the future have great audio quality, regardless of how cheap and nasty the manufacturer's choice of sound processor may be.

As you may have surmised by now, they don't work. Really they should work, since this is a software issue, but they don't. 

That irritates me. You know what irritates me even more? Finding out that some XDA-dev could make them work with a few lines of code inserted into a kernel. Reflects rather poorly on a certain multinational corporation with scores of coders at it's disposal. You know what irritates me even more than that? Finding out that the iPhone, without any jail-breaking or other such carry on, is able to line-out to these devices and take advantage of their superior sound quality. I found that out a few days ago, and I am in all honesty considering getting an iPhone because of this.

OK. 

/end rant

So let's get to the bit where we can help each other out here.

You can go here and vote this issue up Android's "issues" ladder. To vote simply star this issue.

If the issue gets a further 1150 or so votes it will be in the top ten user-flagged issues for the Android operating system. If you think about the head-spinning numbers of daily Android-device activations that doesn't seem like too big an ask, does it?

I actually started posting about this issue in a number of forums and in my own social media networks earlier today - since then it's accrued another 61 votes, and risen 16 places up the issues ladder.

In brief: I'd love to see this issue take Google's attention, but I need your help. The Android community needs your help. 

If you can spare 10 seconds to open that link above and star the issue, and perhaps a few seconds more to share this post to your social networks, this might be one more first world problem we can put behind us. So please, let's get behind this one. 

A little geek waits.