Audiowizard/Bluetooth Audio Quality Drop after most recent update

[tac0k1ng]

Model: zenfone 11 ultra

android 14

My phone updated last night (11-18-2024) and this morning on my way to work, my phone connects to my stereo in my car automatically and it started playing music, but it didn't sound good at all. It sounded like the bass frequencies were cranked to the max and the mids and highs were muffled. I checked the audio wizard in settings and all I get is that 'Dirac service is unavailable'. 

I restarted the phone, didn't work. I cleared the cache and force stopped audio wizard and restarted the phone, didn't work. I tried 2 different sets of Bluetooth wireless earbuds, and they sounded the same where it was all out of wac. tried rebooting the phone in recovery mode but did nothing. Any ideas on how to fix this before i consider resetting the phone? 

[Monkey726]

I have the same problem after this update, so it's not really the phone's fault. I guess the only way to fix it is to wait for the devs to do something about it 😞

[feljo]

I was just about to post an issue for this. I can confirm that audio wizard is non functional after the last update (34.1420.1420.472) with the message 'Dirac service is currently unavailable' shown when opening the app. Also, the audio quality because of this is different, as @tac0k1ng mentioned (accentuated bass frequencies with muffled mids and highs), with no way to adjust it.

[Keinonen]

Audio quality seems to have something like a low frequency harmonizer when listening speech audio.

Dirac service unavailable in my case as well.

[Outsunrise]

I face the same issue, as if the audio device is detected as a microphone headset instead of original audio output. Dirac is unavailable too. I hope Asus will quickly address the issue, it makes any audio activity very bad.