Smartphone Audio Quality Testing
by Chris Heinonen on December 8, 2013 5:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Audio
- Mobile
- Tablets
- Testing
Many readers have been asking for audio testing on phones and tablets, and we are happy to be able to deliver it now. Because I live far away from Brian and Anand, I can’t easily access units they are reviewing so audio data may not run the same day a review is published. I do hope to be able to add it on to everything in the future so that all of our reviews will be as in-depth as possible, from processor to software, display to audio.
I also have to thank Audio Precision for their loan of the APx582 and their access to their offices and support staff. Without that these tests would not be possible. I also wanted to use their equipment as it is the reference standard for the industry and there can be no doubt about its quality. As I do a lot of AV testing as well, I found that more generic sound card methods of testing are becoming limited as the capabilities of products exceeds what they can easily measure. There are no such worries with the Audio Precision.
I also look forward to feedback from readers on the information here, and what else you would like to see tested going forward. Hopefully this will provide another set of data to help you determine if a product will fit your needs, and which vendors are trying to push performance in all categories.
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Friendly0Fire - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
The Nexus S has some of the best DAC in the industry, actually... Most phones these days use the built-in Snapdragon DAC, but the S has a Wolfson DAC which is way superior.I think you either had a dud or you have another issue somewhere because the S was lauded for sound quality (just like the original Galaxy S).
tedders - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
I must have had a dud Galaxy S then too because my Captivate had abysmal audio.Samus - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
The captivate and epic 4G (sprint variant) were substantially different from the galaxy s, although I remember the epic 4G touch (S2) having decent audio quality.tipoo - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
So I've heard, but I'm not the only one with shit audio on it, the running theory is they put in a good DAC but didn't bother properly making drivers or something for it.tipoo - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
Or perhaps improper shielding of the audio circuit from the radios, since the static seemed to be radio related. Even modern phones have some of that, even the best sounding ones like the iPhone 5S, but it's much much reduced.cheinonen - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
The DAC really means nothing without knowing everything else that goes into the circuit. Yes, the DAC might have superior SNR and THD+N but if you use an amplifier, or a volume control circuit, that are worse than other phones, you've now mitigated that advantage. It's there in the DAC but by the time it gets to the output stage it's been buried by noise elsewhere in the system.Using a better DAC is nice. But you can't just drop it in and get better results, everything else needs to be engineered around it as well.
Friendly0Fire - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
Using a higher end separate DAC hints that the manufacturer at least somewhat cares about sound quality. Using the built-in SoC DAC says that it's an afterthought.It's not a guarantee, but it's certainly an indicator.
Galidou - Sunday, December 8, 2013 - link
Totally agree with cheinonen, any high end audio stereo setup is as strong as it's weakest link. Take the excellent nuforce DAC-100 at ~1200$CAD, use it with a poor sub 400$ multi channel receiver and you won't get much out of it. The nuforce got plenty of amazing review, but it always depends on what it is paired with.The galaxy sure got a nice DAC but it's amplifier section is poorly engineered.
cjl - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
Actually (and I know audiophiles everywhere will disagree with me on this, but whatever...), you can get audibly perfect sound with a dac worth only a couple hundred dollars at most, and an amp of similar cost. There's really no point in buying a >$1k dac, and the same goes for an amplifier (though expensive multi channel receivers can be justified, not for the quality of their amplifiers, but for the quality of their DSP, room correction, video upscaling, and variety of inputs and outputs). For an audio system, by far the most important component is the speakers. You should spend the vast majority of your audio budget on the transducers (speakers/headphones), then buy an amp with sufficient power to drive them to whatever level you need without distortion/clipping (which is almost always less power than recommended by audiophiles). The rest of the system can really be quite inexpensive - the built in DAC in most modern audio products is audibly flawless, and it's impossible to improve on 14AWG zip cord for the cables (from an audibility standpoint) unless you're running your wires over an extremely long distance.Now, that isn't to say that modern smartphones have reached that audibly flawless point yet - many of them haven't (especially when they have such blatant flaws as the single channel clipping shown in the review above), but many of them are a lot closer than people realize, and it really doesn't cost much to make a product audibly flawless. I remember seeing testing done on the latest iPod, and it was good enough to not contain any audible flaws. I would assume that the iPhone is similar, and the GS4 looks to also be audibly perfect in the review above (so long as 500mV p-p is sufficient to drive your headphones - this may not be the case for some less sensitive models).
speculatrix - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
+1A lot of audiophile ideas simply don't stand up to basic engineering principles, and blind A:B tests show it.