Maximising quality from Samsung Galaxy S10 (exenyos)

[DeansOnToast]

Very new to the world of better audio used to ol' iTunes and Spotify, but would like to make sure im using the right audio services and settings for new IEMS.

I'm using Moondrop Starfield IEMS and I'm curious to buy a DAC to bypass the apparently poor quality 3.5mm jack and onboard DAC in my Samsung galaxy s10. Is this a good idea and do I need an amp? Would I need to fiddle with settings to disable the Samsung DAC? Any purchase advice is appreciated, just looking for no volume buttons minimal fuss.

Moondrop also have a APTX Bluetooth cable that I'm considering. I'm guessing this would effect quality? If I get a DAC I'm assuming I would need one with a separate Bluetooth controller to the s10 to avoid its DAC.

 

[Jimbob54]

Very new to the world of better audio used to ol' iTunes and Spotify, but would like to make sure im using the right audio services and settings for new IEMS.

I'm using Moondrop Starfield IEMS and I'm curious to buy a DAC to bypass the apparently poor quality 3.5mm jack and onboard DAC in my Samsung galaxy s10. Is this a good idea and do I need an amp? Would I need to fiddle with settings to disable the Samsung DAC? Any purchase advice is appreciated, just looking for no volume buttons minimal fuss. Who said they are poor quality? Samsung phones from everything Ive read hear and elsewhere have a pretty good audio performance. Are you dissatisfied in your own listening or just been told its sub par?

Are you going to be using whilst on the move? Do you mean a full sized amp for desktop? A dongle DAC/amp? A "portable " but phone sized amp?

The simple answer as to how to bypass depends on where you are getting music from- which streaming service and/ or local files? It would, however, work by plugging and playing- but there are quirks.

Moondrop also have a APTX Bluetooth cable that I'm considering. I'm guessing this would effect quality? If I get a DAC I'm assuming I would need one with a separate Bluetooth controller to the s10 to avoid its DAC. Yes, BT will not be as good as wired - but how audible that decrease is depends on your ears and the implementation. But the BT signal would go from your phone to the BT cable- not from your "other" DAC- you absolutely do not want a second DAC that then only gets converted to BT- second DAC only makes any sense wired.

See bold responses

 

[pozz]

You could either get a portable headphone amp you won't mind carrying around with your phone or a USB C to 3.5mm headphone dongle. The latter will be a DAC & headphone amp combo in a small package.

Go here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Audio_DAC_Performance_Index/

Select "Yes" under Portable and "USB" under Input.

 

[DeansOnToast]

See bold responses

Looking for a dongle DAC and currently using spotify but moving to tidal. and thanks will avoid the bluetooth.

See links for issues with S10
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14072/the-samsung-galaxy-s10plus-review/16

 

[DeansOnToast]

You could either get a portable headphone amp you won't mind carrying around with your phone or a USB C to 3.5mm headphone dongle. The latter will be a DAC & headphone amp combo in a small package.

Thanks likely to just go and get a dongle.

 

[Jimbob54]

Looking for a dongle DAC and currently using spotify but moving to tidal. and thanks will avoid the bluetooth.

See links for issues with S10
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14072/the-samsung-galaxy-s10plus-review/16

Ah- Ok the Exenyos version does look pretty pants- that said, dont be expecting night and day improvements. There are hundreds of dongle DACs- many good- see @pozz post for links to search for reviews. Sadly the Meizu Hifi Pro seems to be out of production- it was the default rec. The non pro might still be available for $20 or so.

If you are getting tidal and a dongle you definitely want to invest in USB audio player pro app- its about $5 but well worth it- passes to DAC bit perfect and ignores android low volume limits. Its a no brainer. Without it android resamples everything.

 

[pozz]

Looking for a dongle DAC and currently using spotify but moving to tidal. and thanks will avoid the bluetooth.

See links for issues with S10
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14072/the-samsung-galaxy-s10plus-review/16

That reviewer performs the measurements using incorrect settings and does not understand background concepts well enough to interpret the results. Please ignore him.

 

[Jimbob54]

That reviewer performs the measurements using incorrect settings and does not understand background concepts well enough to interpret the results. Please ignore him.

In that case @DeansOnToast you might want to just stick with the internals. The moondrop aren't hard to drive, keep it simple.

 

[DeansOnToast]

Ah- Ok the Exenyos version does look pretty pants- that said, dont be expecting night and day improvements. There are hundreds of dongle DACs- many good- see @pozz post for links to search for reviews. Sadly the Meizu Hifi Pro seems to be out of production- it was the default rec. The non pro might still be available for $20 or so.

If you are getting tidal and a dongle you definitely want to invest in USB audio player pro app- its about $5 but well worth it- passes to DAC bit perfect and ignores android low volume limits. Its a no brainer. Without it android resamples everything.

Yeah I'm just going to settle and buy the non pro version, give it a test and see.

Also question about the UAPP, would it mean I play through the tidal app still or directly through UAPP?

 

[Jimbob54]

Yeah I'm just going to settle and buy the non pro version

Also question about the UAPP, will it mean I play through the tidal app still or directly through UAPP?

Uapp has a tidal interface built in (or qobuz if that's your preferred) so all your playlists etc come over but yes, you're going in via uapp. No harm having the tidal app on phone, that's better for browsing and adding, just not playback

 

[DeansOnToast]

Uapp has a tidal interface built in (or qobuz if that's your preferred) so all your playlists etc come over

Nice cheers for the help everyone.

Also seems like theres desperation for the Meizu Hifi pro, that price looks a bit inflated

https://alexnld.com/product/meizu-3...wZrAVuXYNU67pyN2eFJwNhs-5rNpstV4aAt1GEALw_wcB

 

[bobbooo]

That reviewer performs the measurements using incorrect settings and does not understand background concepts well enough to interpret the results. Please ignore him.

Even if they did use incorrect settings, the fact that the Qualcomm Snapdragon version showed significantly better performance than the Exynos holds. And if you are suggesting that the Exynos version has in actuality better performance than reported there, that would also be the case for the Snapdragon.

In fact, Soomal.com's measurements of the Exynos S9+ and Snapdragon S9 (the latter using the same Qualcomm WCD9341 audio chip as the S10 series) also show the Snapdragon (green graphs) to perform significantly better than the Exynos variant (white graphs), with the latter showing higher IMD and THD (at the more objectionable odd and higher orders too):

THD (44.1 kHz):

IMD (44.1 kHz):

And even more of a difference at 48 kHz sampling rate, which the Android audio mixer resamples to when using streaming apps like Spotify and Tidal:

This all suggests the Snapdragon S10 performs better than the Exynos variant. Having said that, both are probably sonically transparent within the limits of audibility, but the Snapdragon is a safer bet in this respect.

 

[pozz]

Even if they did use incorrect settings, the fact that the Qualcomm Snapdragon version showed significantly better performance than the Exynos holds. And if you are suggesting that the Exynos version has in actuality better performance than reported there, that would also be the case for the Snapdragon.

In fact, Soomal.com's measurements of the Exynos S9+ and Snapdragon S9 (the latter using the same Qualcomm WCD9341 audio chip as the S10 series) also show the Snapdragon (green graphs) to perform significantly better than the Exynos variant (white graphs), with the latter showing higher IMD and THD (at the more objectionable odd and higher orders too):

THD (44.1 kHz):

IMD (44.1 kHz):

And even more of a difference at 48 kHz sampling rate, which the Android audio mixer resamples to when using streaming apps like Spotify and Tidal:

This all suggests the Snapdragon S10 performs better than the Exynos variant. Having said that, both are probably sonically transparent within the limits of audibility, but the Snapdragon is a safer bet in this respect.

He only showed that the implementation was worse. He had no basis for his "warmer sound" or soundstage comments, and inexplicably shows a high-bandwidth, high-FFT plot at one level, apparently basing everything on that alone. It's highly misleading and irresponsible.

 

[bobbooo]

He only showed that the implementation was worse. He had no basis for his "warmer sound" or soundstage comments, and inexplicably shows a high-bandwidth, high-FFT plot at one level, apparently basing everything on that alone. It's highly misleading and irresponsible.

If the implementation is worse, then the sound quality is worse. Maybe the warmer sound he heard is due to that 250 Hz distortion component, and soundstage is such a multifaceted subjective quality I don't think it's that implausible that higher distortion could negatively impact it's impression. Of course it could just be expectation bias. Whatever mistakes they made with the measurement settings, you would expect that to be a systematic error that would carry over to the Qualcomm measurement, but they are much better. Their measured Exynos S10 distortion is quite a bit higher than Soomal's of the Exynos S9+ though, so there may have been an initial firmware issue causing that. (I've heard vague rumors of it being 'fixed' in subsequent firmware, but no evidence of this whatsoever).

Anyway, Soomal's measurements clearly show a significant difference between the Exynos S9+ and Qualcomm S9, and not only does the latter have the same audio chip as the Qualcomm S10, but I've just seen on teardowns that the former has the same Cirrus Logic CS47L93 audio chip as the Exynos S10, so it's highly likely the results for the S9 variants are applicable to the S10.

 

[DemchY]

See bold responses

Regarding: Who said they are poor quality? Samsung phones from everything Ive read hear and elsewhere have a pretty good audio performance.

I am setting up now my listening studio, testing gears. I mostly listen classical music which is the most demanding for quality of both players and phones.
I tested Sony WH-1000XM4 and Beoplay H9 gen3 and selected Sony because of better set of characteristics.
I tested Cowon Plenue R2 (32 bit DAC) while I own old Cowon Z2, and despite I am impressed by R2 quality with wired connection, I decided to return it because of critical deficiency when listening via BT. This is when you listed classical with segments with low level sound, BT connection doesn't play these segments and music simply drops and jumps. Sony is more affected than Beoplay, probably because of AptX in Beoplay.

At the same time, I tested Samsung Tab S5e and Samsung Galaxy S10 with YouTube Music App. S10 quality and dynamic range is much better and almost suitable for me. Tab S5e plays surprisingly bad.
So, don't blame Samsung phones for bad audio.

As a side goal of this post, I would appreciate advice on good Player/DAC with preferably 32 bit DAC and proven wide dynamic range.
I read reviews of recent Hiby R6 Pro and Fiio M11 Pro and I am not sure that I want to buy device with bad production quality and bad customer service.

 

[bobbooo]

Regarding: Who said they are poor quality? Samsung phones from everything Ive read hear and elsewhere have a pretty good audio performance.

I am setting up now my listening studio, testing gears. I mostly listen classical music which is the most demanding for quality of both players and phones.
I tested Sony WH-1000XM4 and Beoplay H9 gen3 and selected Sony because of better set of characteristics.
I tested Cowon Plenue R2 (32 bit DAC) while I own old Cowon Z2, and despite I am impressed by R2 quality with wired connection, I decided to return it because of critical deficiency when listening via BT. This is when you listed classical with segments with low level sound, BT connection doesn't play these segments and music simply drops and jumps. Sony is more affected than Beoplay, probably because of AptX in Beoplay.

At the same time, I tested Samsung Tab S5e and Samsung Galaxy S10 with YouTube Music App. S10 quality and dynamic range is much better and almost suitable for me. Tab S5e plays surprisingly bad.
So, don't blame Samsung phones for bad audio.

As a side goal of this post, I would appreciate advice on good Player/DAC with preferably 32 bit DAC and proven wide dynamic range.
I read reviews of recent Hiby R6 Pro and Fiio M11 Pro and I am not sure that I want to buy device with bad production quality and bad customer service.

The WCD9341 audio chip in the (Qualcomm Snapdragon) S10 is already 32-bit, and its specs say has a very high dynamic range of 130 dB, so there's no need for you to get another device.