Speaka is piece of garbage. I bought it. It sounds muddy and boomy. Amir's measurements show it can resolve only 15 bits. Haven't tried Apple dongle. Tried Hifime Sabre 9018 - it is good, but not cheap.
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Samsung USB-C Headphone Adapter Review
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Speaka is piece of garbage. I bought it. It sounds muddy and boomy. Amir's measurements show it can resolve only 15 bits. Haven't tried Apple dongle. Tried Hifime Sabre 9018 - it is good, but not cheap.
Jimster480
Major Contributor
There is alot of profit when you figure millions of $9 dongles sold (that probably cost $1 to mfg) and then how many people will isntead opt to purchase $100 headphones (that really cost $10-15 to build) that will instead break in 1 year and thats another $100.
Its all about the money and nothing else.
It has been backfiring, any phone without a headphone jack has poor sales. This is part of the reason that mfg's have been releasing new phones every 3-6 months now. The sales are so bad they are just trying to upgrade the phones every chance they can get. Look at the profit margins from all the phone companies.... they are completely in the toilet (even apple's) because people don't want this anti-consumer trash.
Actually he used stricter criteria for the Speaka, a maximum of 0.1dB deviation from linearity compared to 0.5dB for his more recent measurements like the Apple dongle. From the Speaka review: "Using my 0.1 dB criteria, it stops at 15 bits of resolution but going beyond nothing bad happens with max error remaining pretty small." Comparing the graphs for both, you can see the Speaka is actually better than the Apple dongle in this area, 'resolving' 20 bits (-120dB) to Apple's 18 bits, under the new criteria of max 0.5dB deviation from linearity:
So it's possible the Speaka could actually be as good as or even better than the Apple dongle in other areas as well (in addition to being more powerful) - we'd just need @amirm to confirm this by measuring it with his new analyzer for a fair comparison.
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iPhones still sell.
People don't buy phones because smartphones stagnated. New models no longer provide enough of an improvement over the previous ones to justify an upgrade, and the $1000 phones trend of the past few years didn't help.
Rapid release has been a thing for ages. If we consider only the flagship space though phone release schedule hasn't changed much in the past few years.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #47
No, I bypass the Windows audio stack.
In Europe, we see EE-UC10JUWEGWW
https://www.samsung.com/fr/mobile-accessories/type-c-to-35mm-headphone-jack-adapter/
If the S8 integrated output is as good as the Note 9, you probably don't have to regret that it's not compatible with the S8 either.
Samsung Galaxy Note 9
(Virtins Multi Instrument 3.8, WAV file recorded from sine generator, played with Foobar app on Note 9,
Note's Headphone Jack out, RME ADI-2 Pro fs as ADC, +4dBu = 0dBFS,
Driver limits to 16 bits)
Samsung Galaxy Note 9
(Virtins Multi Instrument 3.8, WAV file recorded from sine generator, played with Foobar app on Note 9,
Note's Headphone Jack out, RME ADI-2 Pro fs as ADC, +4dBu = 0dBFS,
Driver limits to 16 bits)
Is that the Exynos or Qualcomm Snapdragon variant of the Note 9?
It seems like most modern smartphones (or at least the LG and Samsung flagships) are pretty much transparent, so there is very little need for a dedicated DAC these days. The LG G7 has been measured here, but it would be great if @amirm could add more evidence for this by measuring his S8+ with the new analyzer, so we can can do a direct comparison with other DACs/amps.
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Exynos, I think.
Model is SM-N960F.
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The Snapdragon variants of the Note 9, and the S8+, would likely be even better if they're as good as the S10 one (the Snapdragon S8-10 and Note 8-10 all have the same audio chip):
(Measurement of the Snapdragon S10+ by Anandtech)
We'd need full measurements of the S8+ by Amir with his new rig to confirm this for sure though.
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I don't know how the CPU type may impact the sound performance.
Is that different DAC/output chips too?
https://www.soundguys.com/best-smartphones-for-audio-16373/The Snapdragon variants of the Note 9, and the S8+, would likely be even better if they're as good as the S10 one (the Snapdragon S8-10 and Note 8-10 all have the same audio chip):
(Measurement of the Snapdragon S10+ by Anandtech)
We'd need full measurements of the S8+ by Amir with his new rig to confirm this for sure though.
Theo
Active Member
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You're right about the money.
I am not sure however that the phone sales are that bad, although I agree that there is a slump. Is the reason for the decrease that people care about the dongle or is it the saturated market?
I would guess that the strategy to make money is to sell wireless earbuds, which are more than 200$ and last a couple of tear due to battery life...
Yes, they have different DACs inside - the Exynos models tend to have Cirrus Logic chips (CS47L93 for the S10), whereas the Snapdragon variants have Qualcomm audio chips (WCD9341 for the S10).
Unfortunately, unlike Amir, Soundguys are not transparent about what equipment they use for their measurements (all they say is they use a "dedicated interface" with Audio RightMark), so it's hard to fully trust their results.
Well, from the picture they publish, it pretty much looks like a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to me.
If it's the CS47L93 and the audio circuit remains mostly the same then performance should be similar to the Exynos S8, which 0db tested here
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