Engadget reviews smartphones for audiophiles

[pm]

It's an interesting review. Lots of pretty graphs midway through.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/iphone-vs-rivals-audio-tests/

I thought it was worth noting that the top that:
"Given that these Senns are so easy to drive, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that all the smartphones tested came off pretty well. In fact, it's not going too far to say that if you use in-ears with similar properties to these, and if you're only ever likely to use these types of headphones, then you may as well pick your handset based on other factors, because audio quality isn't a big enough deal to accept or reject any of them."

I'm actually using a lower-end pair of Sennheiser earbuds most of the time in my phone that are that different than the reviewers and I'm not much of an audiophile (I blew out both eardrums as a kid and I'm sure the frequency response of my ears is much worse than these phones), so my takeaway from this review is that smartphones are pretty good at playing music. It's interesting that the iPhone 5 scored worse than the iPhone 4S except in battery life.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Wow... an audiophile review that completely disregards the built-in DAC of those phones...

And I pretty much stopped reading when they tried to bring the DT990 Pro 250 Ohm into the review as a way to "validate" their subjective claims...

Ah well, at least I think they give a generally good idea on how "loud" each of the phones can get relative to one another... and relative to the Fiio E17, which is admittedly quite a decent low-end consumer-grade amp. The E17 is a DAC as well, but it can only be used as an amp for portable devices.

 

[pm]

Wow... an audiophile review that completely disregards the built-in DAC of those phones...

And I pretty much stopped reading when they tried to bring the DT990 Pro 250 Ohm into the review as a way to "validate" their subjective claims...

Ah well, at least I think they give a generally good idea on how "loud" each of the phone can get relative to one another... and relative to the Fiio E17, which is admittedly quite a decent low-end consumer-grade amp. The E17 is a DAC as well, but it can only be used as an amp for portable devices.

I thought the distortion graphs were kind of neat.

What do you mean by they ignored the DAC - keeping in mind that I'm not an audiophile and all I know of a DAC is what the words mean. But if you are listening to music through the headphone jack, aren't you using a DAC?

 

[runawayprisoner]

Different phones have different DACs, and disregarding their internal amplifiers, the DAC plays quite an important role.

I'm sure you know that all music or sound sources on those phones are stored in digital format. Since they are in digital, they need to be converted back to analog in order for humans to "understand"/hear them, and thus the need for the digital-to-analog converter, or DAC for short. In a nutshell, its basic function is to determine how the digital signal will be converted back into analog for output. Different DACs do this differently. This actually has more to do with the fact that they were designed by different people, and those different people tuned them differently. Why? Because all humans hear things differently. We all have different ear structures, and so... we don't all hear sounds the same way.

That aside, you are right in that if I'm listening to music through my phone, then I'm using the DAC. But that's exactly why it shouldn't be disregarded. It's included in the chain. And by "chain", I mean it's the sequence that goes from your music file to your ears, like this: music file > DAC > amp > headphone/earphone > ear.

But like I said, different DACs sound... different. And those phones that were included in the review have different DACs. This difference actually doesn't show up on the frequency response graphs because when they do frequency response, what they do is they sweep from low frequency all the way to the highest and track the volume and the sweep goes by.

But when music is playing, it's the jump and mix of different frequencies that happen, not a smooth sweep from top to bottom or vice versa... and it's the way the DAC handles those jumps and mixes that makes up the differences you hear. And that's also not to mention distortions and variations caused by the amplifier.

So basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is... the worth of a phone as a music player should not be solely judged on how loud it can play things back. In my opinions, if that's the only criteria, then they're basically judging just the power output of the internal amplifiers. In which case, the Fiio E17 would effortlessly outclass everything.

But you are still correct in that their graphs are neat. Especially the distortion one. That one tells you just how well each phone controls its voltage load into the headphone/earphone, and that's quite a crucial factor in determining how "good" the phone can sound.

 

[s44]

Unfortunately the use of the S4 gave the US SGS3 a crappier DAC... yet another reason to favor the Note2?

Sorta sad that the best Android solution is still SGS1/Infuse with Voodoo.

 

[pm]

Thanks for the explanation, Runawayprisoner. I appreciate it. So, would it be best to do some sort of test of the DAC that plays back a couple of songs (say, one classical, one rock, one jazz) where you record the spectral graph of the songs and then diff them versus a high quality output source?

Also, while I'm asking questions, why do you think that the professional company that Engadget hired to do the review didn't do a better objective test? Laziness? Cost? Complexity? Wanted to skew results by relying on a subjective test?

 

[GTaudiophile]

Don't the G-Nexus and S3 use the Wolfson DAC?

 

[s44]

Don't the G-Nexus and S3 use the Wolfson DAC?

Nexus no (TI reference). International S3 yes. Domestic S3 no (Qualcomm).

Note 2 does use the Wolfson, and since both international and US models are on the same Exynos platform, the US one should too.

 

[Red Storm]

Audiophiles are an extreme I neither understand nor care for.

Also I can't imagine any real audiophile is going to trust an Engadget review.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

It's more of a, who the hell calls themselves an audiophile and doesn't use a dedicated mp3.

 

[KentState]

I leave the expensive audio equipment at home where it can be enjoyed. Even with the best headphones, there is just to much background noise on the go to really discern the differences.

 

[bearxor]

I wonder if an AudioQuest Sydney Uni-Directional audio cable would have made a difference...

 

[God Mode]

Ignoring sound quality, I thought the HTC with 'beats audio' would have more output than the others. My HP with beats does sound better than any other laptop I've tried. Not for sound quality but sheer output and bass.

 

[NaOH]

You can attach a USB DAC to the s3 such as the odac or fiio e7. It will do so with out a USB hub as well.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Thanks for the explanation, Runawayprisoner. I appreciate it. So, would it be best to do some sort of test of the DAC that plays back a couple of songs (say, one classical, one rock, one jazz) where you record the spectral graph of the songs and then diff them versus a high quality output source?

Also, while I'm asking questions, why do you think that the professional company that Engadget hired to do the review didn't do a better objective test? Laziness? Cost? Complexity? Wanted to skew results by relying on a subjective test?

Well, you can test the DAC by playing back songs, but since some phones don't allow a line-out signal that bypasses the internal amplifier, it's not really possible to test just the DAC.

So they can only test the entire phone (DAC + internal amplifier).

However, I think the reason why they chose not to do so is not because they wanted to skewer results, but because they ran out of time.

To do a song sweep + difference analysis, it requires them to make a lot of graphs... and preparations, and I don't think they want to do that in a review of this scope. If they were doing a review of $3000+ amplifiers or $1000 headphones, I guess they'd throw more technical data on the table, but not for a review of this scope.

I guess... my main beef is not with the fact that they attempted to test the audio quality of the phones, but that they used the term "audiophile" so loosely in a review of this scope. I think the term "music lover" would be more appropriate.

I am a music lover myself. I am not an audiophile. Audiophile, IMO, describes... someone who is almost fanatic about his audio gears, and for such people, I have found that you really need to throw a lot more data than this at them to convince them.

Also there's the fact that portable music players in general are just not... good enough for audiophiles. There are some cream of the crop, but they are few and far between.

As an aside, I think... subjectively, that the iPhone 5, while being not as loud as its siblings, does improve on sound quality to my ears. The more quiet sound actually contributes to this... as some songs (classical, relaxing jazz) are just not... good when played loud.

 

[destrekor]

It's more of a, who the hell calls themselves an audiophile and doesn't use a dedicated mp3.

Most audiophiles who let their audiophileness dictate portable purchases, are likely choosing Cowon MP3 players. I've heard nothing but raving reviews from the audiophile camps for some, if not all, of their MP3 players.


Some audiophiles, or at least the pseudo-types, will sometimes let convenience factor into things - they'll "sacrifice" in order to save time/money if they don't consider using the audio features (or in this case, portable audio) a major concern.

The original Zune (HDD models) had a better DAC than the iDevices at the time, and I loved the size and form factor of the ZuneHD. I just discovered most audio "experts" quite well agree the ZuneHD sounds worse than the 4th Gen iPod Touch (not sure about other devices), but I don't care enough to switch. I'm having a hard enough time deciding if I could get away with dropping Zune Pass. I love it so! But dammit, having music available on my player, my Android phone, and my MotoActv, is just not an easy approach.
Getting DRM-free MP3s from Zune Pass (10/month) is helping get music on the MotoActv, but ugh.
I can see the appeal of going all Apple - shit is easy if you want everything everywhere under one service/account.

Microsoft really needs to open up "Xbox Music" (god damn that's more retarded than "Zune" - my PC, laptop, and Win Phones in general (don't own one), aren't "Xbox"!.. well, not yet at least). I'd love to have it on Android. That guarantees they get to keep my moneys. Eventually I'll have to ditch the ZuneHD.