Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Sound Quality

It will be a real shame if S6 has subpar audio quality.

obsidyen said:

  It will be a real shame if S6 has subpar audio quality.

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The horse is not out of the barn yet.

sujan said:

   
As with every Samsung Exynos phones,it comes with a Wolfson DAC. S6 comes with WM1840.
 
https://plus.google.com/+supercurioFran%C3%A7oisSimond/posts/Zs5voZXCFde
 
Still Touchwiz Resamples 44.1KHzto 48KHz.
 
https://plus.google.com/+supercurioFran%C3%A7oisSimond/posts/BpAbw9SpyBX

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Note 4: wm5110E
 
http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/samsung-note-4-galaxy-alpha/

Is there a Note 4 owner reading the thread from one of the areas where the Android 5.0.1 OTA update has gone live? I'd really like to know if there's any truth to the rumour that the updated Touchwiz will now pass 44K (or whatever rate) audio unmolested over USB, without re-sampling everything to 48K like it did under 4.x.x.
 
This would be a welcome addition to those of us that don't wish to root within the warranty period but would like to use the phone as a portable transport sometimes (e.g. for auditioning other components) without any digital f**kery going on that makes it no longer digitally transparent. 

And what about the Note Edge?
How good is it with audio quality and volume?

vegetaleb said:

  And what about the Note Edge?
How good is it with audio quality and volume?

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It should be EXACTLY the same as the normal Note 4. I mean, they basically use the same SOC.
I doubt that would be any of a different case whether we were talking about Snapdragon or Exynos. As for how good, depends on the person and which variant we are talking about.
I enjoy my Snapdragon variant with either Neutron or V4A. I bet its even better with the Exynos version.

I auditioned Galaxy S6 at a Vodafone store. I think the design is a major fail. It looked like Galaxy S5 with a glass front/back. It was a fingerprint magnet unlike Sony Xperia phones which have glass back/front but don't get much fingerprints on them. I couldn't test the sound quality as it was a demo unit and there wasn't any music in it. Touchwiz seemed responsive but it's as ugly as ever. I hope the SQ is great because other aspects of the phone didn't appeal to me. I might wait for Sony Xperia Z4 otherwise.

Hi, there. Got my Note 4 910C (exynos) yesterday. I Upgraded to android 5.0.1 just after initial setup and installed everything I used everyday on my SGS3 (which was rooted and used with AOSP omnirom + Boefla Kernel). From this morning I started testing audio quality on my Sennheiser IE7s and Rocket Player (flat EQ) - my choice for Android music playback. Sound quality seems really good, I didn't notice much difference compared to what I had on SGS3+IE7: bass is warm and slightly dominating, vocals are clear, instrument seperation good, soundstage quite wide, volume level for listening outside is 1 notch after the sound warning, inside 2 below. I'd say Note4 with exynos is on par with my SGS3 in terms of sound quality. I'm happy id didn't turn out to be a disaster!

woundedrhyme said:

  Hi, there. Got my Note 4 910C (exynos) yesterday. I Upgraded to android 5.0.1 just after initial setup and installed everything I used everyday on my SGS3 (which was rooted and used with AOSP omnirom + Boefla Kernel). From this morning I started testing audio quality on my Sennheiser IE7s and Rocket Player (flat EQ) - my choice for Android music playback. Sound quality seems really good, I didn't notice much difference compared to what I had on SGS3+IE7: bass is warm and slightly dominating, vocals are clear, instrument seperation good, soundstage quite wide, volume level for listening outside is 1 notch after the sound warning, inside 2 below. I'd say Note4 with exynos is on par with my SGS3 in terms of sound quality. I'm happy id didn't turn out to be a disaster!

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Oh good, I was beginning to think there were no Sprint or Verizon customers on here, since basically nobody else but Poland and Korea have the Lollipop update yet. You have an Exynos handset, which means a Wolfson DAC, so it should be decent. Mine is a Snapdragon and I'm not 100% happy with the direct audio out (not bad, just aggressively average), but then I prefer to use the phone as a transport anyway. Which leads me to my earlier question from my previous post:
 
Have you plugged your phone into a DAC? If so, when playing a 44.1KHz track, does the DAC show the same figure, or 48KHz? From what I've heard, this forced sample-rate connversion was supposed to be gone in 5.01 but I can't find confirmation now that it's actually out. Would make USBAudioPlayer obsolete if so, and finally let us use any player we want, even free ones. Would be nice to get bit-perfect digital out from stuff like Jremote/Gizmo, etc.

woundedrhyme said:

  Hi, there. Got my Note 4 910C (exynos) yesterday. I Upgraded to android 5.0.1 just after initial setup and installed everything I used everyday on my SGS3 (which was rooted and used with AOSP omnirom + Boefla Kernel). From this morning I started testing audio quality on my Sennheiser IE7s and Rocket Player (flat EQ) - my choice for Android music playback. Sound quality seems really good, I didn't notice much difference compared to what I had on SGS3+IE7: bass is warm and slightly dominating, vocals are clear, instrument seperation good, soundstage quite wide, volume level for listening outside is 1 notch after the sound warning, inside 2 below. I'd say Note4 with exynos is on par with my SGS3 in terms of sound quality. I'm happy id didn't turn out to be a disaster!

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amleth said:

   
Oh good, I was beginning to think there were no Sprint or Verizon customers on here, since basically nobody else but Poland and Korea have the Lollipop update yet. You have an Exynos handset, which means a Wolfson DAC, so it should be decent. Mine is a Snapdragon and I'm not 100% happy with the direct audio out (not bad, just aggressively average), but then I prefer to use the phone as a transport anyway. Which leads me to my earlier question from my previous post:
 
Have you plugged your phone into a DAC? If so, when playing a 44.1KHz track, does the DAC show the same figure, or 48KHz? From what I've heard, this forced sample-rate connversion was supposed to be gone in 5.01 but I can't find confirmation now that it's actually out. Would make USBAudioPlayer obsolete if so, and finally let us use any player we want, even free ones. Would be nice to get bit-perfect digital out from stuff like Jremote/Gizmo, etc.

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I thought the US variants were Snapdragon not Exynos based SoC so I don't know how the USB drivers of the Lollipop implementations would compare.

I'm not from the US, I'm from Poland . I do not have a DAC, never used one actually, but if there is any other way to test I can try it. Do you know of any app which would show the audio-out frequency from the micro-usb port?

stand said:

   
 
I thought the US variants were Snapdragon not Exynos based SoC so I don't know how the USB drivers of the Lollipop implementations would compare.

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The SoC is irrelevant to this, it's a software difference. The Android mixer would forcibly convert everything to 48KHz internally in pre-5.x.x, and then would only output at this rate regardless of source sample rate. Lollipop is supposed to add support for multiple sample rates internally so any rate can come out untouched. Apparently the fan-made images for Note 4 do indeed work like this, but I don't have word yet on whether the official Samsung ROMs do too. I'd assume they would, but there's no guarantee with Samsung about sensible choices being made. Look at Touchwiz bloat and lag.
 
Exynos vs Snapdragon is only a concern if listening through the device headphone jack, because the Exynos models have a separate, competent DAC chip (Wolfson), whereas the Snapdragon designs use the integrated DAC solution on the Snapdragon SoC, which has noticably lower performance (but saves the cost of the extra chip, which is probably only a few cents). It's not all bad news, though. The Snapdragon models are all-around faster overall, and have significantly better graphics hardware, plus if you're using a portable DAC/amp solution, the internal DAC in the phone is irrelevant anyway. I'm glad I have the Snapdragon, personally, but I wouldn't complain if they put the Wolfson DAC in it too so both models sounded the same through headphone out, even if it cost $10-20 more, since this is the way most people will use them...
 

woundedrhyme said:

  I'm not from the US, I'm from Poland . I do not have a DAC, never used one actually, but if there is any other way to test I can try it. Do you know of any app which would show the audio-out frequency from the micro-usb port?

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I don't know if such a thing would exist, but sadly, I suspect it doesn't. Players generally only show the playback specifics of the source. Plus, when everything comes out at the same rate there isn't really any need for a tool to show what that rate is. Maybe someone's writing one now, though, since the situation is different now?

stand said:

   
 
I thought the US variants were Snapdragon not Exynos based SoC so I don't know how the USB drivers of the Lollipop implementations would compare.

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amleth said:

   
The SoC is irrelevant to this, it's a software difference. The Android mixer would forcibly convert everything to 48KHz internally in pre-5.x.x, and then would only output at this rate regardless of source sample rate. Lollipop is supposed to add support for multiple sample rates internally so any rate can come out untouched. Apparently the fan-made images for Note 4 do indeed work like this, but I don't have word yet on whether the official Samsung ROMs do too. I'd assume they would, but there's no guarantee with Samsung about sensible choices being made. Look at Touchwiz bloat and lag.
 
Exynos vs Snapdragon is only a concern if listening through the device headphone jack, because the Exynos models have a separate, competent DAC chip (Wolfson), whereas the Snapdragon designs use the integrated DAC solution on the Snapdragon SoC, which has noticably lower performance (but saves the cost of the extra chip, which is probably only a few cents). It's not all bad news, though. The Snapdragon models are all-around faster overall, and have significantly better graphics hardware, plus if you're using a portable DAC/amp solution, the internal DAC in the phone is irrelevant anyway. I'm glad I have the Snapdragon, personally, but I wouldn't complain if they put the Wolfson DAC in it too so both models sounded the same through headphone out, even if it cost $10-20 more, since this is the way most people will use them...
 
 

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Like I said, different implementation of the ROM's for each SoC,  so one never knows what's in the soup. If you're looking for hires, be prepared for possible/likely disappointment (I hope I'm wrong).
Supposedly Samsung has toned down their heavy/inefficient hand on TouchWiz. I use Nova Launcher any.
Wolfson doesn't mean that every model of DAC chip they make is magical or that Qualcomm blows.

stand said:

   
 
Like I said, different implementation of the ROM's for each SoC,  so one never knows what's in the soup. If you're looking for hires, be prepared for possible/likely disappointment (I hope I'm wrong).
Supposedly Samsung has toned down their heavy/inefficient hand on TouchWiz. I use Nova Launcher any.
Wolfson doesn't mean that every model of DAC chip they make is magical or that Qualcomm blows.

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This is an Android 4.x to 5.x architectural difference though, which is constant regardless of hardware used; its not a driver thing. It should be in all the ROMs built from the 5.x kernel, but I wouldn't put it past Samsung to do something odd that removes or defeats it for some strange reason or other. For example, the "Material Design" look that's supposed to be a feature of 5.x has been buried under Samsung's Touchwiz UI elements, for the most part (though it's apparently at least a bit lighter than previous Touchwiz implementations). Basically, until I see (or at least hear of) native rate output working in shipping Samsung 5.0.1 ROMs, I'm gonna feel uneasy.
 
It's not about Hi-Res, it's about avoiding unnecessary lossy sample-rate conversions done at 16bit precision, so that you can actually get bit-perfect CD quality output as a transport. The 44.1K source upsampled to 48K sounds worse than the original, just like audio munged through the Windows Volume Mixer getting forced to 48K internally does. For that you need ASIO or WASPI to get around it, but for Android there's been no solution 'til now except USBAudioPlayer, which gives bit-perfect output (by totally bypassing the Android audio implementation and writing its own USB driver), but that costs money, and has a pretty clunky UI. I want to be able to use whatever audio or video player I want and get perfect output.
 
No, it doesn't, but I never said this particular Wolfson was magical, just competent. And it's always going to be better to use a dedicated chip vs forcing analog-domain hardware onto the main SoC die where all the digital stuff happens and clock rates are in the GHz instead of KHz. When they cost a few cents each in quantity, and there's a slot and traces already on the board for it, it seems a bit stingy to leave it out of some versions.

@Amleth using an external DAC with PCB traces inside the same RF device may not be better than putting it all in the same SoC.
I hope that I'm wrong but I haven't seen any specs from Google about sample rates and bit depth for Lollipop, just some harping about low latency and multichannel.
One other app bedsides USBAPP is Onkyo HF Player.