LG Electronics LG V20

General Information

The First Quad DAC Phone by LG Electronics. Boasting a ES9218 chip that supports 32-bit 394kHz and DSD512 formats.

Latest reviews

BrianLHR

New Head-Fier
Pros: Quad DAC
Cons: LG Bootloop issue possibility
The quad DAC sabre is really comparable to that of high end AK models. Since this is a head-fi forum, I would like to mention the technical problems with the V20. There are really no cons regarding the V20 as a music player.

LG phones have a tendency to function well for around 2 years. This is due to soldering issues that results in hardware failure over time, causing overheating/lags/complete failure. There has been a lawsuit regarding this issue. Point being, do not be surprised if it starts failing at the approximately 2 year old mark.
  • Like
Reactions: wormsdriver

eio

100+ Head-Fier
Pros: extremely clean, smooth, balanced, coherent sound. virtually no interference at all.
Cons: slightly lack of current drive, and mediocre crosstalk for low impedance loads.
recommended Poweramp alpha 703/704 settings for V20, for now:
 
1. Audio/Output: native OpenSL ES or java AudioTrack, no difference, they all work at 16/48.
2. Audio/Advanced Tweaks: enable Direct Volume Control, it seems DVC can move digital volume control before resampler, instead of after resampler if you use system volume control. this makes following settings effective, and yields much better result than system volume control.
3. Audio/Resampler/Resampler Type: use SoX.
4. Audio/Resampler/Dither: this is tricky, you can choose between 2 options...
        Shibata noise shaping: very clean sound. but noise gate on DAC does kick in frequently when signal is very weak at low volumes, resulting in slight gliches/pops.
        Triangular with high pass: noise gate seldom activates in this mode. the downside is that you get a consistent white noise, not unlike some analog recordings.
 
RMAA test results:
 
20 ohms dummy load test at 45 to 75 volume levels (75 is the maximum volume on V20)
 
V20's distortion start to rise above volume level 50 on 20 ohms load, looks like being soft-clipped, maybe due to current limit.


 
crosstalk:

 
sweep frequency IMD:

 
 
10 ohms dummy load test at 35 to 75 volume levels
 
wow! it is massively overloaded at volume 75, spectacular! 
very_evil_smiley.gif
 



 
100 ohms (detected as high impedance deivce) dummy load test at 35 to 75 volume levels.
 



 
10 ohms (in high impedance mode by hot swap) dummy load test at 15 to 75 volume levels.
 
it doesn't look like a good idea to override the auto detection...



 
summary of output voltage levels at different gain modes, measured by -3dB 1k tone with 10 ohms load
 

 
 
summary of distortion performance in low gain mode
 

(i tried to include high gain/aux mode in the same graph, but it seems high gain mode performs significantly worse than low gain mode for low impedance load even at the same output voltage level)
 
 output impedance:
2.3 ohms for ESS ES9218 in all gain modes
3.8 ohms for Qualcomm WCD9335
 
just for fun, V20 in non-hifi mode into 10 ohms load 
tongue.gif

 



 
 
this time i want to learn about the differences between gain modes (other than gain factor, which is already measured above), and to determine what are the best gain modes for various loads.
 
each load is tested in all three gain modes, and all tests are voltage matched.
 
10 ohm load:
fr.png
ct.png

thd.png
sthd.png

imd.png
simd.png

 
100 ohm load:
fr.png
ct.png

thd.png
sthd.png

imd.png
simd.png

 
unloaded:
fr.png
ct.png

thd.png
sthd.png

imd.png
simd.png

 
low impedance load works best in low impedance mode.
high impedance load works best in high impedance mode.
unloaded works best in line out mode.

Comments

There are no comments to display.
Back
Top