Do we know what kind of internal DAC it has?
Sony Xperia 1 II most probably uses a Qualcomm audio codec. Can be their flagship Aqstic WCD9341, a dedicated audio chip. Only a proper tear-down will reveal the details. As I found out this audio chip contains a very good DAC section and can produce nearly 1 Vrms at headphone out when implemented in high performance mode.
Last year I bought the Meizu 16th (Meizu 16 in China), which sadly was their last flagship with a headphone jack. At $240 in India, it came with Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC & 8GB RAM. Meizu India provided us a fully Google certified device with Google Playstore (GMS) pre-installed. In short, pretty awesome performance, built quality & assured Google security for its price. In general during certification process, Google just wipes the slate clean with any of the Chinese mobiles and mainly due to security reasons rejects factory installation of half of their China specific apps. On the negative side, we do not get many useful apps which are present on their Chinese ROMs.
Meizu has a rich history of making portable music players before they ventured into smartphones and still today makes some very good quality headphones & earphones. As such the company understands sound quality and many of their previous flagships smartphones came with dedicated DAC solutions. However for 16th, there was no press material indicated anything extraordinary in the audio department. I took for granted it was using some low quality audio codec from Qualcomm. However more I listened music through my Meizu 16th, more I fell in love with this device. One day just for fun I sat down a did some critical listening with some good earphones, and immediately noticed the sound quality is above ordinary through the audio jack. It has to do with both the audio tuning & hardware. I started reasoning my mind how is it possible with Qualcomm codecs and Meizu must have done something special.
After going through some Chinese websites performing detailed tear-downs, I found Meizu 16th was using the highest quality flagship audio codec available from Qualcomm, better known as Aqstic WCD9341. WCD9341 is a dedicated audio chip with ADC, DAC and headphone amplifier built in. It is not just some random low cost audio codec shoved into a Qualcomm power management IC. It supports PCM playback of upto 384 kHz, native DSD steams upto DSD128 and also DoP (DSD over PCM). With an advertised dynamic range of 130 dB & distortion of -109 dB during audio playback the WCD9341 is quite close to ESS ES9218P SABRE (LG's Quad DAC) or Cirrus Logic CS43199 (Vivo NEX S). Digging deeper I found Qualcomm partnered and further tuned their flagship WCD9341 under the guidance given by a group of audiophiles known as "Golden Ears". Qualcomm was then able to create custom digital filters which creates the final sound signature which are generally preferred by audiophiles.
However in real life even if these objective measurements are very close to ESS & Cirrus Logic, there still remains a gap in performance which Qualcomm needs to fill. ESS & Cirrus Logic still are the kings in the smartphone audio segment. In Meizu 16th tear-downs by Chinese media, I found the WCD9341 audio chip sits under its own tiny metal plate cover with graphite & copper shielding on top. So the chip is well isolated from rest of the PCB and other ICs, eliminating a lot of induced noise on the analog stage of WCD9341. Frankly, quite impressed as Meizu shelled more money in the production line to make sure the sound quality remains intact through the 3.5 mm audio jack.
The other fact I noticed on 16th is the power available through audio jack is much higher than similar WCD9341 implementations like in OnePlus 6 (sadly the last OnePlus with audio jack). The OnePlus frankly sounds anemic in comparison, no drive. Meizu seems to have much more power and can drive same headphones much better. This is mostly due a better power supply stage to the audio chip. Going through the spec sheet I found WCD9341 is designed to perform with power anywhere between 6mW to 34mW. In high performance mode it will require all of those 34 mW and maybe Meizu is providing all the power it needs by dedicated power supply rails to WCD9341. On other hand LG's QuadDAC consumes 2.5 times more power at 80mW but provides over 2 Vrms output, more than twice that of WCD9341.
Again, truly impressed by Meizu's dedication for sound quality as I see & hear the difference of the same audio chip with drastically different performance levels between Meizu & OnePlus. The expertise of Meizu in audio tuning also plays a big role here. In actuality it is Meizu's good implementation that makes the WCD9341 shine.
Subjectively, Meizu 16th sound signature more akin to my LG V30+ or Vivo X5Max, which can best be described with words like pristine, neutral & accurate. Just like LG & Vivo, the amount of detail retrieval is very high in this Meizu smartphone. To my tastes WCD9341 is better than anything from AKM stables, be it AKM AK4376 or AK4376A in terms sound quality. Others may vary. Drive capability on my Vivo X9/V5Plus (AKM AK4376) and Meizu 16th is more or less the same.
The default music player provided by Meizu is good and convenient to use but Vivo default iMusic app is better. LG has the best default music player in my opinion. The 16th supports all kinds of PCM audio files however it does not support native DSD playback even though WCD9341 supports it. Meizu music player is unable to play DSD files be it DSD64, DSD128 or DSD256.
Good news is while using USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) on Meizu 16th, it correctly detects and says "Internal HiRes DAC Detected". However during DSD playback, UAPP performs software decoding from DSD to PCM at 176.4 kHz. This proves both support for native DSD playback using DoP protocol and existence of a direct software audio tunnel to the audio chip are not present on this phone. History reveals Meizu never supported DSD playback. I was not able to distinguish any sound quality improvements on UAPP over default music player when playing high quality PCM files. However I primary use UAPP as it gives me a consistent feel among my multiple devices.
One of the other reasons I bought Meizu 16th was the dual front firing stereo speakers. Each speaker is powered by a dedicated Cirrus Logic CS35L41 mono speaker amplifier, so sound is loud & crisp leaning more on the musical side rather than being out and out loud. I just love the 16th for its speakers. In the end I am quite impressed with the sound quality and headphone drive capability of Meizu 16th through 3.5 mm audio jack considering that it still uses an audio codec from an unknown brand like Qualcomm. And I admit the audio codec is of high quality if implemented in high performance mode. Qualcomm deserves credit & also Meizu deserves a pat on their back for bringing to us perhaps the best implementation of Qualcomm Aqstic WCD9341 on a smartphone till date.
