[RicardoB]

  Definitely unbeatable for the price point. I don't have any other high end smartphone to compare against, but (its included stock DAC) being so close to the OpenDAC HD for audio quality is something I did not expect.
 
I could not find a reputable source for the stock DAC by itself, only the ones that are built into headphones. (The few places I found claiming to sell it for $5 or less are most certainly fakes.) I theorize that the stock DAC actually costs enough to make (at least for now) that it could not be sold for what a normal consumer would consider a reasonable price. That situation will likely change in the future as demand for tiny USB DAC chips increases and helps push down the cost. (The majority of the cost of making a chip is R&D. Once that's done, it costs almost nothing to manufacture the chips, especially when they're likely using a 65nm or other "outdated" process.)

​Thank you very much

 

[RicardoB]

The problem with Chinese brand phones is that they are not compatible to most USA LTE bands and limited connectivity for within the US

sad....I hope HTC 11 will be even a bigger boy in audio quality

 
True but after about 9yrs being in cell phone sales I can tell you if you don't have unlimited data LTE is a kind of a waste like having a 40inch 4k TV that you sit more than 5 feet away from......LTE offers more bandwidth but to do what? Stream music? browse the web? post to social media? Most people in the US are hunting for wifi all day. Once you view a couple Instagram videos or youtube you are burning through your data cap, T-mobile has unlimited plans for streaming video but at the moment only up to 480p, as long as HSPA+ is around and there are data caps trust me you wont be missing much, I have LTE off on my x800 US(I know its not CN) and my speeds are still great plus I save a very slight amount of battery if you want I could do a speed test and post a screenshot, at the prices you can get some of those CN phones for with not only good portable audio but battery life etc its unbeatable.....you could buy both a LeTV x900 and Meizu Pro 5 for about $50 more than the cost of a single HTC 10

 

[RicardoB]

I know lot of you are going to laugh at me for this post but I recommend when your purchase a new device to give it time to "break in", on my x800 I flashed a few ROMs to gain performance and bug fixes and the sound quality and output volume I had with the stock ROM was gone, so I was baffled then I found a developer and I asked if he could increase the headphone output volume in his custom kernel which he did cause that guy is just awesome and the same....just a bland recessed sound so I gave up that night and while listening to some tunes before bed it magically kicked in because the kernel finally settled in I had to drop the volume about 4 clicks down and the sound became more "present"....placebo? I did a full reset...same...at first bland then over time especially with HIFI on and a couple max volume spurts (not with headphones on of course) the same magic happened. I browsed the system folder I found the xml files the developer edited and this phone has many xml files for output, dolby and sampling....long story short I returned to full stock ROM and recovery and I got the same low output "internal DAC" sound and over two hours its the same I had to drop the volume and I'm hearing full sound with amazing vocals, my guess is the system takes time to check the audio circuitry for defects and load the xml files which tell the OS how to handle audio playback, I tested with different headphones and all of them I had to lower the volume and I did the test with other people at the same volume and they asked if I did something. So those are my findings laugh or try it for yourself.

 

[Rainmaker91]

Did anyone find such adaptor like he mentioned above ? OTG and charging to micro USB together ?

Just search for "charge usb otg" on ebay, aliexpress, gearbest or amazon. I can't guarantee they will work though as I can't seem to find the link to the one I use anymoore, but something like this should do the trick.

Or just look for somehing similar on one of the mentioned sites, what you want is a USB hub for OTG that has a dedicated charge port (it should only ever be used for charging).

 

[god-bluff]

Z3 has separate magnetic charging so can charge/ run off mains whilst connected OTG to a dac

 

[god-bluff]

On the same note. Refurbished Z3 Compacts are available to preorder for £179.99 on Amazon UK. Pretty good deal for one of the best mobiles around

 

[GouryellaIV]

Hey guys,
 
made this big detailed list of  smartphones that have dedicated DACs, the list has 43 smartphones, ranging from the the biggest 6.44" Ramos MOS1 Max to the smallest 4.7" Vivo X1S and Y series. If i missed any smartphones, please let me know but it has to have dedicated DACs, and not Qualcomm DACs.
 
 
EDIT:For updated image list of smartphones, Check post #5307
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/662095/best-smartphone-for-audiophile/5295#post_13020806

 

[NiHaoMike]

The problem with Chinese brand phones is that they are not compatible to most USA LTE bands and limited connectivity for within the US

sad....I hope HTC 11 will be even a bigger boy in audio quality

The Le Pro 3 and Le S3 fully support AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. If you're on either of those carriers or a MVNO that piggybacks on either one, you won't miss a thing.

  Hey guys,
 
made this big detailed list of  smartphones that have dedicated DACs, the list has 43 smartphones, ranging from the the biggest 6.44" Ramos MOS1 Max to the smallest 4.7" Vivo X1S and Y series. If imissed any smartphones, please let me know but it has to have dedicated DACs, and not Qualcomm DACs.
 
 
 
 
 

Both the Le Pro 3 and the Le S3 (and all other LeEco phones without headphone jacks) use a USB 2.0 DAC and allow the user to easily swap it for a third party USB-C DAC.

 

[Kyrts]

Mate, could you please post this list as a *.png file so that us oldtimers might get a chance to actually see what's written there...
 

 

[GouryellaIV]

 
The Le Pro 3 and Le S3 fully support AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. If you're on either of those carriers or a MVNO that piggybacks on either one, you won't miss a thing.
Both the Le Pro 3 and the Le S3 (and all other LeEco phones without headphone jacks) use a USB 2.0 DAC and allow the user to easily swap it for a third party USB-C DAC.

not sure if its still a dedicated DAC, do you have the name of model/make or specifications of that DAC your talking about?
 
 

  Mate, could you please post this list as a *.png file so that us oldtimers might get a chance to actually see what's written there...
 

Fixed it, didnt know Imgur converted images to JPEG, its PNG now

 

[Gojira]

Thanks, GouryellaIV. Wow. What a list. Lots of raw data to work with from that. I think that may be the most useful post in this whole long mega-thread. I just hope I am not the only one willing to risk trying unknown, unproven brands so that we can test more of them. I got burned badly, but the headfier who bought the Bluboo Maya Max is quite happy with his purchase.
 
Some additions: LeTV x800, Lenovo Vibe/Lemon X3 Lite, Bluboo Maya Max, and Umi Max. I also strongly suspect (but can't prove) that the Vivo Y51 has non-SoC audio regardless of what devicespecification says. I listened to it and at the very least it seems too loud to be Qualcomm SoC audio. Also it has a certain sweet/musical quality that I've certainly never heard with other SoC audio. Vivo also lists it among their phones with HiFi audio and it sounds much, much better than the Y55 I listened to that lacks the HiFi audio. Admittedly there is some evidence that the Snapdragon 410 may have better audio than some of the later chips, but I have listened to other phones with Snap410 audio (Redmi 2, Asus) and they did not sound as good as the Y51 and the difference is not subtle.
 
It is interesting to see how Vivo utterly dominates the list in terms of the number of models with non-SoC audio. And Vivo seems to be experimenting with a large variety of manufacturers. I wonder if they will eventually settle on one. Apple has none? Samsung only has the Galaxy S7. Even LG only has 3 models. Of all the phones on this list other than really old phones like the MX4 I think Vivo may be the hardest to source. If you don't happen to live in or travel to Southeast Asia or India or maybe China they seem almost unavailable even online. Aliexpress does seem to have one vendor who sells them, but they are charging at least a $50 - $60 markup over local pricing making Vivo pricing even less competitive than it already is. Even with local pricing they tend to be overpriced for the features you get. May have something to do with Vivo being Indian-Chinese in the way that Lenovo is American-Chinese. Pure Chinese companies may have a pricing advantage. Are there any Indians or maybe Malaysians here with a more complete selection of Vivo phones locally who can check local prices? Here in the Philippines there are only 4 models available so far: Y51, Y55(new), V3, and V3Max.
 
I think a nice addition to this list would be aliexpress pricing (because cheap and has even obscure chinese phones) and maybe sources for the data on the audio chips if there are mulitiple ones.

 

[Kyrts]

Thanks for the PNG fix mate, very nice list!

 

[NiHaoMike]

  not sure if its still a dedicated DAC, do you have the name of model/make or specifications of that DAC your talking about?
 

It identifies as "LeTV LeEco_CDLA_DH1" with a VID of 0x262A and a PID of 0x1534. Looking into it, it seems to be a Saviaudio chip.
 
Here's what the USB Device Info app shows:

  Device Info
Device Path: /dev/bus/usb/001/002
Device Class: Miscellaneous (0xef)
Vendor ID:  262a
Vendor Name:  not in database
Product ID:  03ea
Product Name:  not in db
Interfaces
Interface #0
Class: Human Interaction Device (0x3)
    Endpoint: #0
Address        : 129 (10000001)
Number         : 1
Direction      : Inbound (0x80)
Type           : Intrrupt (0x3)
Poll Interval  : 6
Max Packet Size: 1
Attributes     : 000000011
Interface #1
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoints: none
Interface #2
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoints: none
Interface #3
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoint: #0
Address        : 3 (000000011)
Number         : 3
Direction      : Outbound (0x0)
Type           : Isochronous (0x1)
Poll Interval  : 1
Max Packet Size: 56
Attributes     : 00000001001
Interface #4
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoint: #0
Address        : 3 (000000011)
Number         : 3
Direction      : Outbound (0x0)
Type           : Isochronous (0x1)
Poll Interval  : 1
Max Packet Size: 84
Attributes     : 00000001001
Interface #5
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoints: none
Interface #6
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoint: #0
Address        : 130 (10000010)
Number         : 2
Direction      : Inbound (0x80)
Type           : Isochronous (0x1)
Poll Interval  : 1
Max Packet Size: 56
Attributes     : 00000001001
Interface #7
Class: Audio Device (0x1)
    Endpoint: #0
Address        : 130 (10000010)
Number         : 2
Direction      : Inbound (0x80)
Type           : Isochronous (0x1)
Poll Interval  : 1
Max Packet Size: 84
Attributes     : 00000001001
 

 

[Gojira]

Just to clarify are we talking about the cheap DAC/amp in the CDLA earphone included as an accessory or the cheap DAC/amp in the "Type-C 3.5mm Adaptor" included as an accessory? Or both? In either case it's essentially an external DAC (and amp) and one that I highly doubt can compete with true external DAC-amp combos that headfiers are using. The DAC and amp chips must be very cheap indeed if LeTV can afford to throw in 2 of them as accessories. In any case I'm not sure it belongs in that list because they are not actually a part of the phone. We are basically talking about an accessory.

 

[NiHaoMike]

They both seem to use the same chip or at least they have the same VID/PID.
 
I certainly wasn't expecting it to hold up that well against the OpenDAC HD (PCM1792A+OPA1612+TPA6120A2), but Delta Sigma is truly amazing technology. I speculate that inside the "DAC", they have a DC/DC converter generating a positive rail and a negative rail, with a CMOS output stage running at 6MHz or so and LC output filters (very tiny at 6MHz and such low power levels) to finish the conversion to analog. Then it's just a bunch of digital logic to interface USB 2.0, convert PCM to a bitstream, and a Delta Sigma ADC to digitize the microphone input. Very little in the way of precision analog circuits to trim and "outdated" 65nm or so processes make it possible to fit a lot into a tiny chip and still have it cheap to make. The chip vendor might also have contracts with the device manufacturers (e.g. LeEco) to reduce the costs of the chips in order to jump start the move to USB-C audio and drive demand for USB-C headphones.
 
In contrast, the PCM1792A came out around 2004 or so when 90nm was cutting edge, so it most likely would be built on a 180nm or even 250nm process. They do not redesign it for a newer process ("die shrink") as it would cost a lot to revalidate the chip and the typical applications for it are not particularly power sensitive.