I am not familiar with ZTE Axon 7 mobile phone,do they use AK4490 in a budgeted phone? This is new to me as AK4490 is too power hungry for mobile application application, and I am not aware of any mobile phone will integrate this chipset into their audio solution.
We can go through the basic idea to the question logically. Assuming the DAC chipset remain the same, the different will be:
- The digital processing before going into AK4490:
- The analogue processing after AK4490 has decoded the audio bitstream
- The Power management that support the complete digital and audio processing.
Once we go beyond this logical thinking, the details will become technical and I am not sure if this is necessarily information for general consumers. For example, just to name a few tasks to illustrate the involvements.
Before DAC chipset:
- translate file into bitstream according to specific codec
- DSP to enhance digital signal and reduce error
- User controlled DSP features with adjustment/selection options (e.g., PMEQ, upsampling, digital filters, ...)
- Clock sync and jitter reduction
After DAC chipset
- Amplification circuit design
- Choice of components/Op-amp
- Voltage/Current conversion
- Anti-interference
- Volume Control
- Gain Control
- Mute Control
Power Management
- Make sure each component receive the optimized power supply
- Ground looping
- Minimize components interference from power circuit
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In my personal understanding, Power Management is actually the most critical part of the implementation, Analogue comes second, and the digital function before DAC chipset is the least important among the three, but this is subject to disagreement.
Theoretically if you want to compare devices which are capable of playing music from a chipset/component/technical design point of view, these are the issues you need to look at. Isn't this wonderful!
OK, let come back to the real life in English.
First of all, mobile phone is not cheap, they are more expensive and sophisticated then our DAP in most cases. Unfortunately mobile phone will not put audio playback as a priority issue during their design and implementation, so they tends to go for an integrated solution in order to minimize the space and power required. For example, they probably need to condense the analogue circuit to one or two components only and they won't use high-power op-amp like we do in a dedicated DAP, result in significantly lower driving power, and reduction in audio quality from audiophile point of view. However whether these difference is audible will largely depends on the experience and preference of user, choice of headphone, and choice of music. So I always encourage customer to compare the DAP and mobile phone with the headphone they are using and the music they listened to regularly, if they don't hear any different and didn't plan to change their headphone, then they probably will be happy to stay with their mobile phone. The story probably will change dramatically when they use my headphone and my music to compare the DAP and the mobile phone, but that's not always a valid option to the customer.
thanks !
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