[Verloren]

   
No way there's enough room to fit more than a single dac chip in the V20 along with everything else.

The only way I see it having 4 DACs if it is the size of a Nexus 7/iPad mini, and that would still come at the cost of a smaller battery.

 

[ljnew]

  The only way I see it having 4 DACs if it is the size of a Nexus 7/iPad mini, and that would still come at the cost of a smaller battery.
 

http://www.droid-life.com/2016/08/11/lg-v20-will-bring-quad-dac-heat-first-smartphone/

 

[malifact]

Until there's a teardown, I'm sceptical about this quad DAC business. Vivo did a similar marketing trick with the XPlay 5. I'm still interested in the phone, but the reason I like the V10 is the tuning. If that's not done right, it doesn't matter what components are included.

 

[Verloren]

  http://www.droid-life.com/2016/08/11/lg-v20-will-bring-quad-dac-heat-first-smartphone/

I still don't see how it's possible to cram 4 DACs onto a mobile device motherboard.
 
Here are the ESS DAC chip sizes for the mobile products:
ES9028Q2M: 5mm x 5mm
9018C2M: 2mm x 2.15mm
ES9018K2M: 5mm x 5mm
ES9016K2M: 5mm x 5mm
ES9010K2M: 5mm x 5mm
 
Here's an image of a LG V10 motherboard:

Most mobile devices have similar motherboards. As such, I don't see a 4xDAC phone as a feasible product. There is very little space available.

 

[Feelgood]

Super phone

 

[gr8soundz]

  I still don't see how it's possible to cram 4 DACs onto a mobile device motherboard.
 
Here are the ESS DAC chip sizes for the mobile products:
ES9028Q2M: 5mm x 5mm
9018C2M: 2mm x 2.15mm
ES9018K2M: 5mm x 5mm
ES9016K2M: 5mm x 5mm
ES9010K2M: 5mm x 5mm
 
Most mobile devices have similar motherboards. As such, I don't see a 4xDAC phone as a feasible product. There is very little space available.

 
As I've been saying (for the same reasons you visually pointed out), the V20 WON'T have 4 dac chips.
 
I checked the ESS site yesterday for specs on all the mobile chips you listed and its unclear which one has 4 channels. Some were unspecified while others showed 2-channels and, afaik, only the non-mobile chips have 8 channels.
 
So, assuming LG continues their partnership with ESS, either the V20's 'quad-dac' is indeed marketing speak or it will contain an entirely new chip. Can't see ESS making a custom chip just for an LG phone when 5 mobile variants already exist. Not to mention the 9028 is less than a year old and was used in the G5's dac module.
 
We should know for sure after September 6 but, with such limited pcb real estate, saying the V20 will have 4 dac chips is like saying every quad-core cpu is 4 separate cpu chips (like a server motherboard might have).
 

 

[Onitsuka]

Nice!

If they fix some of the problems I have with the V10, I'll grab this, and give my V10 to my gf. She's currently using an LG Stylo, so this would be a big improvement. 

Wishlist:

• Give users more control over the amp 
• Kill the second screen
• 128 gb of internal storage
• Improve battery management
• Less bloatware (on can dream
• Bigger battery
• Shorter
• Better Bluetooth antenna
• Improve the screen. (A friend of mine has a Galaxy S7 Edge, and the V10's screen is not in the same league, despite the same resolution.)

Yeah, but why kill the second screen, it's very useful to me, especially when I drive and don't want to unlock the screen just to skip a track.

 

[ljnew]

   
As I've been saying (for the same reasons you visually pointed out), the V20 WON'T have 4 dac chips.
 
I checked the ESS site yesterday for specs on all the mobile chips you listed and its unclear which one has 4 channels. Some were unspecified while others showed 2-channels and, afaik, only the non-mobile chips have 8 channels.
 
So, assuming LG continues their partnership with ESS, either the V20's 'quad-dac' is indeed marketing speak or it will contain an entirely new chip. Can't see ESS making a custom chip just for an LG phone when 5 mobile variants already exist. Not to mention the 9028 is less than a year old and was used in the G5's dac module.
 
We should know for sure after September 6 but, with such limited pcb real estate, saying the V20 will have 4 dac chips is like saying every quad-core cpu is 4 separate cpu chips (like a server motherboard might have).
 

The say it's "The first phone to introduce quad dac" .  Well that would be a strong lie!  They would lose a lot of credibility.  But companies do dumb stuff all the time.  We'll see Sept 6...

 

[shuto77]

Yeah, but why kill the second screen, it's very useful to me, especially when I drive and don't want to unlock the screen just to skip a track.

Yeah, I see that. If I could just root this darn thing, I could delete the bloatware, which is probably what's draining my battery.

 

[Verloren]

  The say it's "The first phone to introduce quad dac" .  Well that would be a strong lie!  They would lose a lot of credibility.  But companies do dumb stuff all the time.  We'll see Sept 6...

 
LG might end up having to do something similar to what nVidia did for the 970, although that class action suit only benefited the lawyers.

 

[malifact]

I'm not sure what to make of the second paragraph in this article on the V20:
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/8/12/12450100/lg-v20-specs-quad-dac-smartphone-audio
 
"To adapt the new audio system to a mobile environment, LG has collaborated with ESS and engineered a low-power mode whereby three of the DACs automatically shut off when playing back lower-quality music or using lower-quality headsets."
 
I wonder how the V20 will decide whether a headset is low-quality or not and will the user have any control over this process. Hopefully, it will be similar to the Hi-Fi mode in the V10 which you can turn on and off manually.

 

[artpiggo]

I'm not sure what to make of the second paragraph in this article on the V20:
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/8/12/12450100/lg-v20-specs-quad-dac-smartphone-audio

"To adapt the new audio system to a mobile environment, LG has collaborated with ESS and engineered a low-power mode whereby three of the DACs automatically shut off when playing back lower-quality music or using lower-quality headsets."

I wonder how the V20 will decide whether a headset is low-quality or not and will the user have any control over this process. Hopefully, it will be similar to the Hi-Fi mode in the V10 which you can turn on and off manually.

I believe they misword from low quality to low impedance.

 

[gr8soundz]

  I'm not sure what to make of the second paragraph in this article on the V20:
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/8/12/12450100/lg-v20-specs-quad-dac-smartphone-audio
 
"To adapt the new audio system to a mobile environment, LG has collaborated with ESS and engineered a low-power mode whereby three of the DACs automatically shut off when playing back lower-quality music or using lower-quality headsets."
 
I wonder how the V20 will decide whether a headset is low-quality or not and will the user have any control over this process. Hopefully, it will be similar to the Hi-Fi mode in the V10 which you can turn on and off manually.

 
Here we go again.......
 
Now we'll need ways to trick the V20 into using all channels for low-impedance headphones and iems.
 
They mentioned LG taking a similar approach to the Apogee Groove which I can confirm sounds pretty good but is too power hungry to work with smartphones. Apogee advertised it similarly as having a 'quad-sum dac' (4 dacs per channel). Being unbalanced means it has an 8-channel chip and best info I could find suggests its an older ES 9006.
 
We all want better battery life but not sure auto-crippling the dac this time (compared to the amp in the V10) is the solution.
 

 

[Whitigir]

http://www.esstech.com/files/4114/4095/2154/ES9023_PB_101103.pdf

Ess9023 is the newest stereo DAC, and it is dual channel. The only way to have Quad DAC would be to use ESS9018S ? However, it wouldn't be able to turn off partial hardware to conserve the power. So my guess is that it would use 9208 in Mono configurations

http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en/products/sabre-digital-analog-converters/sabre-hifi-mobile-dacs/sabre-hifi-stereo-dacs/es9028q2m/

Now, Quad DAC only make senses with Balanced connection available....to hell with LG, if they do...I will be selling my HTC 10 . If they do balanced out, it would be similar to Pono Player which uses dual 3.5 mm

 

[gr8soundz]

http://www.esstech.com/files/4114/4095/2154/ES9023_PB_101103.pdf

Ess9023 is the newest stereo DAC, and it is dual channel. The only way to have Quad DAC would be to use ESS9018S ? However, it wouldn't be able to turn off partial hardware to conserve the power. So my guess is that it would use 9208 in Mono configurations

http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en/products/sabre-digital-analog-converters/sabre-hifi-mobile-dacs/sabre-hifi-stereo-dacs/es9028q2m/

Now, Quad DAC only make senses with Balanced connection available....to hell with LG, if they do...I will be selling my HTC 10

. If they do balanced out, it would be similar to Pono Player which uses dual 3.5 mm

 
It must be a different chip than what is on ESS' site or at least a different configuration. I'm betting they'll use one of the Soc chips with integrated amp. Hard to imagine any other type of chip with the ability to run 'dacs' independently.
 
I wish it were balanced but can't be if they're claiming 4 dacs (assuming 2 channels per 'dac' for 8 total). They'd need 16 channels (which would take up too much space) to still claim that with a balanced output (2 per output with 4 outputs total).