[ohenriquez]

Dear Members
 
I have been looking on the internet and I have not been able to find a comparison between LG V10 and Samsung S7 Edge 
My S7 Edge has a Lucky chip (equinox version) and it sounds quite good and I wonder whether LGV 10 is better
 
I have decent set of headphones Phillips Fidelio L2 and Audioquest NightHawk
 
Sadly, there are no LGV10 on display in Auckland and the only way I can test it is to buy it
 
Thanks in advance for your help

 

[cel4145]

GSMarena should have audio measurements for both of those phones. Look at the full reviews.

 

[ohenriquez]

Thanks for your help, yes I had read them and I was wondering about real experiences from people. I kept researching and interestingly enough, I found real life comparison between LG G5 with his external DAC and the S7:
 
"I have S7 Edge Exynos version with Lucky CS47L91 Sound DAC and LG G5 + B&O Hifi Plus module (equivalent to LG V10) side by side. I struggle to pick any difference or flaw in any of them with my gear and my ears. Reviewed with 16 and 24 bit flac lossless material and Sennheiser IE80 16 Ohms"

 

[cel4145]

Individual real life experiences can often be less reliable than measurements when it comes to audio electronics.

 

[ohenriquez]

I saw the reviews for each one but I dont know how to interpret them
For the LG V10:

"Audio output is nicely clean, but not very loud

The LG V10 produced perfectly clear output when connected to an active external amplifier - there wasn't a single one of its readings to be anything other than excellent. The volume wasn't particularly impressive, but it was still just above average so we certainly liked what we saw here.

Plug in a pair of headphones and you get some extra stereo crosstalk and a bit of intermodulation distortion. Both readings remain very good for the case though so the overall clarity is rather pleasing. Volume levels do drop a bit though and that means the V10 wouldn't be particularly comfortable handling high-impedance headphones. Those aside however, the LG flagship did a very good job here."

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
LG V10	+0.01, -0.03	-93.3	93.3	0.0021	0.0098	-93.0
LG V10 (headphones attached)	+0.25, -0.10	-93.1	91.9	0.0049	0.186	-67.3

S7 Edge

Audio output as clean as they get

The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge delivered perfectly clean output with an active external amplifier - hardly a surprise given its family results lately. Volume levels were just above average so there might be room for improvement there, but the overall showing is still excellent.

Somewhat surprisingly, stereo quality when we plugged in our standard headphones set dropped less than it did on the vanilla Galaxy S7. Given that the non-curved flagship was already impressive in that aspect, you can easily guess that the edge flavor was among the best we’ve tested. An impressive result indeed.

Anyway, here go the results so you can do your comparisons.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge	+0.01, -0.05	-92.5	92.7	0.0028	0.0089	-92.2
Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (headphones)	+0.02, -0.06	-92.0	92.0	0.0052	0.092	-85.2

 
Based on that it seems that the S7 produces better sound but I am not sure if these numbers translate into noticeable changes to the human ear, at least with my Audioquest NightHawk headphones
 
Any help into evaluating the above numbers would be appreciated 

 

[cel4145]

Right. The numbers are very close, close enough that you might not be able to tell much if any difference between the two.

 

[HipHopScribe]

You might want to visit this thread:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/662095/best-smartphone-for-audiophile
 
I haven't heard the S7 Edge personally, but I can say that the V10 is one of the most highly regarded smartphones for audio. 

 

[ohenriquez]

I tried the LG V10 (for one day) and struggled to find a difference when compared it with my S7 edge (Exynos)
I did not spend much time though 
I used my Audioquest NightHawk Headphones
At some point, I found the LG V10 sound marginally better than the S7 edge
Both provide clear, not too warm sound 
 
Unfortunately, I had to return the LG V10 as the screen was scratched 
 
Tomorrow, I will receive the HTC 10 and will compare it with my S7 Edge

 

[eio]

Individual real life experiences can often be less reliable than measurements when it comes to audio electronics.

Totally true.
 
But unfortunately valid measurements are hard to get...
 
Take GSMArena for example:
bit depth, sample rate, load, level are all unknown, neither the operating mode for phones having dedicated HiFi audio path.
it's not measured by a proper audio analyzer, it's not even recorded with a good sound card! (100db DR and -86db THD+N in A/D, M-Audio Fast Track Pro is pretty out of league today)
 
An interesting test, but not a reliable measurement of device's audio performance imho.
 
device manufacturer's spec sheet is also not much useful:
even if they are honest, they only tell you a tiny part of the story - the best performing scenario, that typically means near infinite load resistance, near maximum volume, certain sample rate (48k for most Android devices) and certain frequency point (1k maybe), that is nowhere representative of the most used condition in real life.
manufacturers knew what numbers are important for real world use, they just don't want to publish them (it will look much worse, sometimes horrible compared to the ideal numbers)
and there are also not-so-honest players, numbers can be faked or copied straight from IC spec, graphs can be drawn in photoshop...it's a mess.
 
I'm also looking for some meaningful measurements (esp. for ultra low resistance load, which means more susceptible to noise floor, more likely to hit the current wall, and less damping) between V20 and Exynos S7/S7 Edge, sadly with no success yet...