LG V20 Sound Quality

[ljnew]

You can plug in quality 'phones and get good DAC quality. You can also listen to YouTube music at 24/48 and watch Netflix.

!

You can't stream hifi quality from youtube. Is that a typo?

 

[ljnew]

Can someone share any method, app etc to boost bass in v20 without sacrificing the other spectrum...

root!

i disagree with everyone saying dedicated daps are better. The phone isn't optimized out of the box. Rooting will give you access to the phone's full audiophile capabilities.

Also, people should mention what headphones or iem they use before saying something is better!

 

[oliwek2]

You are welcome! You probably didn't have to order exactly that cable, I think that any cable with physical volume adjustment should work. Since you did order, I will add that I lower the volume to about 50% on the cable when connecting and it works extremely well, but lowering it all the way to 0 sometimes registers as AUX output. Kinda weird and really confused me at first so I wanted to just point that out. Please share your experiences once it arrives just so that we have more idea about how it works in general, given that people have been exclusively using extension cable in combination with impedance adapter so far.
In terms of sound quality that gets lost going through the cable, it shouldn't be anything drastic, although this and the inconvenience still nudges me towards rooting every once in a while.

I had hopes for V30 and I still hope that V40 and future LG audiophile phones allow users to select output power manually. All kinds of amps have this option and go through regulations without issues so LG must have had other reasons for not allowing manual control.

Thanks again for the details about how to trigger different modes on the V20. For me it's convenient (more than an impedance adapter) with certain cans I have, that do not always trigger it but need more gain than low power mode offers.
With the IEMs I have it's not necessary (that's curious because I used high power mode with IEMs and the V10).
It should be also usefull to regulate volume with certain DAPs without having to take them out of my pocket. I just don't know yet if sound quality will suffer much in that case.

Actually the Android SRC renders everything at 16/48, it's not just phones but Android TV boxes too. This is rather silly as there is nothing commercially released at those sampling rates, the venerable 44.1khz rate would have been a much better base level as most music files and all ripped CD's are 16/44.1 and would have required no conversion of any kind. This SRC was bypassed well before Hiby, and in earlier Android versions it was easier to accomplish it. Sony, HTC, were known for this a few years back.Since third part apps and now Hiby can do it, it means LG could have done it too, there is no excuse for this.

Thanks for the correction and comment. From what I remember reading certain devices (Axon 7?) also downmix audio at 16/44.1 but I'm not 100% sure which device and what use case.

 

[oliwek2]

I guess I should have been more pedantic: the aux mode lowers the noise floor, but that's all. How exactly are you using your phone in a way where this matters? The entire idea of the "normal" mode is that users are unlikely to run into a situation where the noise floor is the limiting factor for SQ.

If you're using an external amplifier, this matters a lot, but you don't amp with normal mode. All aux mode does is turn on all 4 dacs instead of the one. Nothing else, according to everything I've read, so of you disagree you had better be able to cite where you're getting your info.

From androidauthority:
it’s sufficient to understand that a parallel sub-DAC structure can improve noise performance typically by (6 x Nth order)dB per octave increment in the number of channels. An alternative way to look at this is that signal outputs are summed, while more random quantization noise errors occasionally cancel out because of their non-fixed phase relationship.

Put simply, doubling the number of ΣΔ modulator (sub-DAC) channels improves the noise performance by 6dB times the order of the modulator. So, a simple dual modulator design offers an extra 6dB of SNR over a single channel modulator,
.

The article you quote was written without the device in the hands (LG had just announced the V20, it was not on the market yet), and was an essay to explain what a quad DAC could do for the sound. They didn't know for sure how the ESS chip worked in LG device.
Later LG officials said the quad dac was always active in HiFi mode, even on normal/low power mode. This is from memory, but I'm sure you cand find back their quote. High power is about amping, not digital conversion.
Though I have same doubts with high power mode and V20 + (good resolution) IEMs, especially multi armature ones.

All the arguments I see are based on the phone's capabilities as a DAP--not as a DAP/computer. No normal computer can do what the V20 does unless extra parts are purchased, the same way graphics cards must be purchased for gaming.

V20 is a good deal!

We're on head-fi forums, not xda, aren't we ?

 

[Emulle]

Remember that the downmixing is easily fixable by;
Rooting & editing build.prop -> audio.offload.pcm.16bit.enable=enable
And/or depending on location -> use LG Music Player.
This will enable flawless bitperfect playback from 16/44.1 to 24/192(highest I've been able to test).

 

[finemind]

Coming from a slightly faulty HTC 10, I thought I'd try the Italy-only LG Q8 as it has the V20's quad-dac set-up and is smaller. (It's known elsewhere as the LG V20 mini/V34 etc).

It drives my HD25 I ii (70 Ohm) beautifully. And my HD600 (300 Ohm), better than the HTC 10. Buy I have a headphone amp to drive my headphones at home.

My Fiio F9 (32 Ohm) however triggers 'normal' mode and while the sound quality is pleasant, the phone can't drive them at all loud. I couldn't use these on public transport and at home playing quieter classical recordings, I can hear the cat yelling in the garden over the strings. Comparison to the HTC is pretty unflattering for the LG.

To sum up, I have a mobile phone that can drive a 300 Ohm pair of open-backed cans but not a 32 ohm pair of iems. Nice one, LG.

I know, you told me so.

It goes back tomorrow.

 

[shahkhan]

I'm using lgv20 with rha ma750 , and find it little sibilant. Wanna switch to a sony dap, like NW a45 etc. Can somebody having sony dap compare the two??

 

[470221]

RHA CL1 and V20 = very good synergy. For too much high tones I'm using Comply Foams T400.

 

[Dartin Bout]

Goto the UAPP forum and ask to sign up for the UAPP Hi-Res DIRECT mode driver beta. Listen to any track <96Khz fs, and prove to anyone with any log output or metadata that what is getting rendered is SRC material. So far, using ADB is seems impossible to prove it one way or another --- but it sounds so much truer to life and allows DIRECT mode to select every single time...just not when the moon, planet and stars line-up just right or fall victim to android mixer output. The ES9218 is an amazing sounding part when fed a clean digital feed.

I got the beta installed today and through my higher impedance VE Monks Pro, it would appear to be connecting the"High Impedance Dac" and not down converting local files to 16\48. I've used all of the tested apps that were discussed, last year,

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lg-v20-sound-quality.816024/page-144#post-13285367

and it compares favorably amongst them. i' don't see why any owner of this phone ever plugs in a low impedance headphone or streams anything, Doing that makes this no better then an IPhone acoustically.

Long Live the Quad Dac! Bow before it's Glory!

 

[ljnew]

I would like

I got the beta installed today and through my higher impedance VE Monks Pro, it would appear to be connecting the"High Impedance Dac" and not down converting local files to 16\48. I've used all of the tested apps that were discussed, last year,

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/lg-v20-sound-quality.816024/page-144#post-13285367

and it compares favorably amongst them. i' don't see why any owner of this phone ever plugs in a low impedance headphone or streams anything, Doing that makes this no better then an IPhone acoustically.

Long Live the Quad Dac! Bow before it's Glory!

I would like to test the beta as well. How do I get started?

 

[Dartin Bout]

I would like

I would like to test the beta as well. How do I get started?

http://www.extreamsd.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=580

 

[jacko5]

I convert all my music files to 24 bit/ 44.1 and 192k and use the LG Music app on the LG v20 with Shure SE535 Ltd Red and the sound is great.
I do not have root but use high impedance mode with 3.5mm extender trick.

 

[Emulle]

http://www.extreamsd.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=580

Sweet, have you checked DIRECT output with adb command "adb shell dumpsys media.audio_flinger"

 

[jt25741]

Yes....with the beta driver.... the v20 shows DIRECT output 100% of the time, with no exceptions as exist with the normal driver or other players regardless of what is going on prior its output. This is with TIdal as well, and network streaming...which is a big deal to me.

 

[chowmanfu]

You can't stream hifi quality from youtube. Is that a typo?

No. It's true. You can try Chick Corea's 'Romantic Warrior'. It streams 1440p. If you download and decompress it is actually 24/96.

A number of of uploaders vinyl-rip.