[deco cat]

You recommend to get an LG V20 or a DAP. My budget is 250-300$.

For LG V20 users: what mod/rom you recommend to maximize audio quality?

 

[thejoker13]

You recommend to get an LG V20 or a DAP. My budget is 250-300$.

For LG V20 users: what mod/rom you recommend to maximize audio quality?

You don't need a mod or ROM. The stock quad dac works great and does what you need it to do, right out of the box.

 

[MorrisL]

What's the v20 competitor in the same price range? I bought the v20 but I wish it was just a tiny bit smaller so I could use it single-handedly to make calls at least. The v20 sits awkwardly in the palm. One cm narrower design would help.

 

[PaElgin]

What's the v20 competitor in the same price range? I bought the v20 but I wish it was just a tiny bit smaller so I could use it single-handedly to make calls at least. The v20 sits awkwardly in the palm. One cm narrower design would help.

The LG v20 does have a reduced size screen mode that is activated by dragging a finger across all three buttons on the bottom. In either direction too. To reverse it, just swipe the other way.

Phil in gorgeous Young Harris, Georgia, USA

 

[MorrisL]

The LG v20 does have a reduced size screen mode that is activated by dragging a finger across all three buttons on the bottom. In either direction too. To reverse it, just swipe the other way.

Phil in gorgeous Young Harris, Georgia, USA

I was talking about physical phone size.

 

[450408]

What's the v20 competitor in the same price range? I bought the v20 but I wish it was just a tiny bit smaller so I could use it single-handedly to make calls at least. The v20 sits awkwardly in the palm. One cm narrower design would help.

guess what...there isnt..at least in a phone..thats the reason i went to shanling m0. it has the same dac as the v20 and its tiny,very tiny, check it out.

 

[Tweeters]

What's the v20 competitor in the same price range? I bought the v20 but I wish it was just a tiny bit smaller so I could use it single-handedly to make calls at least. The v20 sits awkwardly in the palm. One cm narrower design would help.

Check out the ZTE Axon 7 mini

 

[Freefallr4545]

What's the v20 competitor in the same price range? I bought the v20 but I wish it was just a tiny bit smaller so I could use it single-handily to make calls at least. The v20 sits awkwardly in the palm. One cm narrower design would help.

HTC 10 Its 5.2 and sounds phenomenal In my opinion. It's 5.2 vs 5.7 and the reduction in size was just right to wrap my hand around making phone calls I know exactly what you mean. However I still use the V20 Constantly

 

[Freefallr4545]

guess what...there isnt..at least in a phone..thats the reason i went to shanling m0. it has the same dac as the v20 and its tiny,very tiny, check it out.

\I was checking out this shanling M0 you speak of. That"s a great little peace of musical wonder. I would get it but I'm travelling all the time, and unfortunately I ripped all my music to AAC 192 Lossy.

I stream Tidal all the time

 

[450408]

\I was checking out this shanling M0 you speak of. That"s a great little peace of musical wonder. I would get it but I'm travelling all the time, and unfortunately I ripped all my music to AAC 192 Lossy.

I stream Tidal all the time

oh ok then. you can check out the phones that other guys recomended. i wouldnt get axon 7 mini cause of the software. htc is probably your best bet and it will last a while but as it is kind of old device check if you have support in your country.

 

[totte]

What apps can be used to get access to a good eq without messing up the dacs and cause resampling issues? Ive been eyeing through the thread but I dont get all the technical lingo. I only play mp3s and flac with the stock player. I dont have root and Im.afraid of trying it since I have the h990ds. I got the b&o mark on mine and only a few set eq setting available in the stock music app but need somethimg more custom like a 10 band. Much appreciated for any help!

 

[Mmurin]

What apps can be used to get access to a good eq without messing up the dacs and cause resampling issues? Ive been eyeing through the thread but I dont get all the technical lingo. I only play mp3s and flac with the stock player. I dont have root and Im.afraid of trying it since I have the h990ds. I got the b&o mark on mine and only a few set eq setting available in the stock music app but need somethimg more custom like a 10 band. Much appreciated for any help!

Short answer: AIMP

LONG:

Dear all,
I write this post to highlight how much the player choice can affect the sonic quality of our android devices.
Please ignore my preceding posts on the topic, as only with this one I completed and re-analyzed all the measurements.
My focus here is on my LGV20.

I tried measured to measure my V20 H990DS non B&O with RMAA as explained here :

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the...urements-in-post-3-tutorial-in-post-2.800208/

with the mobile loaded with sennheiser ie80 (small load).

For the tests I played RMAA test file in different formats for with different players,with eq off and DAC on.

Concerning various sonic performances, essentially I checked with crosstalk and intermodulation distorsion that the DAC was effectively used.
Notable results:
- if the DAC is used all player have the same measured sonic performance
- rocket player was unable to use the DAC (worse values than the others)
- AIMP only used the DAC with audiotrack method

Then I checked that the frequency response was flat, by looking at the "frequency response swept sine" line; the results are summarized in this list :

Format results for each player, in order: wav / flac / mp3 / opus

AIMP : gentle roll off at 8 kHz / - / gentle roll off at 10 kHz / flat
folder player Peter Shashkin : sharp roll off at 15kHz / - / flat / flat
foobar : sharp roll off at 15kHz / - / - / flat
HYBY : sharp roll off at 15kHz / - / - / -
musicolet : sharp roll off at 15kHz / - / sharp roll off at 16kHz / sharp roll off at 15kHz
neutron : - / sharp roll off at 16 kHz / sharp roll off at 15kHz / -
player pro : - / - / flat / flat
stock pl : gentle roll off at 15 kHz / sharp roll off at 14 kHz / - / sharp roll off at 15kHz

It is very eye-catching the various roll-off at high frequency.
The format which behaves the better is opus.
I suppose this is due to the fact that is natively encoded at 48 kHz, thus by-passing Android re-sampling.

Some remarks:
- I also tried a test with less efficient heaphones and a 75 ohm impedance adapter in the measurement loop for 1 or 2 cases, and found the same frequency response as the preceding cases.
- the only value seriously affected when switching the dac off was stereo crosstalk.
- I compared the results with my old lumia 820, using foobar for windows phone. The test shows a marked roll-off similar to aimp for the V20, but if the wasapi option is chosen the rolloff frequency increase, as in the other players for the V20.
- due to the degradation coming from the lossy formats, the measurements of the Lumia are on par. with the ones of the V20.
- this high frequency roll-off is audible and quite nasty (e.g. metal music, brass or string rich instruments music , e.g. jazz, classical...)

Final thoughts:
- concerning sonic quality, this is not a beautiful show. The frequency response shall be flat ("transparent"), and altered only willingly by equalizers
- I still believe the biggest impact on sonic quality, even more than earphones / speakers is the quality of the recording
- I don't believe high-res music brings any sonic improvement
- I am perplexed of the tests of some websites (e.g. gsmarena) which measure the sonic performance of smartphones, sometimes defining it excellent, while posting a frequency response image showing high frequency roll-off as the one I measured here
- concerning the format choice I chose opus, which is natively 48 kHz (-> no resampling), free, very performant (transparent from 128 kbps, according to these people https://wiki.xiph.org/Opus_Recommended_Settings )
- concerning the player choice, among the ones which have a flat frequency response with opus, I chose AIMP, which supports multiple queues with automatic bookmarking, and supports well opus playback.

Here's the link with the recorded audio files, which you can feed to RMAA, if you wish it.

http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/729222/V20.zip

 

[LightBlue77]

UAPP should also be considered. It has eq, some additional audio tweaks for which one has to pay, bit-perfect option and some other settings i didn't try.

 

[seanc6441]

Anyone update their V20 to android 8.0 oreo? Is it possible for the SQ out of spotify could change? seems like something has changed but I cannot be sure.

 

[jt25741]

Anyone update their V20 to android 8.0 oreo? Is it possible for the SQ out of spotify could change? seems like something has changed but I cannot be sure.

I have and found the sound quality to drop drastically. After turning on debugging and saw that it was no longer doing DIRECT I/O instead going through the MIXER and being resampled. This was fixed by setting the DIRECT flag in UAPP Hifi Audio settings. I do not use Spotify directly as a source for apples to apples comparison though.

Overall I like what Oreo has done...but it has its quirks......and the aspect ratio of the visibility screen seems to have changed with Android 8 from 7.