You just nailed it. The S10+ Snapdragon, which I have owned since they came out, is a warm smooth sound with decent width and better depth front to back, with hard hitting bass and good dynamics. My Noble K10U sound really good off just the phone wired. The bass is the star of the show, with smooth treble and a really nice and present midrange. Where my iBasso DX160 outshines the phone is in sound stage size and width and more forward mids/highs, but I would be happy with just the S10+ Snapdragon.
Interesting! Thanks for the info, as I've read the Noble K10U seems to be an analytical and bright sounding iem (have not auditioned it) so to think that when paired with S10+ it has good dynamics in the lows department is great to hear as it sounds like the S10+ had done some work in strengthening the bass performance of the IEM which is what I'm looking for.
There will likely be no audible difference in sound quality between them. Here are the distortion measurements of the S10+:
And here are the same measurements for the LG G7 (which has the same audio chip as the G6):
The distortion spikes to the right of the main test signal in the middle are likely way too low on both phones to be audible. As for 'sound signature', both phones have nicely flat frequency response (as all DAPs/DACs/amps should).
S10+:
LG:
If you want "something more dynamic and slightly more smooth warm in the bass department", then get different headphones, or just use EQ.
Interesting, so when you were auditioning them both side by side in terms of sound signature both sounded identical?
My current IEM is the Westone UM 30 PRO V1, which is recognized for its dark sounding sound signature with aggressive and fast bass response and thick mids. When i first got these I was using Sony's Xperia Z1 and than afew years later I upgraded to the LG G6.
When paired with the dark sounding Westone UM 30 PRO
Xperia Z1: Strong, Fast, Dynamic, Aggressive and Smooth Bass, Thick Mids, Tamed Smooth Highs, Narrow & Initimate Sounding Soundstage
LG G6: Neutral Flat Spacious Sound and somewhat lackluster and weak/surpressed bass response. Mids are no longer thick sounding and in your face kind of experience.
And these were with no equalizer.
I've regreted selling my Xperia Z1 now even though the LG G6 is better in overal performance but the sound signature is just not my cup of tea, eq-ing it doesn't seem to solve the problem for me.
If the Snapdragon S10+ sounds closer to what the Z1 sounded i'll be impressed and it will be a keeper. From what I've A/B-ed so far the only phones that comes close to how the Xperia Z1 sounded were the Huawei Phones such as Mate 20 X and P30 (non-pro). These 2 phones had very strong, dynamic and clean bass prescience with thick mids might even be better than the Xperia Z1 but at this point it has been over 6 years since i had the Z1 so I can't really say if it's improvement for sure but what I know is it seems to make my UM 30 PROs shine again, the way people had describe the UM 30 PROs in this forum.
With the LG G6 it sounds like a different IEM altogether, might be a good thing for those who like analytical sound signature and to think that it can even transform a dark sounding and thick sounding IEM such as the UM 30 PRO into a neutral and spacious sounding IEM makes me wonder how much weaker in bass would a naturally neutral sounding IEM such as K10 or a bright sounding IEM get when paired with the LG G6.
That said I would rather go with Samsung than Huawei due to the lack of support from Google, those 2 mentioned though are not affected as they were released before the ban but they are probably older than S10 in terms of specs. Based on my A/B with Huawei Phones it seems possible that phones with the Kirin processors might just have the same sound signature as them since both phones are using Kirin Processors. But if i'm not wrong those processors are exclusive to Huawei only, might need to do some research on that.
Does a thread exist for it?
