I wish the mastering engineers would evaluate devices more thoroughly for Sony in these videos. It was vague in this one.
Without using the S-Master amp and dac from their walkmans to give their Xperia an edge there wouldn't be a dramatic increase in fan interest. LG has left and that reduces the likelihood anything will happen in the short term.
'audio tuned in collaboration with Sony Music Entertainment.'
Significant audio tuning has reduced crosstalk to an imperceptible 20dB - over 90% lower than USB-C headphone connections.
In addition to High-Resolution and High-Resolution Wireless Audio,
Xperia 1 II introduces DSEE Ultimate.
Source:
https://presscentre.sony.eu/pressre...-ae-tracking-burst-and-5g-dot-dot-dot-2975092
Can someone guess what the 20dB means here? is it a minus value?
Ivan (IVX) explains that:
Meizu HiFi DAC and Meizu HiFi DAC Pro are rated -55dB (
-55.577/-55.561dB) at 32 ohms (1kHz and 10kHz): Meizu 5 cm cable makes crosstalk -50db, imagine what happens after 3m of your cables...
BTW, if 9038D has -82db@32ohm, hence, at 600ohm it will be -108db, because it is R/R phenomenon up to -135db (unloaded infinite resistance). Actually, the way to get a lot better crosstalk with 3.5mm jack does exist. Need to use TRRS 3.5mm jack and balanced 4-wire cable, however, the compatibility with 3-wire unbalanced cable will be funky, in the case if 3.5mm plug will be TRRS also but as a GND used only S from trrS, the crosstalk could be even worse. But as I already said, even -50db@1kHz crosstalk is fine for precise stereo-image.
So when choosing devices, we have to pay attention to the crosstalk on the lowest resistance headphones.
DC03 has 92 dB at no load, 70 db at 300 ohm, around 50 or lower at 32 ohm. This is perhaps equal to Meizu but without its cable. So perhaps cables have no bearing on these values.
If 20dB is compared to these dongles, you could say it is way worse but I just don't see how it could be that they brag it is 90% better. In the Japanese marketing materials, they explain that it is reduced to 1/10th of Xperia 1's analog USB-C dongle crosstalk. Sony's official pages detailing the passion they put into Xperia show graphs without units so the 20 dB remains a mystery.
How much would Xperia 1's analog USB-C dongle crosstalk have been? 2dB? 200dB?
They are using terminology carelessly and their meaning was further distorted when translated to English by Sony EU or others.
As a result of various research on the net, there is a lot of information that the Xperia 1ii and 5ii are loaded with Qualcomm's high-quality sound chip called WCD9341. I haven't disassembled it and confirmed it, but as far as I can hear the sound, I think this information is correct. (I don't know if it's really installed or not.) The homepage says that the mixture of left and right sounds has been reduced to 1/10 of the previous Xperia ratio, but it is true. Crosstalk has been dramatically improved compared to the models before 1ii, and I felt it was completely different. The WCD9341 is also equipped with an amplifier function, has an output of 34mw with 16Ω, and has specifications that surpass even the Walkman A50's S Master HX in terms of dynamic range and total harmonic distortion. It also has an analytical upscaling function called dsee ultimate, which is also installed in the Xperia 1ii. There are many opinions on the net that it is equivalent to A50. There used to be rumors that the Xperia XZP might have a WCD9341, but in the end it was a lower chip called the WCD9335. The existence of Walkman's A series etc. will not be required thanks to this phone.
But it is obvious that one would prefer to pick and choose dongles instead.
For reference, Apple's lightning adapter/5s has around the same values as dc03 for normal loads but it can't go higher as the resistance goes higher. But I still don't get what 20dB could be referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosstalk
An IBA weighted graph is shown, and it makes you think that 50 dB is already too good.
To add further confusion to me,
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/206709234 shows Sonata HD Pro to have very good channel separation which doesn't quite correlate with other measurements found above.
It appears that crosstalk is not all that important even for headphones, and brings into question the entire basis of speakers and headphones and what exactly is the proper way to capture, store and play back sound.