Music DAC in Samsung Galaxy S III is good or junk

[Bengal Tiger]

We know that Samsung Galaxy S III has been recently released. I wanted to discuss about Music DAC of this particular portable device. what do you think whether it is good or junk? Any comments on this particular matter will be highly appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance.

[Samaria]

I don’t think so DAC should be good in this particular device. I think the bad quality supposed to be happened because of cost cutting only. I know that all the users are not going to deal with Beats Audi and I am hoping that they are not going to jump on band wagon. Well I am not having much idea regarding kind of DAC is used on Sony phones but I have noticed that Sony Experia Play is having great sound quality. Just a off topic thing you would like to see into Meizu MX which are having quadcore Exynos as SGS3. Meizu is great in terms of sound quality if I am not wrong.

[Anjan1990]

I am also concerned about DAC as well. I let you know that S1 is having better DAC as compared to S2. I am expecting that they are going to manufacturing cheap DAC in upcoming year as well. as far as I know is having Wolfson DAC.
Audio codec

• Wolfson Micro WM1811
  
• 100dB SNR Class W Heapdhone amp output
• ReTune DSP
• 3x digital interface
  
• 1x stereo DAC as a replacement for 2x
  
• 2x 2W Speaker amp as a replacement for 2x 1W

Audio driver configuration and policy implementation should be based on TinyUCM. It should be subset of TinyHAL implementing codec configuration into the config files rather than of putting everything into ROM or kernel driver at the time of compiling. Native sampling rate should be 44100 Hz. DAC should be processed by means of software up-sampling routine which is same as that of provided on Galaxy Nexus. Or any other device which is accepting 48000 Hz.

[Mahalingam]

In this particular situation I am not able to talk about recording with SIII. We know that SGS2 was disappointing in that particular scenario. As far as I remember sgs1 was good after having voodoo app. I am hoping that manufacturer would make decent recording system for new device. so far I am not much impressed with this particular device however it is having some great improvement.

[Donatien]

After going through entire thread I wanted tell you that mobile phones seems to be flagrant as compared to other hardware platforms. Also external parameters are playing huge role when sound quality of a mobile phone is concerned. consider an example of Optimus 2x. it is having same WM8994 as that of other device available in the market but still it is having some shortcomings. Also it does not give same output as any Samsung devices. There is no need to talk about SoC PLL clock generators, power headroom for headphone and speaker amp. No one will be able to get exact idea about the sound quality of device until and unless listening and measuring the output.

[Aachman]

Well if you are looking to great bass effect then you should get HTC device. Wolfson DAC are well known to provide dynamic and great sound quality. Voodoo app provides better sound settings on several Galaxy devices which can improve sound quality of devices. If you wanted to make use of this particular app then you should flash your phone with kernel and Voodoo sound patch.

[Mahalingam]

The most interesting thing which I can tell you over here is that Apt-x codec implementation than you can provide to speakers. It will help you to avoid double amplification or lousy Bluetooth profiles. DAC of Galaxy S voodooed seems to be loud enough but it is worse than that of iPhone. Also there are crosstalk and output impedance with premium multidriver. It is nice sound device but it could be made better. Well I am expecting that Samsung/Wolfson will provide you less than 2 ohms output impedance as well as some more broadness in sound. I wanted to see that same into output impendence of this particular device and capacity to drive difficult headphones.

[akkiiii]

The thing Output impedance is a physical thing and one cannot lower down the same by using software. The Samsung Galaxy S as well as Voodoo seems to be great player. If Samsung Galaxy S3 seems to be having output impedance lower than 2ohms and crosstalk lower than -60 driving 16 ohms then I would drop my iPhone 4S. if they does not provide the same then I am going to continue with iPhone 4S. the DAC should be implemented .