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Mobile sound - what determines the quality

When it comes to quality portable audio, hi-fi audio players immediately come to mind. The inscription "Hi-Fi" on sound reproducing equipment means that it complies with one of these standards: DIN 45500 or IEC 60581, i.e. such a device can reproduce audio with high fidelity. But only a few pay attention to the fact that their smartphones can also play audio in Hi-Fi quality.

Mobile sound - what determines the quality

Manufacturer restrictions and workarounds


Every smartphone has audio playback capability, and there are three output options: speaker, classic 3.5mm headphone jack, and Bluetooth. The quality of the audio played through each of the outputs is different: there are limitations on the audio bit depth, sampling rate, bitrate and many other parameters that directly affect the quality of the audio being played. All these restrictions can be both hardware and software, i.e. either the output device does not have the ability to produce higher audio quality, or if the device supports high-resolution audio, but restrictions are set in the system configurations responsible for audio output.

At the moment, we will consider the software part of mobile audio, or rather, how it works and what determines the sound quality in the Android system. In addition to software limitations, there are a large number of settings for processing the reproduced audio, improving quality, increasing the volume and all kinds of changes in sound parameters.

Audio quality in "musical" smartphones


Of the hardware features of smartphones, during the creation of which the manufacturer paid attention to the implementation of high-quality sound, one can single out the presence of built-in amplifiers and DACs. For example, Cirrus Logic DACs are found in smartphones from Vivo, and LG's "G" line has an ESS ES9218 DAC. These smartphone models are far from having a small price tag at the time of their release. But do not be upset, for example, in state employees from Xiaomi you can find amplifiers of such models: TAS25XX and TFA98XX. Often smartphones are equipped with hardware audio codecs, which are a separate element on the board that has a DAC, an amplifier and other elements that are responsible for processing and outputting sound: for example, Qualcomm WCD audio codecs. If you have a hardware audio codec, a dedicated DAC, or an amplifier in your smartphone, you can get a good increase in sound quality, as well as,

Audio modifications


To improve the sound quality of Android devices, there are special modifications. Most of these work on the principle of the Magisk module. For example: there are audio configuration files in the system, and in the installation script of a particular module there will be commands to change lines or variables, or add new ones in order to modify the audio configuration to improve the sound quality. Some modules, in addition to changing stock values ​​and adding lines to configs, can add various audio libraries and effects to the system, which also affects the final audio quality in its own way.

Audio driver


Not only hardware and system configs are responsible for the sound in a smartphone. And we are talking about the very link that connects the program and the hardware - the driver. The sound quality directly depends on how the potential of the audio chip is realized in the core of the smartphone system. When building the kernel, you can use the latest drivers (for example, CAF for Qualcomm processors), certain optimizations, all kinds of methods for improving sound by tweaking the part of the kernel that is responsible for sound. It often happens that the same "stock" firmware for smartphones sound worse than custom ones, precisely because of the worse tuning of the audio part of the kernel. As it turns out in most cases: the manufacturer needs the smartphone to go on sale and at least not lag, but practice shows that many cannot even cope with this. Therefore, seriously deal with the software part, which is responsible for the sound in the smartphone will not be every manufacturer. There are third-party developers who create various software to improve the sound quality and unlock the potential of audio chips in smartphones. These are assemblers of custom firmware, kernels, or modders who create modules for Magisk.


Conclusion


The topic of mobile sound cannot be fully covered in one article. You can consider specific audio modifications, individual improvements, sound features in custom firmware, and much more. This article fully describes what the quality of mobile sound depends on. In the future, a number of articles are expected, each of which will consider in detail methods for improving the sound quality of smartphones on the Android platform.

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