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Hello,
I am looking forward to buying a decent headphone. The headphone's impedance is 47 Ohms. Usually, the lower the impedance, the less the trouble of powering it properly. Obviously, 47 Ohms in above the average impedance of earphones. So can someone here with a set of headphones with impedance close to 47 Ohms try it with the HAM2 and see if it gets properly powered.
Thanks.
I own Sennheiser HD 598, and even though the large connector requires an adapter to fit into the small headphone port of the phone, I did try it, and found the max volume to be just 20% shy of where I'd like my louder music to be. These headphones supposedly are 50ohms.
Some of you may agree but some may disagree. The audio output of the 3.5mm headphone jack is far to quiet.
A cheap and easy solution to this is I bought the USB-C to 3.5mm DAC from HTC. Join the HTC club and it was £5.95 with free next day delivery.
Much louder and very good quality. Can't find any specification on what BIT the DAC is and I don't have the tools to measure it but its far better than the build in 3.5mm jack.
http://shop.eu.htc.com/store/htcemea/en_GB/pd/productID.5093216900/parentCategoryID.70508500/
I've got tinnitus in my right ear from constantly having a headphone in it for a number of years. I used to always listen on the loudest volume. With the xperia xz you can have active noise cancelling headphones, I can warmly recommend the nc31em in ear, I bought a pair for 15 bucks and it uses the processor of the phone so you don't have to carry a big dongle. Now I can listen at half volume and still hear everything better than I did before!
I received a Griffin iTrip Clip Bluetooth headphone adapter so I could be wire free from my phone and found this improved the loudness and remained good quality audio. You may get a bit of breakage occasionally if multitasking but for £14 from Amazon, it's a cracking piece of kit!
Fantastic solution
I have followed the steps of signing up for HTC Club, and ordering the adapter straight away. It really came next day with no extra charge for delivery. And oh boy, the sound is amazing! I am bit of geek when it comes to headphones, so i have a multiple different types. The difference between using the audio jack output of the phone and using the usb c adapter is NIGHT and DAY. Not only loudness is incomparable higher, the pure quality of the sound is improved in every way. I do not believe that there is DAC hidden in the adapter, as it is quite small and low priced. What makes difference in my opinion is the additional power phone can send to the headphones by using the USB C out. Difference is so big, that this workaround can be seen as hidden features to extent, as Sony has not said a thing about using your USB C out for audio. Now I truly understand why the removal of headphone jack make sense as even phones with not the best DAC and AMP can produce great sound thanks to power of USB C.
In case of Sony Xperia XZ however, it looks as DAC is of a top- notch quality(it officially supports Hi-Res codecs after all) but the AMP is criminally under-powered and so combined with Sony obeying EU regulations for safe listening volume converts to quality sound but on quiet side. But thanks to this adapter the DAC is no longer tied to volume level set by headphone jack.
Everyone who owns this phone must buy this, especially considering the low price of the adapter. You need hear it to believe it.
jms.flynn said:
Some of you may agree but some may disagree. The audio output of the 3.5mm headphone jack is far to quiet.
A cheap and easy solution to this is I bought the USB-C to 3.5mm DAC from HTC. Join the HTC club and it was £5.95 with free next day delivery.
Much louder and very good quality. Can't find any specification on what BIT the DAC is and I don't have the tools to measure it but its far better than the build in 3.5mm jack.
http://shop.eu.htc.com/store/htcemea/en_GB/pd/productID.5093216900/parentCategoryID.70508500/
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Click to collapse
I was on another trip recently and one scheduled for next week. Indeed the sound out of the headphone jack is extremely low so I ordered one of these gadgets and will arrive on Friday. The success from others is what I expect to gain and will report back
USB Type C to 3.5mm Earphone Headphone Cable Adapter USB-C to 3.5mm Jack Aux Cable for Letv 2 2pro max2 Pro 3 Xiaomi 6
http://s.aliexpress.com/UnmURNbM
(from AliExpress Android)
Efe64 said:
USB Type C to 3.5mm Earphone Headphone Cable Adapter USB-C to 3.5mm Jack Aux Cable for Letv 2 2pro max2 Pro 3 Xiaomi 6
http://s.aliexpress.com/UnmURNbM
(from AliExpress Android)
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Hello i bought thi product but isn't working for me do i need to do something else or just plugging in ??
RedJHoN said:
Hello i bought thi product but isn't working for me do i need to do something else or just plugging in ??
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Its not working for me too...using the xaomi dongle
Just asking is they a way of updating the dongle without having a htc device I've installed the audio usb jack toolkit from htc but nothing seems to happen
Thanks
Thank you so much for this. The low earphone volume was driving me mad. So after reading this, I bought the same thing from HTC and it works fantastically and sounds amazing now.
Is is working also on oreo latest update?
triggaz said:
Is is working also on oreo latest update?
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Yes works fine with Oreo.
Two kinds of USBC to 3.5mm Adapters, beware.
Just so folks know, there are two types of USB-C 3.5mm adapters out there - Digital and Analog.
All decent phones should support the Digital adapters, since they are just USB Audio Class devices made small. You could also plug them into a PC. Because they contain the DAC and amplifier, they will be spendy.
However, the $2 Passive adapters have no DAC in them. They trigger a special mode of the phone that basically puts the USB-C jack into an analog 3.5mm mode and the rest is just plastic and metal. The DAC is in the phone. The phone has to specifically support this mode, and will likely indicate USB-C Analog Accessory Mode in their specifications. Xperia XZ Premium does NOT support this mode, and never will - it has to be built into the hardware.
Just sayin.
FirmwareGuy said:
Just so folks know, there are two types of USB-C 3.5mm adapters out there - Digital and Analog.
All decent phones should support the Digital adapters, since they are just USB Audio Class devices made small. You could also plug them into a PC. Because they contain the DAC and amplifier, they will be spendy.
However, the $2 Passive adapters have no DAC in them. They trigger a special mode of the phone that basically puts the USB-C jack into an analog 3.5mm mode and the rest is just plastic and metal. The DAC is in the phone. The phone has to specifically support this mode, and will likely indicate USB-C Analog Accessory Mode in their specifications. Xperia XZ Premium does NOT support this mode, and never will - it has to be built into the hardware.
Just sayin.
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how come some people heard a huge difference in audio quality?
---------- Post added at 12:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:30 AM ----------
jms.flynn said:
Some of you may agree but some may disagree. The audio output of the 3.5mm headphone jack is far to quiet.
A cheap and easy solution to this is I bought the USB-C to 3.5mm DAC from HTC. Join the HTC club and it was £5.95 with free next day delivery.
Much louder and very good quality. Can't find any specification on what BIT the DAC is and I don't have the tools to measure it but its far better than the build in 3.5mm jack.
http://shop.eu.htc.com/store/htcemea/en_GB/pd/productID.5093216900/parentCategoryID.70508500/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
htc website doesnt ship to my region
where else can I buy it from?
madshark2009 said:
how come some people heard a huge difference in audio quality?
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Because people are trying different USB Audio headphones. Sony is not in control of their quality or amplification since the DAC and amp are in the headphones. For those using different 3.5mm headsets, their quality varies greatly. Sony expects folks to buy theirs, preferably with their active noise canceling that they wrote software for. It works well but as stated, they are not very loud.
-FG
FirmwareGuy said:
Because people are trying different USB Audio headphones. Sony is not in control of their quality or amplification since the DAC and amp are in the headphones. For those using different 3.5mm headsets, their quality varies greatly. Sony expects folks to buy theirs, preferably with their active noise canceling that they wrote software for. It works well but as stated, they are not very loud.
-FG
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ok so I have an audio system in my car, and volume in headphones gets super low compared to CD (I know CD quality is the best you can get i think) but still its VERY very low compared to it, in aux on 13db I get same loudness as 7db in CD, which means I have to turn it on almost twice as much as a cd to hear same loudness, (why dont I simply turn my audio more than usual on a cd?) because I like listening to very loud music and I some times get to 23db on a cd and its very loud and on aux i must reach at least 40db to get close to being as loud but my audio system only supports up to 30db so I am getting aux loudness of 15-16db compared to CD.
will the usb 3.0 to AUX DAC help me get louder volume?
It's easy to force high impedance mode.
I've got a set of headphones with a detachable 1/8" jack at both ends, but you can use a splitter and an extra 1/8" double male plug cable as well.
I use the 1/8" cable and connect my v20 to another cell phone or tablet headphone jack. It immediately goes into high impedance. I unplug only the end going into the other phone and plug that end into my headphones. As long as the cable stays plugged into the v20 it stays in high impedance mode
If your headphones don't have a detachable cable, it'll still work with a splitter and a cable that has male 1/8" plugs at both ends.
Using the splitter, plug your splitter into the v20. Use the double 1/8" jack cable to connect the splitter to a phone or tablet. Once it's in high impedance mode, unplug the cable from both ends and connect your headphones to the splitter. Don't remove the splitter plug from the v20. As long as the splitter stays plugged, you'll be in high impedance mode and get more power into your headphones
Ok...what is the use of high impedance?
Sid 6.7 said:
It's easy to force high impedance mode.
I've got a set of headphones with a detachable 1/8" jack at both ends, but you can use a splitter and an extra 1/8" double male plug cable as well.
I use the 1/8" cable and connect my v20 to another cell phone or tablet headphone jack. It immediately goes into high impedance. I unplug only the end going into the other phone and plug that end into my headphones. As long as the cable stays plugged into the v20 it stays in high impedance mode
If your headphones don't have a detachable cable, it'll still work with a splitter and a cable that has male 1/8" plugs at both ends.
Using the splitter, plug your splitter into the v20. Use the double 1/8" jack cable to connect the splitter to a phone or tablet. Once it's in high impedance mode, unplug the cable from both ends and connect your headphones to the splitter. Don't remove the splitter plug from the v20. As long as the splitter stays plugged, you'll be in high impedance mode and get more power into your headphones
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its just wasted a time, and change nothing on everything you hear. look, high impedance automatically triggered only if you put headphone with 50 ohm above. you know why? because regular phone or music player only could deliver impedance with range 15-30ohm. while lg v20 like any other DAP with external amplifier could support from 50-600 ohm. even with 250 ohm headphone if you put on regular phone it would only run on 30 ohm max. and same goes to your phone, even with your v20 or any DAP player which support 50ohm impedance above, if you connect to low impedance headphone it would only run on your max headphone impendance. its not something you could force to work.
alldine345 said:
its just wasted a time, and change nothing on everything you hear. look, high impedance automatically triggered only if you put headphone with 50 ohm above. you know why? because regular phone or music player only could deliver impedance with range 15-30ohm. while lg v20 like any other DAP with external amplifier could support from 50-600 ohm. even with 250 ohm headphone if you put on regular phone it would only run on 30 ohm max. and same goes to your phone, even with your v20 or any DAP player which support 50ohm impedance above, if you connect to low impedance headphone it would only run on your max headphone impendance. its not something you could force to work.
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Bro I agree with you. I have used 60ohms headphones and 45ohms headphones with my Lg V20. With 50hms and above, we can see "high impedance headphones connected" in settings.but nothing improved in sound quality. So doing force high impedance is unnecessary.
sbacham said:
Bro I agree with you. I have used 60ohms headphones and 45ohms headphones with my Lg V20. With 50hms and above, we can see "high impedance headphones connected" in settings.but nothing improved in sound quality. So doing force high impedance is unnecessary.
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check your audio files first, make sure you have lossless audio like flac or dsd. for flac i recomended using song with 24bit/96khz. if you playing with stock lg music player you'll see there is "hifi" icon on the selected song. join audiophile comunity for more reference. and for headphones , well.. there are many type, some headphone have flat bass, more vocal, etc. choose one which suits you and the music you played. from what i got while browsing on auido/video community, there are 3 main requirements for best audio experience:
1. good drivers aka player like DAP/AMP or our beloved LGv20 which support impedance above 50 ohm
2. lossless audio files like flac, dsd/dsf which support hifi system
3. good headphone with high impedance that has many feature depends on your need. some people love high bass, while other prefer clear vocals, etc
lg v20 is a good drivers, its not the best but its good if you dont wanna spend another 150-250$ on music player with dedicated amplifiers.
High Impedance Workaround
I was thinking the same thing on an easy workaround, so I bought a $3 splitter, plugged in my AKG headphones which pulls up high impedance, then plugged the B&O earbuds. (that came with my V20)Then unplugged the AKG's and it remained in high impedance mode. Doing that, if you turn the volume up higher than 75%, you'll probably pop an ear drum. It gets waaay loud and clean!
Frodar
H910
Why not just use my mod and forget about extra cables?
NVM.. Just read no root. Sorry folks.
Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk
I never said it improved quality. I understand how DACs and amps work.
The reason for high impedance mode.... If you have headphones with less than the 50ohm threshold, high impedance mode increases power output from the amp. The result.... On low impedance headphones you get more power which means higher volume output.
I have a set of V-moda Crossfade LP cans that are less than 50ohm. On the regular power level, max volume of 75 still lacks a couple decibels for my preference. When I trip high impedance mode I am able to reach a higher volume level and I usually don't need to go higher than 60.
frodar56 said:
I was thinking the same thing on an easy workaround, so I bought a $3 splitter, plugged in my AKG headphones which pulls up high impedance, then plugged the B&O earbuds. (that came with my V20)Then unplugged the AKG's and it remained in high impedance mode. Doing that, if you turn the volume up higher than 75%, you'll probably pop an ear drum. It gets waaay loud and clean!
Frodar
H910
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Exactly... Higher volume output. I didn't say it improved quality, as others are arguing.
sbacham said:
Ok...what is the use of high impedance?
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Look at my last post.....
Triggering high impedance mode and then connecting low impedance headphones will give you more amp power which equals higher volumes. Does nothing about increasing quality just higher volume threshold. But only if you trigger high impedance and THEN connect LOW impedance headphones
This mod worked with a splitter in my v20. Thanks @Sid 6.7. wow listening to low impedance headphones at high power is a fun. Great workaround.
I don't have a V30 yet. Saving up for it right now. I do have an audio question though....
For a typical, non-Quad-DAC phone, I realize that an aux cable between the car's head unit and the phone's headphone jack should sound better than playing music via Bluetooth due to losses from Bluetooth.
With that said, with the V30, and using an aux cable to the radio's input jack...would enabling the Quad-DAC make any difference to the sound quality? I assume that the DAC and amplifier are designed for headphone use where headphones typically have no external power other than that provided by the signal. But, while using the aux cable and going through a car's amplified radio head unit, would the DAC give you anything above what the radio itself provides? Does the fact that the radio has a powered amp negate what the V30's DAC provides?
On a similar note...my old LG Optimus G Pro (currently my EDC phone) when connected to my car via Bluetooth...when I play a song on my phone, and then play the exact same MP3 file on an iPhone, the iPhone sounds better. Cleaner, clearer, better dynamic range and stereo separation, yet it's the identical MP3 source file. Is that a hardware issue between the 2 phones, or is it a software/firmware issue?
Good question. I haven't tried it in my vehicle yet. (I use thumb drives to listen to music in my truck.) I will try and report back. You can toggle the DAC on and off.
I'm interested in me too. I listen to music in the car via bluetooth. that is, V30 connected to the car stereo.
andygold said:
I don't have a V30 yet. Saving up for it right now. I do have an audio question though....
For a typical, non-Quad-DAC phone, I realize that an aux cable between the car's head unit and the phone's headphone jack should sound better than playing music via Bluetooth due to losses from Bluetooth.
With that said, with the V30, and using an aux cable to the radio's input jack...would enabling the Quad-DAC make any difference to the sound quality? I assume that the DAC and amplifier are designed for headphone use where headphones typically have no external power other than that provided by the signal. But, while using the aux cable and going through a car's amplified radio head unit, would the DAC give you anything above what the radio itself provides? Does the fact that the radio has a powered amp negate what the V30's DAC provides?
On a similar note...my old LG Optimus G Pro (currently my EDC phone) when connected to my car via Bluetooth...when I play a song on my phone, and then play the exact same MP3 file on an iPhone, the iPhone sounds better. Cleaner, clearer, better dynamic range and stereo separation, yet it's the identical MP3 source file. Is that a hardware issue between the 2 phones, or is it a software/firmware issue?
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Tl;DR - aux will usually be better than BT. Make sure your source files are high quality. And lastly, USB transfer or stream will be the best quality in almost all scenerios.
Okay, a couple basics. DAC stands for Digital to Analog Converter. Your car system has a DAC for playing digital audio files. I suspect most decent car audio systems perform better DAC than most cell phones. While it may be better than most cell phones, I doubt our V30's would be better than most new car systems.
With Aux, your phone is doing the DAC and sending an analog signal to the car. Then you car is just amplifying (as per you eq sertings). With BT, your phone sends a digital signal, which is then run through the car DAC system.
Here's where it gets complicated. There are a few different codecs that can be used to compress the transfer, and then quality settings within them. In theory, BT can be a very high quality transfer with near 320kbps sound... BUT ... You get into compatibility issues. This would very likely be why the sound from the iPhone generated playback sounded better than the other phone; it is using a different codec or higher bitrate on compression. My post is already too long but search for BT codecs if you want more detail.
A few tips. Make sure your source file is good!
General convention is that a 128 is comparable to FM radio. 160 or 192 is generally felt to be similar to CD quality.
Check the setting on your music app. In spotify, both streaming and download bitrate settings can be bumped up. Jist be aware of your potential data and storage issues.
Conclusions:
Phone DAC won't come into play for BT transfer. Hopefully your car system has the codec compatibility for high quality transfer. If so, go with that. If not, then AUX will be better.
V30 DAC seems to be high quality, and will function for aux transfers. The car system will then apply analog effects (bass/treble or EQ boosts) during amplification. You will have to play with the settings to see what sounds best to your ears.
A final consideration: Take a look at USB cable connection. A modern car audio system will likely be able to take advantage of digital transfer via USB. This may take the form of seeing your phone as file storage or may allow for your phone to stream music. Either way, assuming a good quality car system, your car can playback your high quality files without any losses that come with BT. If the DAC in your car is better than the V30, then this will be best.
Sent from my LG-H933 using Tapatalk
Audio DAC on the V30 is mostly better than most car stereo converter. Heck, most laptop / desktop PC have lesser DAC than the V30.
BUT, in order to use it rightfully, you need high quality audio files. No matter how good is the DAC, playing 160kbps mp3 won't make a difference... Playing 24bits flac, on the other hand, will show you the difference between them all.
If you want, you can downlaod the sample on this site to test out the result:
http://www.eclassical.com/pages/24-bit-faq.html
That being said, the V30 pluged in the AUX will most likely sound better than mp3, as long as the sourde file are higher in quality.
Some of this stuff has already been mentioned, but here's my experience. I have a rooted V20 (waiting for bootloader unlock for US998 V30 before I buy it) with V4A. I also have a $4k custom audio system in my car with an amp, subwoofer, and aftermarket speakers. I love music and it's the only reason I've bought V20.
If you use BT, V30's DAC won't be used (as has been previously mentioned in this thread). If you use AUX, it will be. In my experience, AUX provides *far* better sound quality than BT. As far as Hi-Fi DAC, I discernibly notice a difference only with lossless audio; not so much with MP3. That difference, however, is enough for me to stick to the LG V* line and not switch to google pixel, which I would have done otherwise.
You should also keep in mind that not all cars will allow you to play audio through USB-C. Digital audio through Android is not nearly as widespread supported with car manufacturers as with iPhones.
If you have a good audio system in your car, you will be happy with the sound quality of your V30 through AUX, much more so than through BT.
Just for comparaison;
AptX as a bitrate of 352kbps
AptX HD as a bitrate of 576kbps
Mp3 @ 320kbps will stream with AptX with no lost,
Flac @ 16 bits have a bitrate around 900kbps (more or less, depending on many factors, but you can average on this)
Uncompress 16bits @ 44hz stereo is ~1400kbps
The Audio Dac of the V30 can run above this.
deroth said:
Some of this stuff has already been mentioned, but here's my experience. I have a rooted V20 (waiting for bootloader unlock for US998 V30 before I buy it) with V4A. I also have a $4k custom audio system in my car with an amp, subwoofer, and aftermarket speakers. I love music and it's the only reason I've bought V20.
If you use BT, V30's DAC won't be used (as has been previously mentioned in this thread). If you use AUX, it will be. In my experience, AUX provides *far* better sound quality than BT. As far as Hi-Fi DAC, I discernibly notice a difference only with lossless audio; not so much with MP3. That difference, however, is enough for me to stick to the LG V* line and not switch to google pixel, which I would have done otherwise.
You should also keep in mind that not all cars will allow you to play audio through USB-C. Digital audio through Android is not nearly as widespread supported with car manufacturers as with iPhones.
If you have a good audio system in your car, you will be happy with the sound quality of your V30 through AUX, much more so than through BT.
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What is your opinion/experience with streaming?
nitramus said:
What is your opinion/experience with streaming?
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Most online streaming sources utilize same compression as MP3, so I personally don't notice much difference whether HIFI DAC is on or off. I'm sure if I was using something like Tidal for streaming, which steams lossless audio, the difference would be there.
Just got this new V30S going, discovered VERY poor audio quality on the 3.5mm output.
Doesn't matter whether the hi-fi DAC is enabled or not.
The system also does not even recognize my Beyer iDX200 headphones unless I connect an extension first.
I'm thinking I got a defective V30S. Am I missing something here? Headphones (edit: Beyerdynamic iDX200) sound excellent as always on my other phone.
Edit: Weird problem apparently related to impedance of the Beyers extension/connector. They work no problem and sound great with other devices, but the V30S has some issue related to impedance checking of the extension and connector. If I connect headphones without the extension they work ok. Guessing something related to VSWR.
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Tinkerer_ said:
Edit: Weird problem apparently related to impedance of the Beyers extension/connector. They work no problem and sound great with other devices, but the V30S has some issue related to impedance checking of the extension and connector. If I connect headphones without the extension they work ok. Guessing something related to VSWR.
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Yeah, I think you may have gotten the low impedance portion of the DAC when you should've gotten the "Advanced" Higher Impedance setting. The sound quality of the phone & the DAC isn't actually bad, it's just a particularly bad coded file on part of LG. They apparently messed up a file named "mixer_paths_tavil.xml". Whiskeyomega has more information about this on his sound mod page: https://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-v30/themes/whiskeyomegas-v30-sound-mods-t3757115
XCaliburX said:
Yeah, I think you may have gotten the low impedance portion of the DAC when you should've gotten the "Advanced" Higher Impedance setting. The sound quality of the phone & the DAC isn't actually bad, it's just a particularly bad coded file on part of LG. They apparently messed up a file named "mixer_paths_tavil.xml". Whiskeyomega has more information about this on his sound mod page: https://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-v30/themes/whiskeyomegas-v30-sound-mods-t3757115
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There was more to this problem them just low impedance detected.
The Beyerdynamic iDX 200 IE headphones incorporate an extension, the primary cables connected to the headphones themselves are too short without the extension. This arrangement was somehow causing a fault condition with the V30S, it would cause an odd noise (audible in the headphones) when first plugged in to the V30S jack, then fail to even register that headphones were connected at all (implying impedance way out of expected range). If the extension was plugged in to V30S jack first (sans headphones), the HiFi DAC icon would show, then plugging the headphones to the female end of the extension would enable the headphones to work - but the sound was not only very weak, it was horrible and garbled, with what sounded like artifacts from the worst low-bitrate codec in existence. Even with high quality FLACs.
What fooled me into thinking the phone was faulty initially was the fact that the Beyers sound fine on other devices.
So, bottom line: Apparently the V30 impedance-checking is not compatible with the Beyers using the Beyer extension. Something to do with the connection I guess, maybe some VSWR/impedance phenomenon that the V30S can't deal with.
The V30S sounds fantastic with Soundmagic E80. Also sounds fair with the included headphones (B&O?). And good with my other decent headphones (ATH-CK7), although those do not trigger HIM.
Just posting all this as info in case someone else encounters this unusual problem.
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