Report of market research into portable DACs (USB-C) and Xperia 1 II’s DAC chip

 

Few people travel a lot and require DAPs, in countries like Australia.

The market for portable audio is small, given that devices are saturated in most households, and the technology itself is as well.

However, a love of comparing and considering codec chips like CXD9872, ALC889DSD, ALC1220, and S-Master, AKM, ESS, Cirrus Logic, Qualcomm is found in some audiophiles.

The dual DAC boom is a result of LG’s quad DAC history with ESS. Since the chips are not mono, there is no need for dual codecs.

DSD recording has never appeared since ALC889DSD ceased circulation. We understand that DSD format alone cannot guarantee good quality. The mics and rec technology are prioritised over the format.

For non-portable audio, AKM chips were used in Z1 rather than S-Master, meaning that there is no ‘best’ codec to use. Personally I might prefer IDT…

It could be said that implementation is key to the sound. Cirrus is simple, ESS is complex. Cirrus’ CS43131 descended from Wolfson tech is basically all in one, so the chip itself is sufficient. On VAIO PCs, their codecs had capacitors on the same board, and it was a board connected to the motherboard, not on the same board. Sound changes are attributable to the difficulty in implementation or components etc on the analog pathway. Measurements can reveal a small but crucial aspect of this difference.

A layperson might collect and try out each codec chip brand. However, the expert would require just one from a reputable brand – such as Apple or another dongle maker+Cirrus, a Walkman, or a modern high end smartphone. They would know that S-Master, AKM, ESS etc have a reputation for being notoriously difficult to implement for a good sound, and if the measurements are very good, the sound becomes a harsh and sabre-like critical analysis of sounds. So they have to make it a little worse to sound good.

I used to place format above all. Now I understand it’s not that simple. Some find walkmans different from phones, others hear the same thing. Some found firmwares/softwares can affect DAC playback. Others know that transducers have good pairings and average ones too.

I could go so far as to say that Cirrus’ CS43131 is my favourite chip, thanks to its current popularity in the dongle market, and its great specs. But I like S-Master as well, so I often combine CS43131 as DAC, and S-Master as amp, like A&K did in their latest dongle. The sound is described as natural and all the formats are playable.

I see no need for 768kHz playback, which gets to DSD territory for PCM, but it would be nice nevertheless.

There appears to be no space for improvement. DSEE Ultimate has no purpose for a listener with plenty of high resolution files.

Some people were curious about Xperia 1 II’s DAC. Its dual mono amp was widely known at its release, but its DAC remained unpublicised. Qualcomm Aqstic WCD9385 is in it. It’s integrated into Snapdragon 865. It has filters, and is max 32/192, DSD128, its ADC can do 24/192. DR is ADC 109/ DAC 122. So not very good. Last year, I surmised that Realtek was behind this Aqstic series, since its specs are similar to ALC1220. However there is no evidence for this. Clearly any Walkman would sound better than Xperia 1 II.

On my A21s phone with Exynos 850, the audio codec is likely separate from the SoC. It is unlikely to allow DSD.

Overall, other than DSD or pro level or binaural recording on a phone, there is little required to improve audio playback on an engineering level at present.