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PowerAMP and phones with poor DAC's


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I was rather looking forward to getting the new Samsung Galaxy Note, released today. As an audiophile and user of Poweramp, I am disappointed to see this thread on XDA which says that whereas the original Samsung Galaxy had the excellent Wolfson's WM8994 DAC, the later Galaxy S2 and the new Galaxy Note (the big one) now have the apparently poor performing Yamaha C1YMU823 / MC-1N2 DAC.

Which left me thinking... does Poweramp actually use the built in DAC supplied with the phone, or does it do it's own DAC thing in software?

Regards,

John

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Well is it not that a DAC is hardware and not software i.e not software like a 'driver'...Please excuse me if I'm incorrect.

btw, yes spot on much Sammy Galaxy audiophile fans are aware of the quality pleasure of the Wolfson.

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A bit more information. Here is a detailed lab test of the Samsung Galaxy S2 audio with has the same supposedly inferior DAC.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4686/samsung-galaxy-s-2-international-review-the-best-redefined/13

There seems to be two distinct areas of inferiority:

a) background noises from system operations

B) DAC deficiencies such as poor stereo cross-talk etc.

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Now that I am awake, yeah I'm thinking DAC has to be hardware.

It seems there is more to this than just hte DAC. Apparently earlier drivers weren't so good on the Galaxy S2, and headphone socket impedance was poor at 49ohms.

Maybe they have improved on some of that on the Note. Time will tell.

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Just adding my two bits, I have a Galaxy S and find its sound quality to be vastly inferior to my old Cowon PMPs (a U3 and an S9) as well as to iPhones I've listened to. If the Galaxy S 2 is even worse than the original Galaxy S then I'm definitely ruling it out when I replace my phone in a couple months. If Cowon could partner with HTC, Moto or Samsung, to get Cowon sound into a great phone, I'd be the first in line to buy one. Don't get me wrong though. Poweramp definitely makes better use of whatever hardware capability the Galaxy S does have than any of the other music players I've used with my Android phones.

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