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Technical
Sunday, July 22, 2018
Many smartphone users use not only their device to take pictures and surf the net, but also to listen to music. What should you watch out for, and what tips can be used to improve the sound experience?
Sometimes it sounds dull, sometimes it sounds strident, the bbad bounces and the heights hiss. If you connect your headphones to different smartphones, you are surprised how much the favorite music differs. This can have many reasons, and not always the helmet is to blame. With some things, you can dramatically improve the sound.
Smartphone
Unlike many other components, manufacturers do not usually reveal what they use on audio components. Values such as frequency response or signal-to-noise ratio, which otherwise occur in this context, do not appear in the data sheets. An badessment on this basis is out of the question. However, some manufacturers indicate which file formats are compatible with their smartphones and they can, for example, play high resolution audio files. A look at the datasheet is worth it anyway. After all: "In earphone playback, the differences in sound are often not so great, but depend on the headphones used," says Felix Fleischmann, group head of Mobile Audio Rendering at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits ( ISS)
] If this is not built into the music player right now, almost all smartphones have an equalizer or an equivalent sound improvement app installed. Sometimes it is even possible to customize the sound according to a hearing test. You have to experiment with the audio applications and the available parameters until it sounds good.
"It still works," says Dirk Lorenz, project manager at Stiftung Warentest. "Maybe once a year or two, we could have a cheap device, maybe with an audio chip that was not tidy, or a weird music app that did not have any settings d & # 39; equalizer. "
If you can not get a flower pot with the provided headphones and even after a lot of adjustment with the equalizer and Co., you should think about buying good headphones – if you do not have them already. The earplugs provided often do not provide a particularly convincing quality. It is important to pay attention to a good fit. Because in the ears are not really in the ear, we often hear of bbad nothing anymore. It is therefore worth trying out the different sizes of rubber plugs provided or investing in some corresponding memory foam plugs.
Connections
"The beloved jack slowly starts to turn off," says Lorenz. "More and more manufacturers are leaving, and I only have the headset on the USB-C or Lightning port." Especially at least one jack adapter included. Thus, the USB-C port works in badog mode, which compared to the direct connection to a jack makes no difference: "The bottleneck is no longer the headphones."
The situation is different with headphones with Lightning or USB -C plug, which can connect directly to the connector. Then the interface works in digital mode and also plays a digital signal. "In this case, the electronics of the headphones must then provide the digital-to-badog conversion of the signal," says Fleischmann. Equalizer functions can also be implemented here.
Musical Formats
The quality of music files or music stream is also important. Music files are often in compressed MP3 or AAC format with loss (with loss). Music lovers love to digitize with lossless compression codecs like FLAC. The advantages and disadvantages are obvious. MP3 or AAC files are compressed at a lower bit rate, so they generally sound worse than lossless compressed files. But they are also much larger and often take up ten times more space. If you have a lot of space and enjoy the good sound, you can afford it. Those who prefer space-saving MP3 or AAC should make sure that they are compressed at a rate of 320 kilobits per second (kbit / s). Then, the loss of quality is barely audible.
Bluetooth
Codecs are also used for wireless transmission of the smartphone to a wireless headset. Since data is compressed with loss, quality can suffer. The standard for Bluetooth audio is SBC. Depending on the smartphone, AAC, aptX, aptX HD or LDAC transmission technologies are also supported, which in some cases allows even higher quality. However, a codec other than SBC does not come into play, even if the headphones control it.
It does not have to be a headache. Typically, the best possible codec is automatically selected, and current smartphones typically support one of the most powerful transmission technologies. In a recent test of the "chip" bluetooth headphones, aptX also had no measurable impact on the sound rating compared to SBC in the testing field. And even the best Bluetooth connection does not matter if the transmitted music is anyway coded with a lower quality.
Source: n-tv.de
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