What’s Snapdragon Sound, what does it supply and which units have it?

Pocket-lint

Qualcomm is perhaps greatest recognized for its cell platforms that you will discover beneath the hoods of a number of smartphones, from Samsung and OnePlus to Oppo and Motorola, however inside these platforms, there are a selection of applied sciences current.

A kind of is Snapdragon Sound, which has quite a lot of options beneath its umbrella. That is every thing you want to learn about Snapdragon Sound, together with what it’s, what it presents and which units have it.

What’s Snapdragon Sound?

Snapdragon Sound is a expertise developed by Qualcomm that’s designed to ship the very best audio expertise, no matter you are doing. Whether or not that is gaming, streaming music, or making voice and video calls. It ensures a sure degree of HD audio high quality between suitable telephones and headphones with low latency and high-quality voice calls, too.

Snapdragon Sound was first introduced originally of 2021, out there on the Snapdragon 888 chipset. It then got here to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 cell platform, and extra lately, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform that Qualcomm revealed at its Snapdragon Summit in November 2022.

In accordance with Qualcomm, Snapdragon Sound is “the one resolution designed to ship Lossless music, trade main low latencies, and by utilising Qualcomm Bluetooth Excessive Pace Hyperlink expertise, essentially the most strong Bluetooth connections.”

It is an end-to-end audio system and it has quite a lot of options constructed into it – extra on these additional down – although with a purpose to profit from the options, each the cellphone and headphones or audio system want to make use of Qualcomm {hardware} inside.

What options does Snapdragon Sound supply?

Snapdragon Sound has quite a lot of options inside it, as talked about. For 2022, Qualcomm introduced Dynamic Spatial Audio, improved latency and lossless audio.

So as to expertise a few of these options although, you’ll not solely must have a cellphone operating the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 cell platform, however additionally, you will must have a pair of headphones or a speaker with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 chipset or S5 chipset inside.

In case you have each of these although, listed below are the options you may get and what they imply.

Dynamic Spatial Audio

Snapdragon Sound presents Dynamic Spatial Audio for each wired and wi-fi headphones and the concept is to ship a extra immersive expertise. It is what Apple presents by its AirPods 3 and AirPods Professional fashions, with Qualcomm bringing the expertise to Android right here.

When watching a movie or listening to music with Spatial Audio or Dolby Atmos, the sound stays locked to the place the machine you might be utilizing it on is, even in the event you flip your head left or proper, up or down. The expertise permits for a extra pure and encompassing listening expertise.

Improved latency

With the most recent Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and the units with the Snapdragon S3 or S5 chip, there’s improved latency for gaming on Snapdragon Sound. This could imply that you will get lag-free gaming and a greater expertise total. Qualcomm decreased the latency to 48ms, which is kind of considerably decrease than the standard 300ms you may discover on Bluetooth headphones. Once more although, you will want suitable headphones and a suitable smartphone to learn.

There’s one other factor to this half although. Qualcomm additionally introduced an improved model of the S3 Gen 2 chip in June 2023, six months after the Snapdragon Summit. This chip has been designed for use in adapters and dongles, and it’s claimed to ship <20ms latency, which is nearer to what you’ll anticipate from a wired headset, which is normally round 5ms to 10ms. The concept is that you just plug the dongle with the S3 Gen 2 chip inside into your machine – whether or not laptop computer, USB-C cellphone, TV – and you’ll expertise extremely low sub 20ms latencies from a wi-fi headset when gaming. The headset needs to be a Snapdragon Sound-approved headset with an S3 or S5 chip inside and it additionally helps voice back-channel for in-game chat.

Lossless Audio

One of many key options of Snapdragon Sound is aptX Lossless audio. Qualcomm introduced assist for 16-bit 48Hz lossless audio with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform and S3 and S5 chips, which is a smidge higher than CD high quality, which is 44.1Hz. For units operating the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, lossless is accessible at 44.1Hz, whereas these with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 presents 48Hz lossless by Bluetooth LE.

Lossless is designed to supply an an identical copy of the monitor you are listening to, adapting based mostly in your setting by scaling again the bit charge with a purpose to proceed to ship an excellent audio expertise, with no drop outs or glitches, reasonably than compress the monitor and lose element like Lossy audio does.

Strong Connection

Snapdragon Sound is alleged to be optimised to work throughout your units and ship a strong reference to minimal drop-outs or audio glitching, regardless of the place you might be, even in busy environments when there’s plenty of interference from different units round you.

Which units have Snapdragon Sound and the way do you get it?

Qualcomm has quite a lot of companions within the audio world, with many key gamers utilizing Qualcomm chipsets inside their headphones. These companions embrace Bose, Sennheiser, Anker, Jabra and Nura. Bose introduced all its 2023 headphones would assist Snapdragon Sound, which implies 48Hz lossless audio too.

There are presently over 100 merchandise out there that assist Snapdragon Sound, which you will get a full checklist of right here. Not all of those supply the most recent Snapdragon Sound options although as for these, like we talked about, you will want a smartphone operating the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform and a pair of headphones or audio system operating the S3 or S5 chips.

The units supporting Snapdragon Sound characteristic a badge to point they’ve been examined and licensed by Qualcomm to ship the anticipated expertise.

What in regards to the Snapdragon Sound dongle?

At present, there’s presently no dongle available for purchase as a bodily product. Qualcomm hasn’t introduced once we would possibly see the primary dongle or adapter out there that options the improved S3 Gen 2 chip inside both, although the corporate has detailed the expertise to a few companions and Pocket-lint was advised in a briefing {that a} bodily dongle with the expertise would seemingly arrive “quickly”. We skilled a reference dongle in motion and there was little or no distinction between the Bluetooth headpones we used with the dongle and the wired SteelSeries headset that was used for an AB take a look at.

Together with supporting <20ms latency, the S3 Gen 2 chipset additionally helps the most recent LE Audio Auracast broadcast capabilities for dongles and adapters, which might remodel units comparable to TVs, telephones, laptops, PCs, consoles into premium broadcast platforms. For music listening, 24-bit 96kHz high-resolution Bluetooth streaming is supported utilizing Snapdragon Sound and Qualcomm aptX Adaptive audio expertise.