I have a pair of Sony XM3’s capable of High-Res Audio (32-bit, 24 bit 96Khz etc) and I’m wondering where the F3 peaks?
I can’t find any specific audio specs anywhere. Does The F3 support any high-res codecs, Flac, etc?
I am not sure if this can be answered by “just trying” or not. Anyway, I am just playing a 96kHz/24bit FLAC track using the pre-installed YT Music app on a Fairphone 3. No issues with that one.
How’s the wireless bluetooth capability? Any drop-outs or hissing with wired or wireless headphones?
Obviously I’m seeking to protect the investment in my headphones so while I’m very interested in making the ethical choice to choose Fairphone I really need to ensure it’s good for my needs.
From the tech-specs:
Supported audio codecs
- PCM playback, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, MP3, WMA (v9, v10), WMALossless, WMAPro 10, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, FLAC, ALAC, Vorbis, AIFF, APE
So, it is supporting Flac and WMALossless.
To me this sounds to be as good as smartphones come.
Edit:
From the Qualcomm Homepage of the Snapdragon 632:
Audio Playback
Playback Dynamic Range: 130dB
Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise (THD+N), Playback: -109dB
Sampling, Playback: 44.1kHz, 48kHz
PCM, Playback: Up to 192kHz/24bit
Amplifier output power: Up to 4W
Speaker protection: Speaker protection
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Support for Bluetooth audio codecs is limited, with HD audio not currently supported. See also here.
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So in my settings for my Bluetooth headphones it does give me the HD AAC option and this seems to function well without hissing on my Plantronics Backbeat Pro 2. Though I hadn’t noticed any issues on regular setting either as I think even default codec is better than it used to be, so it could actually just be using default SBC and the toggle does nothing, both sound good quality to me.
In developer options there are setting where you can change to many different Bluetooth codecs and bit rate options etc, though I don’t know if they function, I assume the proprietary ones such as AptX definitely won’t work (as per other thread). See screenshots.
Edit: in order for them to not fail to apply and reset after exiting and re-entering developer settings you seem to need to toggle Bluetooth off and on whilst still inside the Dev settings. This allowed it to stick to LDAC and higher sample rate, but it caused my headphones to keep restarting- probably because mine don’t actually claim to support LDAC, only aptX
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In terms of dropouts I have had one dropout whilst using the headphones a lot over a few days and may have been due to two phones connected to the headphones. I have noticed infrequently a tiny skip in music on Bluetooth but not sure if the fp3 is responsible or headphones, or if codec choice effects it
Thanks for the comment! I was going by the comment in the last post in the topic I linked to, in which Fairphone customer support appears to say HD doesn’t work. Customer support isn’t always accurate, so based on your experience I’m starting to think that it’s mainly AptX that doesn’t work.
HI-Res audio is rather a gimmick, at least I hear no difference playing flac files, I think there’s more than one factor has to be involved. But I’m really satisfied with Snapdragon’s chipset audio capabilities, maybe not as dynamic as samsung’s Exynos or iphone’s Bionic chipsets.
As long as you avoid MediaTek’s Helio which in my experience(years ago) had a really inadequate sound quality.
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