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Quality of Smart phone audio vs standard LAPTOP PC audio
Hi there
the newer smart phones have nice powerful processors in them so I was wondering if the DAC (Digital / Analog converters) in these are as good as the ones in a typical LAPTOP computer set up -- bog standard on board sound from a laptop computer -- not high end specialized studio stuff etc.
My Galaxy III S phone can play FLAC files and plugging the output into a DECENT set of speakers appears to me to be just as good if not better than the same sound played from the computer - a relatively decent laptop computer (Sony VAIO VPCEH with Intel I5 processor).
I tested this by connecting the phone DIRECTLY to the pre-amp with the music on the phone's micro sdhc card. Had I done it via the USB then that might have needed another DAC conversion so the test cases wouldn't have been the same.
I use a phone app WINAMP PRO (just like the PC version) so I can use Folders / directories to play the music and it can play FLAC too -- a lot of music phone apps lack this facility which is a shame. I like also the "play by folders" too -- as I have a lot of Audio books -- saves endless tagging and creating playlists / albums. --Just point winamp to the directory / or file and play it.
I find also streaming music from the phone to the receiver device seems to work better than messing around with pc software too -- especially on a laptop.
Another app here -- OrangeSqueeze in conjunction with SQUEEZEPLAYER -does the job of the logitech squeeze server on the laptop. The phone will stream music from a Network (or any acessible drive) to the player device(s) -- no prob but use the Wifi on the phone --not the DATA content from the phone company !! otherwise your Bank balance will diminish faster than Spain's Economy !!.
Anybody else finding these sorts of apps are replacing similar laptop stuff (note high end gear and computers are a different ballgame).
I used to be very sceptical of smartphones --even have some posts on the forum saying I'd never buy them -- however I have to eat my own words -- the latest crop with the latest Android version are incredibly useful now and possibilities seem quite exciting with what you can do with them.
Seems to me that we don't need to do much Multi-media streaming from W7 in the future as your phone will handle it. Perhaps Ms is getting this right by gradually withdrawing a lot of multimedia in the standard version of W8.
cheers
jimbo
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