At the Snapdragon Tech Summit held in Hawaii this month, Qualcomm announced more devices were going to come with Snapdragon Sound technology built-in. Originally launched in March 2021, the technology is an optimised chain of audio innovations and software designed to provide seamless, immersive audio in, and across, devices including smartphones, wireless earbuds and headsets. To coincide with this launch, Amazon Music and Qualcomm Technologies also released a curated lossless-audio Snapdragon Sound Playlist.
In March, Qualcomm onboarded Xiaomi for Snapdragon Sound on select devices. Lei Zhang, vice president of Mi smartphone and general manager of Hardware R&D at Xiaomi, said: “Xiaomi is excited to be the first mobile manufacturer to bring Snapdragon Sound to devices. Snapdragon Sound will bring new high quality, seamless, low-latency audio experiences to our customers everywhere and provide better sound while engaging in voice calls, video conferencing, gaming and/or music listening. Snapdragon Sound has industry-leading capabilities to fully optimize the smartphone phone and earbuds delivering great sound.”
Motorola this month announced the moto g200 5G smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 888+ Mobile Platform, featuring the Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 connectivity system for best-in-class 5G, WiFi 6E, and Snapdragon Sound. Many more flagship devices will feature the technology as manufacturers feature the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mobile platform in future.
There are many ways sound quality can be disrupted between users and devices. How devices connect with each other, breaks in connectivity, audio dropouts and glitches, latency, and poor audio compression can all contribute to a tiring and distracting listening experience. By optimizing interactions between Qualcomm technology stacks, Snapdragon Sound is designed to deliver a more robust and seamless wireless listening experience, supporting high-resolution 24-bit 96kHz audio, ultra-low latency, improved pairing, and crystal-clear voice quality. To solve end-to-end latency challenges, Snapdragon Sound can support Bluetooth latencies as low as 89 milliseconds (45% lower than a leading competitor) for more immersive gaming and a better video watching experience. For those who prefer listening directly from the mobile device, Snapdragon Sound incorporates the Qualcomm Aqstic DAC, designed to support formats of up to 384kHz 32-bit PCM and DSD with ultra-low THD+N.
For more information, visit https://www.qualcomm.com/products/features/snapdragon-sound