Gadgetory

how's it gone everyone I'm Adam Elina so it's 2018 let's be honest most smartphones are nearly perfect when it comes to audio but nearly perfect isn't perfect and if you take audio seriously it's good to know which phone is gonna do what you want so in this video we're gonna go over the five best smart phones you can get if audio is important to you and if you're curious as to how we got these results stick around to the end of the video because I'll be quickly explaining all of it alright let's get into it so the five phones are the LGB 30 the Galaxy S 9 plus the Google pixel 2xl the Nokia 800 for weird and the razor phone let's start there so if you're all in on this wireless feature the phone you're gonna want is the razor phone it was recently updated to Android 8.1 which means that it now comes with all of the bluetooth co dat goodies that come baked into Oreo you'll get app Dex apdex HD and L Dec 4 bluetooth streaming along with dual front-facing speakers now the glaring downside is that this phone is lacking a headphone jack and even though it was to stuff in a four thousand milliamp hour battery it's still a pretty big inconvenience but to try and make up for that the dongle that comes with the razor phone does give it Dolby Atmos support so if you don't go the wireless route and end up plugging in a pair of headphones at least you get something for your troubles so if you already have a high-end pair of wired headphones or are thinking of getting one in the near future there's really only one option for you the LG v 30 audio files love the LG v 30 for a reason and that reason is the headphone jack not only is that in itself in a plus these days but this phone also has a quad back inside that supports a 32 bit audio and an amp that can power pretty high-end pair of headphones it also outputs a signal that's stronger than any other phone on the market and it has support for f2x HD which is the next-best codec for bluetooth streaming after Sony's L Dec not to mention that if you do plug in a pair of headphones the harmonic distortion was the lowest we tested in any smartphone at 0.0009 percent now because both the phone and the headphones need to have L DAC for the codec to work the lack of L DAC compatibility shouldn't really be a problem for you unless you already own a pair of expensive bluetooth Sony headphones like the WH 1000 X Mark twos during testing some of the own issues we found with this phone are well beyond human hearing which is why they make music sounds so damn good one con to be aware of though is that the speakers on this thing are pretty weak and our testing the output maxes out at 71 decibels making this the weakest speakers on any of the phones that we tested and then we have the galaxy s 9 plus Samsung's latest and greatest now wasn't the best in any one category but it scored well enough to compete and let's be real it has a headphone jack it too supports 32 bit audio and is Dolby Atmos certified when you plug in a pair of headphones the razor phone does this too to be fair but the s9 does it without a stupid dongle it takes the prize home for Best processing just because of that again the speakers here aren't the best and the Dolby Atmos that you get on them won't be as impressive as they are with headphones but it's still something that the other phones don't have you also have the option to customize the frequency response on a system level which is useful for cutting out frequencies that you physically can't hear anyway and then of course we have Google's flagship the pixel 2 XL which made this list even without a headphone jack as Gary would say let me explain the Google pixel to XL is on this list not because of its front-facing speakers which were the second loudest out of any that we tested at 74 point 4 decibels or even because the dongle surprisingly has a noise floor that was basically identical to the headphone jack of the LGV 30 at negative 100 and 1.4 decibels versus negative 100 and 1.6 decibels no it's here for the same reason that it's one of the best phones to get period it's first in line for updates coming straight from Google and while that may not seem like a huge deal right now pixal owners will be the first to get any updates or software tweaks that will make the audio experience even better it's also compatible with all of the Bluetooth codecs except for Samsung HD which is exclusive to the galaxy the only thing I would make this phone objectively better is if it actually had a decent headphone jack which I'm never gonna let go so just deal with it so if you don't feel like spending nearly $1000 on a smart phone I can't really blame you so we also have a bang for your buck pic which goes to the Nokia 8 because despite its low price tag it's a priceless with how well it held up in our testing not only does it have some impressive speakers that gets up to 74 supposin volume but it also has a headphone jack with a noise floor that was on par with the likes of the google pixel - dongle and even the headphone jack of the LGV 30 throwing the fact that it now has android oreo which gives it aptX at the xhd AAC and L dad compatibility and it's well worth the asking price especially when that price is usually around 400 US dollars so how did we get these results well lucky for us we have the latest and greatest technology at our disposal a scarlett 2i2 interface okay okay not that impressive but you'd be surprised at information you can get out of this thing with the right software using a 3.5 millimeter - a quarter-inch TRS connector Y cable we were able to connect each phone to a top-secret piece of software called audio right mark it's actually a free piece of software that you can download yourself if you're thinking this is all really simple you're right it is there's a lot you can learn by simply playing a 96 kilohertz 24-bit test file and then recording and comparing the results we could have tested with higher bitrate files but to be honest there's really no point we chose something that would meet or exceed CD quality which is 44 point 1 kilohertz and 16-bit because at the moment no streaming service even does 32-bit audio and that's how most people are gonna be listening to music anyway now as far as testing speakers go unfortunately we don't have access to an anechoic chamber but if you can get me in one let me know so I could scratch that off my bucket list so we were only really able to provide a gross sound pressure level measurement or SPL by playing a pink noise file on max volume off of each phone at a distance of one meter from one of these guys a decibel reader overall the front-facing speakers on these phones were better than the bottom firing ones but either way all speakers across the board pretty much sucked if you want good audio out of these phones grab a pair of headphones so when we start talking about wide performance this is a little bit easier to understand but harder to hear data aside all of these phones sound pretty damn good more than enough for the average person and unless you spent years training your ears to pick up the smallest differences in air pressure you won't be able to really say that one is loads better than the other now with that out of the way that's why we have data in wired headphones lower distortion and a low noise floor are better for the final product that reaches your ears in that same vein the lower the deviation found in testing the frequency response the lesser audio will be altered before you get a chance to hear it and at the end of all of this testing you get this chart comparing the phones so one thing that's worth mentioning is that phones with dongles like the Google pixel to excel and even the iPhone 10 refuse to output sound at a specified sample rate why no idea but with three different people doing these tests individually we got more or less the same results the good news is that these phones should have an easier time getting rid of distortion the trade-off is that it technically isn't performing as well while the average person streaming music or YouTube videos won't be able to tell Ultra Hardcore wired listening only audio files might not be satisfied with this which is fine because chances are that type of person should avoid dongles if they're using power-hungry headphones anyway now the last piece of testing was the Bluetooth codecs which was actually super easy as the companies explicitly state which codecs they're using which gave us this chart comparing them so you can see which phones have what you're looking for so there you have it if you care about audio those are the top five smartphones you can get that won't let you down I'm out of milena thanks for watching and make sure to follow us on social media if you're not already we have Instagram and Twitter and also hit the notification bell down there so you'll be the first to note every time we upload a new video because we are your source for 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