Gadgetory

a gadget fan circling back to the HTC 10 we want to talk about boom sound now there's been a lot of discussion about boom sound as that HTC has changed up the speaker arrangement on their flagship phone this year splitting up instead of using front-facing stereo speakers on the front of this phone we now have a front firing higher frequency speaker and a bottom firing lower frequency speaker to give you the impression of that you're listening to a tweeter and a subwoofer it's an interesting and nuanced experiment for smartphone audio you're listening to music you're watching movies you're playing games it's a little more detailed but we want to hear from you all how you think it might compare against some older HTC phones like the HTC One m9 a proper front-facing stereo speaker so we've tried to devise a test where you can listen to some audio playback on stereo microphones and then we've got a little poll set up that you can vote on this poll to see which one you think is the winner between the HTC 10 the HTC One m9 which I was just holding up here just a second ago and the galaxy s7 just is a little palette cleanser between the two just a little bit of history before we talk about this test now HTC as a company has been a champion for high quality audio on mobile devices we can all think back to devices like the HTC surround a really audacious Windows Phone with a sliding speaker could stick out the side of the phone now that was a partnership with Dolby then moving over to a phone like the One m7 this was actually the product of a partnership with Beats Audio now back when HTC owned a stake in Beats that was the branding down at the bottom of the phone of course HTC returned to Dolby for the One m8 and the one m9 and Dolby is of course still their partner of choice for the HTC 10 while the 10 is losing front-facing stereo speakers HTC is still holding to a hardware design I wish more companies with latch onto instead of having a tiny little earpiece speaker and then some other loudspeaker like one firing out the bottom of the phone the main loudspeaker is also the same speaker that you would hold up to your ear for a phone call we can turn that speaker down when you're trying to take a regular phone call but when we fire up a speaker phone situate this is still the loudspeaker so you don't have that weird like I'm in a busy place and I'm gonna juggle the phone around my face to take this speaker phone call cuz there's too much noise around me in the year 2016 I really wish all smartphones had this type of speaker arrangement so for this listening party as you might have noticed we've got three phones labeled above my skull and if you've got annotations on this video turned on you can click on any of those and go directly to audio samples from those three devices if you don't have annotations on and you're watching this on some kind of monitor or display or a TV you can go to the description below this video where all of those links are available for you to click on there these are not public videos these are only tied to this video that I'm explaining what's the audio test is we really didn't want to clog up your YouTube feed with a bunch of videos of just static phones playing music and movies and if you want to compare back and forth really close you can click on each of these open them up in their own individual browsers and you can play and pause to your heart's content for this audio test we're using my Olympus LS 100 which has a pretty decent set of stereo microphones built into the front they're not quite far enough apart that we've got that proper stereo human ear head mimicking but they're angled out away from each other far enough that we should at least get a sense of how these phones perform producing audio in an environment this environment namely being my office all three phones are being run through these same files we have a movie sample up front which is going to simulate the experience that you have when you're holding the device the screen is really what you're focusing on and you kind of want that audio to support what you're looking at on the screen and then we have a series of four music tracks after that audio files now we're really focused on the actual audio output from these speakers not necessarily how these phones might be used in real-world condition so when we get to the test the music test for the galaxy s7 we are going to turn this speaker more towards the microphones so we can hear that output as clearly as possible that does give the galaxy s7 a little bit of a bump considering that's not really how we would be using that phone ir l but you know that also just speaks to the advantage that HTC naturally has in that they point speed towards your face which when you think about it that's really where speaker should be pointed all of these recordings were produced with the phones 12 inches away from the microphones built into the LS 100 and no edits have been performed to this audio other than to raise up the levels so that they're a little bit louder but they've all been raised by the same amount so they should be commiserate against each other once you had to listen to all three or if you're just totally biased against one you don't feel like listening to any of them you just want to cheat your vote the here's a poll that we've set up on this video we'd appreciate it if you would vote in that poll there should have been like a little card interface thing that just swung out on this video which what you can click on or the little information the little eye on this YouTube video for more information there should be a link there so we'll let this video run for a week maybe two weeks and then in a future episode of the PocketNow weekly podcast we'll announce the results see which one you guys prefer you know especially having played with all these devices listening between an HTC 10 and an HTC One m9 is a pretty close battle it's a lot closer than I would have thought especially after our first impression some of our initial comparisons so I'll be curious to see what you guys think once you have a listen yourselves especially in these sort of slightly more strictly controlled testing situations than what we do on our fold reviews and if this is something that you all have fun with maybe this is a series that we can look to for future devices and future reviews in future comparison a way for you to provide a little input things that you think companies are doing really well areas where you think companies could improve so give those samples a listen get to voting and we'll pick a winner based on the samples that you all say you prefer as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel from our full coverage of all of the major flagship phones like the HTC 10 the LG g5 the galaxy s7 and make sure you hit that thumbs up button for a little extra positive reinforcement for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos Pagnell you can chat me up on Twitter and Instagram as some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next comparison Chinese a mug