MAUI—Qualcomm says its newest Snapdragon Sound technology will bring premium audio experiences to the next generation of mobile headphones.
Its S7 and S7 Pro Gen 1 Sound platforms, announced today at Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, target a wide range of activities, including lossless music, gaming, multi-point connectivity, and extended-range listening so you can wander further away from your phone or PC without dropping the connection.
Qualcomm relied on its latest State of Sound Report to generate the feature list for the S7 and S7 Pro. Its research, which polled 7,000 people across seven countries, suggests that 79% of people want whole-home audio when listening. In other words, four out of five people would like to be able to connect headphones to their phone or PC and then be able to wander throughout their home without disconnecting from the source. That's a challenge given that the range of many Bluetooth headphones is limited to about 30 feet. Qualcomm also found that 73% of respondents want higher-quality music and that 68% of people would like to use the same set of headphones for multiple activities, such as music or gaming. The S7 and S7 Pro hope to help device makers ease these pain points.
To start, the S7 Pro packs a combination of radio enhancements that should give people more room to roam. The chip supports Bluetooth 5.4 with Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast Broadcast Audio. Qualcomm is combining this with micro-power Wi-Fi connectivity to create an Extended Personal Area Network, or XPAN. This mode relies on your phone's and router's Wi-Fi radios to maintain music streaming wherever the two can provide coverage with up to 24-bit 192kHz lossless with spatial audio.
Qualcomm didn't say exactly how much distance this adds, but you can bet it'll be better than what's available to today's devices. And that boost in streaming quality is notable. The standard S7 platform doesn't include the additional connectivity component for XPAN.
(Credit: Qualcomm)Further, the chips have a new compute module that's able to provide 6x the processing power and support 3x the memory of the previous-generation chips. That means 3x the digital signal processing and 100x more on-device AI. The module has a dedicated AI core that works harder but draws less power for machine learning applications. It also has dedicated cores for audio curation, which handles the ANC, hearing loss compensation, noise management, and transparency. Qualcomm says this equates to ANC that is better able to respond to environmental stimuli and adjust accordingly. Qualcomm calls it 4th Gen Qualcomm ANC and says it can transition seamlessly between quiet and loud spaces.
The S7 and S7 Pro platforms make big strides in battery efficiency. The new chips are able to stream 96kHz lossless music over Bluetooth for 10 hours, which is basically double the efficiency of the older S5 Sound Platform, which was able to stream 48kHz audio for the same length of time.
Last, the new Snapdragon Sound tech will make one set of headphones more adaptable to a range of activities such as taking calls, listening to music, and gaming, while transitioning from source to source seamlessly.
Qualcomm didn't specify what products will carry the Snapdragon S7 and S7 Pro Gen 1 Sound platforms, but the earliest products are likely to reach the market next year.
(Note: PCMag is attending Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit by invitation, but in keeping with our ethics policy, we have assumed all costs for travel and lodging for the conference.)