Key Takeaways

• Snapdragon Sound offers a high-quality audio experience for various activities such as gaming, streaming music, and voice/video calls, ensuring HD audio quality and low latency.
• The features of Snapdragon Sound include Dynamic Spatial Audio for an immersive listening experience, improved latency for lag-free gaming, lossless audio for a detailed and uninterrupted sound, and robust connection with minimal drop-outs.
• To get the latest Snapdragon Sound features, you will need a phone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform or a laptop with the Snapdragon X Elite platform, as well as headphones, earbuds or speakers with the Snapdrgon S7 or S7 Pro platform.

Qualcomm might be best known for its mobile platforms that you'll find under the hoods of multiple smartphones, from Samsung and OnePlus to Oppo and Motorola, but within those platforms - as well as the company's new PC platform too - there are a number of technologies present.

One of those is Snapdragon Sound, which has a number of features under its umbrella. This is everything you need to know about Snapdragon Sound, including what it is, what it offers and which devices have it.

What is Snapdragon Sound?

Snapdragon Sound is a technology developed by Qualcomm that is designed to deliver the best audio experience, whatever you're doing. Whether that's gaming, streaming music, or making voice and video calls. It guarantees a certain level of HD audio quality between compatible phones and headphones with low latency and high-quality voice calls, too. Snapdragon Sound was first announced at the beginning of 2021, available on the Snapdragon 888 chipset. It then came to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mobile platform, followed by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform and more recently, the Snapdragom 8 Gen 3 mobile platform that Qualcomm revealed at its Snapdragon Summit in October 2023. You'll also find it in the Snapdragon X Elite PC platform that was unveiled alongside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform.

According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon Sound is "the only solution designed to deliver lossless music, industry-leading low latencies, and by utilising Qualcomm Bluetooth High Speed Link technology, the most robust Bluetooth connections." It's worth mentioning that the Snapdragon S7 Pro sound platform that was announced at the same time as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon Elite X platforms, uses micro-power WiFi to extend the range of audio devices beyond what is offered by Bluetooth. This allows users with a compatible pair of earbuds and headphones - with the S7 Pro chip within them - the ability to walk around a home, building or campus and further away from the original audio source without losing quality.

Snapdragon Sound is an end-to-end audio system, and it has a number of features built into it - more on those in a minute - though in order to benefit from the features, both the phone or laptop and headphones or speakers need to use Qualcomm hardware inside.

What features does Snapdragon Sound offer?

Snapdragon Sound has a number of features within it, as mentioned. For 2022, Qualcomm announced Dynamic Spatial Audio, improved latency and lossless audio, while for 2023, better active noise cancellation (ANC) was introduced with the new Snapdragon Sound platforms, along with on-device AI and enhanced sound for gaming with spatial audio. In order to experience the Snapdragon Sound features, you will not only need to have a phone running the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile platform if it's the 2022 features you are interested in, but you will also need to have a pair of headphones or a speaker with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 chipset or S5 chipset inside. If you want the improved ANC, WiFi capabilities and better on-device AI, you'll need a phone running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or a laptop running the Snapdragon X Elite, and you'll also need a pair of headphones with the Snapdragon S7 or S7 Pro inside, specifically the latter if you want the ability to move around your home out of Bluetooth range and not experience drop out.

If you have the right combination of those devices though, here are the features you'll get with Snapdragon Sound and what they mean.

Dynamic Spatial Audio

Snapdragon Sound offers Dynamic Spatial Audio for both wired and wireless headphones and the idea is to deliver a more immersive experience. It's what Apple offers through its AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro models, with Qualcomm bringing the technology to Android here.

When watching a film or listening to music with Spatial Audio or Dolby Atmos, the sound remains locked to where the device you are using it on is, even if you turn your head left or right, up or down. The technology allows for a more natural and encompassing listening experience.

Improved latency

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and the devices with the Snapdragon S3 or S5 chip, there's improved latency for gaming on Snapdragon Sound, and this of course, also transfers to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon X Elite and headphones or earbuds with the S7 or S7 Pro platforms too. This should mean that you'll get lag-free gaming and a better experience overall. Qualcomm reduced the latency to 48ms, which is quite significantly lower than the typical 300ms you'll find on Bluetooth headphones. Again though, you will need compatible headphones and a compatible smartphone to benefit.

There is another element to this part however. Qualcomm also announced an improved version of the S3 Gen 2 chip in June 2023, designed to be used in adapters and dongles. It is claimed to deliver <20ms latency, which is closer to what you would expect from a wired headset, which is usually around 5ms to 10ms. The idea is that you plug the dongle with the S3 Gen 2 chip inside into your device - whether laptop, USB-C phone, TV - and you will experience ultra low sub 20ms latencies from a wireless headset when gaming. The headset has to be a Snapdragon Sound-approved headset with an S3 or S5 chip inside, or S7 or S7 Pro, and it also supports voice back-channel for in-game chat.

Lossless Audio

One of the key features of Snapdragon Sound is aptX Lossless audio. Qualcomm announced support for 16-bit 48Hz lossless audio with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform and S3 and S5 chips, which is a smidge better than CD quality, which is 44.1Hz. For devices running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, lossless is available at 44.1Hz, whereas those with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 offer 48Hz lossless through Bluetooth LE. The S7 and S7 Pro platforms offer support for 48Hz lossless audio too, while the S7 Pro offers support for up to 96Hz lossless through Qualcomm's XPAN Technology that uses WiFi.

Lossless is designed to produce an identical copy of the track you're listening to, adapting based on your environment by scaling back the bit rate in order to continue to deliver a good audio experience, with no drop-outs or glitches, rather than compress the track and lose detail like Lossy audio does.

Robust Connection

Snapdragon Sound is said to be optimised to work across your devices and deliver a robust connection with minimal drop-outs or audio glitching, no matter where you are, even in busy environments when there is lots of interference from other devices around you.

Active Noise Cancellation

Active Noise Cancellation is a feature of Snapdragon Sound and the S5 and S3 platforms from 2022 support it too, alongside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform. The Snapdragon S7 and S7 Pro platforms offer 4th generation Adaptive ANC however. This comes from new platform hardware architecture that supports low-

latency, multi-channel and low-power ANC. What that means in reality is headphones and earbuds with the S7 and S7 Pro platform is better active noise cancellation overall, and more responsive too, automatically adapting based on different variables. Transparency mode is also supported for the times you need to hear what is happening in the background. Keep in mind that you will not only need a pair of headphones or earbuds with the S7 or S7 Pro platform, but also a phone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or a laptop with the Snapdragon X Elite to benefit from the improved ANC.

Qualcomm XPAN Technology

Qualcomm announced a new technology that works with Snapdragon Sound at the Snapdragon Summit 2023 called XPAN Technology, as mentioned briefly above. It enables you to keep your earbuds or headphones connected, even when your phone is in another room or even on another floor. You'll need a pair of headphones or earbuds with the Snapdragon S7 Pro inside, along with a phone offering the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or a laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite platform, but if you have a combination of those, you will be able to listen at ultra low power over WiFi at up to 96Hz, scaling up to 24-bit 192kHz.

Which devices have Snapdragon Sound and how do you get it?

Qualcomm has a number of partners in the audio world, with many key players using Qualcomm chipsets within their headphones. These partners include Bose, Sennheiser, Anker, Jabra and Nura. Bose announced all its 2023 headphones would support Snapdragon Sound, which means 48Hz lossless audio too - or 96Hz for any using the S7 Pro platform.

There are currently over 120 products available that support Snapdragon Sound, which you can get a full list of here. Not all of these offer the latest Snapdragon Sound features though as for those, like we mentioned, you will need a smartphone running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform or a laptop running the Snapdragon X Elite, as well as a pair of headphones or speakers running the S7 or S7 Pro chips.

The devices supporting Snapdragon Sound feature a badge to indicate they have been tested and certified by Qualcomm to deliver the expected experience.

What about the Snapdragon Sound dongle?

Currently, there is currently no dongle available to buy as a physical product. Qualcomm hasn't announced when we might see the first dongle or adapter available that features the improved S3 Gen 2 chip inside either, though the company has detailed the technology to a couple of partners and Pocket-lint was told in a briefing in June 2023 that a physical dongle with the technology would likely arrive "soon". We experienced a reference dongle in action and there was very little difference between the Bluetooth headphones we used with the dongle and the wired SteelSeries headset that was used for an AB test.

Along with supporting <20ms latency, the S3 Gen 2 chipset also supports the latest LE Audio Auracast broadcast capabilities for dongles and adapters, which can transform devices such as TVs, phones, laptops, PCs, consoles into premium broadcast platforms. For music listening, 24-bit 96kHz high-resolution Bluetooth streaming is supported using Snapdragon Sound and Qualcomm aptX Adaptive audio technology.