Analog line out and DAC for the Lumia 920

[ripple23]

I just wanted to know if anyone had an idea if there was a

1. Clean line out signal on the Lumia 920 to connect to an external amp
2. If there are any USB DAC products that can bypass the DAC on Windows Phone devices, similar to the Fostex HP-P1 or CLAS or iStreamer in the iPhone/iPod domain.

It would be a bummer if there is no products that address this. That means I would have to use my iPhone or iPod for the portable music rig.

 

[MutumbaSowed]

I personally feel the Lumia 920 has it all but it has nothing when it comes to audio. Haven't actually tasted it yet but being a self-proclaimed audiophile, I have been looking all over the internet for anything to do with the audio DAC of the phone. I found nothing. I think if Nokia had actually put something useful in this device, they would make a lot of noise about it. GSMarena just confirmed my fears and said the audio quality of the 920 has way below average. (They actually said it was disappointing). Now I have been using a lot of N series devices but they seem to get worse by the years. The old N series were excellent. The Symbian 3 devices weren't so good either as they always sounded worse than any android I put against them. Big fan of Nokia but no offense the iPhone is really good at this. Nokia seems to always luck the power to even push high end in ear-phones. There is always luck of bass and power. The mid tones just disappear and you only get the low and high frequencies.
This got me to start looking for external DACs which can be used via Bluetooth or USB. Am not sure the 920's DAC can be circum-navigated via USB but fingers crossed.

# Seriously Nokia, BIG BIG BIG disappointment in the sound department. That Dolby nonsense is only useful if you are watching a movie or something, not when you are listening to music.

 

[anon(5395037)]

Theres no line out or any other way to bypass the internal dac. You cant plugi your dac through usb port like in android devices. Sorry impossible.
Every windows phone 8 is using the same built in in SoC audio dac. The main problem is with the amplifier itself i think or maybe with firmware or phone with disortion problems (maybe gsmarena was having one ). Some devices on the same showed that they can sound excelent (HTC One S). If you want good sound go for Galaxy S, Galaxy S3, One S, Nokia 808 or Iphone 3gs/4s and 5 (its worse but still above average).
This is also big problem for me Lumia 920 user. Yeah on the go lumia 920 with weston 3 or 4R is more than enough in listening experience.

 

[xenoglyph]

With the horrible audio software available to us on WP8 right now line out would be useless anyways. It's 2012 and I don't have FLAC + ReplayGain support on my flagship phone :\

 

[mprebich]

Any update on WP8 functionality relative to digital audio out?

There is now Flac Player, although it requires you to load music from Skydrive.

Anything else that others are aware of?

I've been trying some of UPNP apps that pull music and vids off my NAS, Linada and AV Remote work well, but neither play flac and liimited on video codec support.

With the horrible audio software available to us on WP8 right now line out would be useless anyways. It's 2012 and I don't have FLAC + ReplayGain support on my flagship phone :\

 

[Mutumba Sowed]

Am back again one year later and this time with a 920. It sounds even worse than I had imagined. The problem is mainly on the firmware. Its nokia specific. The Ati S for example sounds fine. The HTC sounds okay. but the lumia is horrible. So we need to get this out to Nokia. They can provide a software control that could minimize internal amplification and let us use external DACs. Apart from that, the device is useless as a music player.

 

[mprebich]

Hi Mutumba,

I've had the L920 for about 6 months now. I have no problem using it as a music player. I feed the mini-plug (headphone plug) into a headamp. I have an ALO Audio MK I and a custom-built CMOY design. Sound is good. Especially when I use my own files, both MP3 and flac. To play the flac, I am using FLAC Player (available from the WP store) as mentioned above. For all other files I use the WP8 Music+video app.

My gripe is that the Lumias don't do digital audio out (USBaudio) thru the microUSB port, for feeding the digital signal to an external DAC.

You mention in your post "Nokia's firmware". I'm not so sure. I have asked the question all over the internet forums and to Nokia, Microsoft, WP directly, unfortunately, none of them will give me an answer.

My question specifically is, "what is the technical limitation, i.e. is it that the current chip in the phone can't pass through the digital (I doubt it), is it in the chip but needs a Nokia firmware upgrade to access it (possibly), is it WP8 just doesn't implement the functionality (Windows on the PC can do this), or are we just missing an app that implements it (can't be that simple, right?) ???

Hopefully, someone can really tell us what the limitation is, so that we can target the right company in the chain to push for this implementation. Given that MS bought Nokia, when it becomes official, MS will be the only one to blame if this is not implemented.

Thanks!

 

[Kent Larsen]

I found this little gadget Bluetooth Audio Receiver, Bluetooth Music and Stereo Receiver - Avantree
Looks like it supports A2DP, so 48KHz in other words CD quality. Not the audiophile option one could dream of, but at least something.

 

[mprebich]

Thanks Kent.

For those looking for a better BT solution for home, I agree that they should check this out. I especially like the aptX for its better compression/transmission, from what I understand. (I recently ordered the LH Labs Geek Pulse dac and Geek Blue BT receiver; they also chose aptX for their BT implementation.)

As for my Lumia 920, I'm looking for a portable solution. So until it (or a future MS WP phone) can do digital out to feed a portable DAC, I'll stick with a just a decent headamp or two.

Thanks again for following-up on this post.

I found this little gadget Bluetooth Audio Receiver, Bluetooth Music and Stereo Receiver - Avantree
Looks like it supports A2DP, so 48KHz in other words CD quality. Not the audiophile option one could dream of, but at least something.