The Sony phone for AUDIOPHILES? - XPERIA 1 III By Joshua Valour

Hey, what's up guys, I'm josh, and this is the Sony Xperia one. Three, I'm going to have an in-depth review of this phone as a phone, but in this specific video, I'm actually going to be talking exclusively about the audio performance of this device. Some quick disclosures, so I need to send this out for review. Nobody is paying asking or otherwise trying to influence me to say anything, good or bad about these products. Now, while this video is exclusively about audio, this phone is absolutely killer and I think the review is going to be a lot of fun. Now Sony has been on an absolute rampage on all of their devices across multiple platforms, honing down the professional and the enthusiast market of those particular devices.

A couple of examples: the Xperia pro actually had some really professional level features for things like their Sony, alpha cameras, which is what I'm shooting on right now when it comes to Xperia one three one of the big pushes that they have is for the audio performance out of the 3.5 millimeter, which is surprisingly and sadly lacking in a lot of today's phones. Now to talk about this, we first have to kind of run through the software here, because there are some things that I think you should disable that are enabled out of the gate to get the best audio performance. Out of this thing, Dolby Atmos off spatial audio off they do have this thing called DSE, which is uh an upscale, and you can choose that if you want to or not, I noticed the difference on it was minimal to non-existent. What I think is worth noting, though, is that if you are using uh, the 3.5 millimeter from like an audio file perspective you're already, either using high-res files or you're doing high-res streaming from like title or something like. I am there's also the strange feature on the volume dial.

When you adjust the volume, you can also adjust something called uh, dynamic vibration and this actually vibrates the phone on low notes, and it will kind of add, like a don't know it's trying to be like one of those weird bass things it. It doesn't really work that. Well, though, I basically keep this off at all times. I couldn't find any official specs on like how many milliwatts or watts that this thing has. It is not the strongest amplifier out there.

It's definitely not uh going to be powering super demanding planar. Now I was able to get every single aim. I threw at this thing and even some planar running out of this amplifier. One of the things that I was able to run with this was the 2021 edition of the LCD. Now, while these are big, planar, they're they're, big kind of open back planar magnetic headphones um, one of the things that enables this pairing to work is that these are sort of made to run off of not that much power, they're actually designed to be very, very efficient.

These come in at 20 ohms and have a sound pressure level of 103 dbs, which for a planar is quite efficient, but on the LCD's, I'm pretty much running that phone at max tilt at all times to get the proper volume output of this thing. Now, if you listen louder than I do, or have more demanding headphones, you're, probably going to need more power than this phone can currently provide now. One other aspect that you may not consider, but I do think, should be valuable for the right person is a potential pairing with an actual DAC and amplifier system, so you can actually run usb to this, which is a topping d30 pro, and this will actually do all the decoding for you, whereas you're just using your phone sort of as an access point for streaming services, um or if you have files on your actual phone, you can run it through that as well. Okay, now for actually sound quality. I tested this with the aforementioned LCD and also my top three aims, which is going to be the Sennheiser i.

e.900 for bass response the empire, ears, Odin from mid-range and tonality, and the fur m5s for basically trouble resolution dynamics, noise, floor tests, things like that, the really sensitive stuff that headphone is great with picking up issues with now the Odin with its vocals and its tonality. It does have a very, very slightly warm shift to it now. The trick with this headphone, though, is that, despite its warm shift, it still has the three c's. It's so clean, clear and crispy, and some amps that are warmer shifted tend to over saturate the vocals a little. They tend to come out a little more syrupy than they actually are, and then some amps that tend to run a little cooler tend to be a little dry in the vocals and don't quite nail it.

I felt like this phone absolutely killed it for tonality, and I really like the center presentation for the vocalist that this thing provided with a decent amount of separation. From the background, I think the performance here was actually pretty excellent. Now the ie900 for bass response. This is a good base performing headphone um, it's its kind of difficult to actually make the sync sound bad, but you can start to pick up on some flaws with uh some other amplifiers with this headphone. It's its good, revealing a lot of the bass characteristics and one of the specifics about the bass response is that the dynamics of the bass response are not crazy.

They're, not overkill, they're not going to be a full desktop, amplifier replacement, unfortunately, they're pretty good, and they perform better on lower power requirement. Things like aims, but as soon as you start getting more demanding headphones in there, you start to lose a little of those bass dynamics. Now, when you are playing with something like the i. e.900, which is an efficient aim, the bass dynamics are excellent, and I felt like the performance was really, really good. Extra from dead mouse is an exceptional bass track, especially the intro of that song.

It's punchy and sprightly, but it's also capable of deep thick, sustained notes and the plan by Travis Scott was also showcasing. Some awesome sound staging with the subtle, sounds in the background, even through some thick bass, so speed resolution and control even through the bass notes, is great, and I also feel like this speaks leagues about the capability of the ie900 being able to really pick up a lot of those background information. Despite like this, what would kind of be for most headphones and overpowering? Very strong bass response? This is able to dissect a lot of the different placement positions. Even at vastly different frequency ranges. Okay, so the fur m5s.

These are the most picky headphone ever like they're they're, one they're incredibly efficient, so like they need like a fairy fart could make them loud. It's its ridiculous now because of this they're very sensitive to a couple of things that if they are not done perfectly, you start to see issues with on other amplifiers, so one of the things is noise war. I almost always hear a noise floor on most amplifiers. If I'm really sitting there analyzing it, I can usually pick it up this phone dead quiet. It's like a 10 out of 10 for noise.4. On that I'm, which is good to see this aim is also really picky for dynamics and dynamics tend to make this aim kind of shoot up way more than it should.

It seems to be overemphasized in some dynamics, depending on the capability of the amplifier really, really high performing amplifiers like that topping 890 that we talked about it doesn't have that issue at all. So I feel like that's two for this aim and this phone combination. One thing I did pick up, though, that was not optimal, is there's a slight reduction in the upper treble frequencies, so I'm thinking like 13 14k and above it isn't very forward, and normally this headphone is like this guru of treble information where it's got this perfect mix of treble information without trouble, forwardness, and it's its got way more resolution than it does uh kind of scratchiness to it. So it's this incredibly informative aim for every song. You listen to.

I felt like the information about a lot of the background things like a lot of the air frequencies. Things like that you would normally pick up on with a full desktop amplifier. This was a little lacking it. I didn't feel like. I had this really transient understanding of the depth and the framework of the music like.

Furthermore, I would normally pick up on with this. Furthermore, I am, but when I really started to look at other pieces of it like the bass response, the mid-range even the treble resolution, it still felt perfect and still sounded perfect, and I didn't find any massively lacking areas as much as just the trouble just didn't feel as forward as I know it can on some incredibly high level amplifiers it's hard to say what would fix this. It's hard to say if it's like a a amplifier limitation in the phone, a DAC limitation in the phone or a power limitation in the phone like if it had more power, would it be a little more alive in that area? Quite possibly, it could be. Even though I felt like the resolution would be the first thing to go before the forwardness went, but the resolution was there just the forwardness. Wasn't okay, so I want to talk a little about high-end, headphones and low-end headphones and some the settings on this uh, this phone that you can adjust.

So one of the things I told you to do earlier was to turn off spatial audio and turn off Dolby Atmos. Here's the thing, though uh those are only problematic when you're running high-fidelity headphones if you're running something that has a lot of details to it, you're going to notice a lot of the distortion in the music, and I feel like the detriments of that experience- outweigh the benefits of the sound characteristics on those settings. However, if you're running sort of a lower tier, more consumer-grade headphone that isn't super high-res, I actually feel like those settings can be a benefit, though usually it's more about a song to song comparison than it is like a sweeping change of saying that it's better for everything. So, depending on the headphones you're running, I would personally recommend if you're a know, a self-described audiophile you'll probably want to turn those off. But if you're just you know a general consumer interested in the sound quality, those settings might be worth playing around a little with and just seeing kind of what you prefer.

The conversation of value is like very difficult to have, because, while this is not an apple to apples, comparison against Adam, for example, because it's got all these extra features like it's got, a 4k OLED 120 hertz display not too many apps have that it's an actual cell phone which apps are not, and then it's got this like crazy camera, and you're paying for, like all of these things when you're paying for this device, which is priced at 12.99 or 1300 bucks. So I wouldn't purchase this as a dedicated DAP. However, if you like all the other features, if you like what the phone has to offer as a phone aside from the audio, that would be my first like consideration would be like. Do you even like what the phone has to offer? If the answer is yes, then I'm happy to sign off on the audio quality out of the 3.5 millimeter as sort of additional feature, or just one more reason to buy it. If you are already interested in this, I think from a user perspective- and I know I'm not like uh, you know a phone review or anything like that, but I personally don't think it's worth the sacrifice of dealing with the phone that you don't like just for the audio quality, even though the audio quality is very good.

Okay, so, as far as recommendations from me be very careful about which headphones you're, using with this the more efficient, usually the better. I do think, though, that aim users are really going to like the performance out of this, and I find the aim performance to be its most practical application and I think it sounded the best on aims. Okay guys. I want to thank you very much for watching. I want to thank Sony for sending this out again for a review and until the next video, my name is josh signing off peace.

You.

Source : Joshua Valour