Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon Sound hardware supports wireless CD quality audio, reduces latency

BARCELONA (Pocket-lint) - Qualcomm has announced the latest additions to its Snapdragon Sound portfolio with the S5 and S3 Sound Platforms.

The new hardware is designed to boost the performance of wireless audio devices, opening up increased quality and lowering latency to deliver a more premium sound experience. 

While Qualcomm is well known for its work powering mobile devices and driving 5G, for example, it's often overlooked that the company also offers connectivity for other wireless devices, including headphones. 

Moving to a simplified naming convention, the new hardware will support CD quality audio - 16-bit 44.1kHz - wirelessly, so users and take advantage of wider availability of higher resolution music from services like Tidal, Apple Music or Amazon Music. This can take advantage of the aptX Lossless codec announced in 2021.

Qualcomm says that it will also support 24-bit 96kHz audio wirelessly, pushing the quality higher.

The ramping up of audio quality is something that's been growing over recent years, as the bandwidth benefits from faster 4G and 5G connections means that mobile customers don't have to worry so much about keeping data usage down, instead enjoying better streaming performance. 

Reducing latency and boosting microphone capture makes for more natural conversations, while the latest Snapdragon platforms also support wireless stereo recording through microphones on headsets, again adding another route to improved audio capture.

While you're unlikely to see anything labelled as Qualcomm Snapdragon S5 Sound Platform, you might encounter the Snapdragon Sound branding which Qualcomm is using as an umbrella term for its audio solutions.

The likes of Master & Dynamic, Audio-Technica, Jabra and Cambridge Audio all make use of Qualcomm's hardware in audio devices to deilvery and great sound experience.

Qualcomm says that its latest hardware is 20 per cent lower in power consumption, while delivering 25 per cent lower latency.   

Writing by Chris Hall.