Qualcomm launches Snapdragon Sound with Amazon Music playlist

Qualcomm Technologies International recently announced Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound technology — an optimized chain of audio innovations and software designed to provide seamless, immersive audio for devices, including smartphones, wireless earbuds, and headsets.

Watch a video about the Snapdragon Sound technology here.

Snapdragon Sound is designed to provide a superior sound experience for consumers while listening to streaming music, communicating on the phone, or wirelessly gaming. To coincide with this launch, Amazon Music and Qualcomm Technologies also announced a curated Snapdragon Sound Playlist.

“The human ear is highly sensitive to glitches, latencies, and other challenges which commonly occur when streaming music, video conferencing, or gaming over wireless connections. By focusing end-to-end, we are looking to deliver innovations to solve common consumer pain-points across virtually all audio interaction points,” said James Chapman, VP and GM, Voice, Music, and Wearables, Qualcomm Technologies.

There are many ways sound quality can be disrupted between users and devices. How devices connect with each other, breaks in connectivity, audio dropouts and glitches, latency, and poor audio compression can all contribute to a tiring and distracting listening experience.

“Qualcomm Technologies is uniquely positioned to provide tremendous value to customers with Snapdragon Sound and help them quickly commercialize products differentiated by the great sound quality,” added Chapman. “Our system-level approach aggregates multiple technologies and the latest products from across our mobile and audio platform portfolios to achieve our vision of delivering high-resolution, wired quality audio, wirelessly.”

By optimizing interactions between Qualcomm technology stacks, Snapdragon Sound is designed to deliver a more robust and seamless wireless listening experience, supporting high-resolution 24-bit 96kHz audio, ultra-low latency, improved pairing, and crystal-clear voice quality.

To solve end-to-end latency challenges, Snapdragon Sound can support Bluetooth latencies as low as 89 milliseconds (45% lower than a leading competitor) for more immersive gaming and a better video watching experience. For those who prefer listening directly from the mobile device, Snapdragon Sound incorporates the Qualcomm Aqstic DAC, designed to support formats of up to 384kHz 32-bit PCM and DSD with ultra-low THD+N.

Key technologies
The key components of Snapdragon Sound include:

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8-series mobile platforms
Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 mobile connectivity system
Qualcomm QCC514x, QCC515x, and QCC3056 series Bluetooth Audio SoCs
Qualcomm Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) technology
Qualcomm aptX Adaptive, 24-bit 96kHz, and 89ms latency
Qualcomm aptX Voice super wideband voice
Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec and smart speaker amplifier WCD938x and WSA883x
Qualcomm Audio and Voice Communication Suite

To ensure high levels of performance, Snapdragon Sound optimized devices will be tested for interoperability in Qualcomm Technologies’ dedicated test facility on measures of performance including audio quality, latency, and robust connectivity.