DAC by-pass

[Sound22Card]

I've tried downloading a few HD music players for this phone. They all seem to work well, but they don't seem to allow access to my thumbdrives, where all my HD music is. They pull up the 'in-phone' files, but that doesn't help me. Can anyone recommend a HD player that allows playing external files. My phone shows the thumbdrive in the 'My Files', and plays them just fine.

I'm just trying to find an app which has a better DAC than the phone and will play some 24-bit, 48000 Hz files.

Thanks.....

 

[svim]

Most multimedia apps are not going to be searching for files on temporarily mounted media by default. Not knowing just which apps you have or haven't tried, have you gone into the Settings menus of the apps you have tried to see what kind of options are there as far as looking for media? i.e. I use MX Player Pro and VLC, both apps have options to set and add specified folders to auto-scan for newly added content.

 

[Sound22Card]

Thanks, svim. I have MX Player fired up and it does let me select files on my thumbdrive. But I must ask, ...Do you know for sure that it's SW DAC is better than the phone's? (I should select 'SW', ..correct?)
Also, how can you be sure that the DAC being used is the one in MX Player? Are there any setting I should turn off or on, to get the best sound?
Sorry. My ignorance in this particular area is pretty bad.

 

[mikedt]

Foobar2000 can browse and play music from removable media, like USB-drives.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.foobar2000.foobar2000&hl=en_US

And it can use its own decoder instead of the stock Android(Samsung) one. Although I'm not sure if you'll actually hear any difference using 24-bit media and player, because the actual hardware DAC that connects to the headphone jack in an S7 is 16-bit, and no software app can improve that.

 

[svim]

My previous reply pertained only to the file directory issue you were asking about, I made no mention about DAC but that aside, if you take the time to go the MX Player app's Settings menu you'll see there are a very large number of both hardware and software decoder/codec options for both audio and video. Most are dependent on the particular hardware configuration of your device so a lot of experimentation is required if you do want to optimize your audio and video playback.

 

[Sound22Card]

Great info. Very much appreciated.

 

[Sound22Card]

Is it an accepted premise that any DAC connected to the Galaxy 7 headphone jack, will take over and supersede the phone's DAC?

 

[svim]

Is it an accepted premise that any DAC connected to the Galaxy 7 headphone jack, will take over and supersede the phone's DAC?

Well it won't be a matter of adding in any DAC device being able to 'take over' your S7's integral DAC, but more a matter of enhancing whatever audio signal is being put out from the headphone jack.

 

[Sound22Card]

Svim, ....So, ....in the case of using a HD music player app on the phone, will the app improve the 16-bit or just the sample rate? If the quality is set at a level by the phone, then nothing after the phone will be able to improve the quality because then, it will be just upsampling.....right? Sorry, just trying to get the right grip on this.

 

[svim]

Svim, ....So, ....in the case of using a HD music player app on the phone, will the app improve the 16-bit or just the sample rate? If the quality is set at a level by the phone, then nothing after the phone will be able to improve the quality because then, it will be just upsampling.....right? Sorry, just trying to get the right grip on this.

To be honest I'm clueless as to how much and how an app will improve an audio signal, nor am I aware of how external DAC devices do their 'magic' to improve an incoming audio signal. There's also the matter of the differences that might involve the audio from a headphone port (analog signal) vs a USB port (digital signal)
https://www.audioadvice.com/videos-reviews/what-is-a-dac/