LG V10 - The Audiophile Phone?

That's great news. My battery life and bluetooth performance both tanked after the Marshmallow update. I've been thinking of a system reset, and this pushes me over the edge. Glad it worked for you

 

Finally! My source selector came in so I've started mucking about with the V10, a GOV2 and Mojo. IEMs were just SE215s at this point...fwiw.

I spent a couple of hours on Friday fighting USB noise, which ultimately resulted in having to run the GOV2 and Mojo on separate machines to get them to play quietly. I started with a non-powered hub which gave me distinct background electrical noise, then tried a powered hub which was slightly better but still noisy, and then moved the two onto each of the two X250 ports which was a little better, but not by much. Somehow these two like to make noise together on the same bus, and a lot of it. The GOV2 is about 3x as loud as the Mojo...I need to listen carefully to pick up the Mojo noise but the GOV2 is clearly audible. Volume adjustment one either makes no difference, nor does running the X250 off battery power. I assume Mojo is quieter because I'm not powering it off the USB 5v. Giving them dedicated machines seems to effectively eliminate the noise.

I had just a few minutes to do some listening after sorting that out, and noticed that the V10 had a clearly audible noise floor, where the GOV2 is almost imperceptible and the Mojo is black. I did a double-take, because the V10 over the last month sounded pretty black to me. Then I realized that it was in Aux mode, not normal mode, so the amp is kicking in - either harder, or maybe only in Aux mode? Testing this by 'tricking' the V10 into Normal mode by plugging a short extension onto the headphones, then into Mojo and then unplugging the headphones and plugging in the selector cable worked. At the same volume level the noise floor is drastically lowered to where it sounds black in Normal mode.

The trick works in reverse, too, so it's easy to test just on the phone. Plug in the extension alone first and it goes into Aux mode. Plug in the headphones, and you're pinned in Aux mode. If you leave the music playing and simply unplug the extension (with headphones attached) and re-plug it will flip into Normal mode and automatically volume-match - voila. the noise floor drops away.

That's the extent of it so far...I haven't had time to do more than fight noise . I'll do some more testing as I have time and let you know how I think the V10, GOV2 and Mojo stack up.

 

More on the noise situation: http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/hep-me-noise-floor.2234/

Skyline, do you have some sensitive-ish IEMs you could test this with? I'm curious to see if you notice it too.

 

I'm afraid not. My only IEMs are 50 ohm, and noise hasn't been an issue.

 

I absolutely love this phone. I purchased it in October after nearly a decade of Sammy phones, Sammy fan boy. Was pleasantly surprised at how much I love this phone.

I just bought a S7 edge, good phone too. Not sure which I like better... But I wanted a new phone, I love my toys. Not sure what I'm going to do with both. Definitely getting the new Note when it's released. I'll jump from. My lgv10, probably give my S7 to my girl. I kind of miss the V10 over the last 2 days, speaks volumes if how great that phone is.

Audio is better in the V10 stock form. Of course I rooted and installed viper. Haven't rooted the S7 yet, not sure if I will yet.

 

Well a little update since I've had my Andromedas for a while.

I've maintained that the V10 is dead black with the Andros, and I'm going to eat some humble pie there. The same weird ghosty distortion that I can pick up easily in Aux mode with IEMs (SE215 and the supplied QB3s) is indeed audible on low gain/regular mode with the Andros. It's definitely signal related and is present whether in flight mode or not. It's quiet enough that for portable purposes it's not an issue, but it's still weird...and I'd rather have a uniform noise floor than signal-based weird noise.

Of course now the successor V20 has been leaked with a new ESS SOC, the ES9218: http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en...udiophile-features-mobile-devices-first-time/

Although the DNR and THD+N are not quite as good as the V10s 9018C2M on paper, there is some more advanced noise/volume manipulation going on which may help the noise situation. Proof will be in the pudding, though, and I can see that cramming all that tech into a small device leads to inevitable compromise.