Qualcomm's James Chapman on the future of Snapdragon Sound

Qualcomm Technologies has long been at the forefront of audio innovation. Our solutions and technologies for true wireless earbuds, headsets, soundbars, and speakers are used by many of the world’s most iconic audio brands – and technologies like Qualcomm aptX have transformed the Bluetooth listening experience.

With rapid advancements in technology capabilities, great sound has become crucial to everyday use cases – gaming, listening to your favorite music, collaborating with colleagues, and connecting with family and friends. And with the launch of Snapdragon Sound, we’re delivering audio technology designed for a new age of sound, optimized across the entire audio chain to provide a premium, low-latency, and robust sound experience.

We recently sat down with James Chapman, Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd.’s VP and GM of Voice, Music and Wearables to talk about Snapdragon Sound, and learn more about the devices it’s used in and how the technology might evolve for future use cases.

What is Snapdragon Sound technology, and why should consumers care?

Put simply, sound matters – perhaps now more than ever. As a result of changes in the way we work and live, the way we use our audio devices is changing – notably, our increasing reliance on wireless earbuds, headphones, and other devices for listening to music, podcasts, videos, gaming, and voice and video calls. It's amazing to see how rapidly audio use cases are evolving, and how important wireless audio is to consumers globally. With Snapdragon Sound we set out to do something that’s never been done before – we’re delivering a wired experience, wirelessly.  

Bluetooth was never really designed to deliver high-res or lossless sound and so, as a result, consumers are not always hearing their music the way the artist intended. With an increasing number of streaming services now offering extensive lossless music libraries, consumers have millions of lossless tracks to choose from. However, when listening via Bluetooth earbuds or headsets, they aren’t hearing all the details in the music because Bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth required to deliver lossless quality music.

For gaming or watching video, low latency is paramount. The video and audio need to be fully synchronized so, for example, gamers can hear what’s happening and instantly react – but right now this doesn’t always happen. The Bluetooth connection itself can also be problematic, particularly in situations where there is a lot of RF interference like a busy train station, which can result in annoying audio dropouts and glitches. And we’ve probably all experienced issues with setting up and pairing devices; sometimes it can take multiple attempts, or they can erroneously connect to different devices. When this out-of-box experience is not seamless it can be extremely frustrating. When we looked across all these pain points and analyzed how consumers are using wireless devices today, it became evident that our challenge was to deliver all the benefits of a wired audio experience, and that’s why we developed Snapdragon Sound.

Tell us about the experience consumers can expect when using devices equipped with Snapdragon Sound.

I’m a music lover so, for me, one of the most exciting capabilities of Snapdragon Sound is that it can deliver 16-bit 44.1kHz lossless music quality. To hear every detail of the music – just as the artist intended it to be heard – is phenomenal. And with many of the leading streaming services making their music libraries available in lossless quality, Snapdragon Sound is currently the only technology available that can support end-to-end lossless audio from phone to earbud.

For voice calls, Snapdragon Sound can deliver 32 kHz super wideband voice for crystal clear calls. This is increasingly important as more of us spend time using our Bluetooth accessories for voice and video calls, whether for work or staying connected to friends and family. And for gaming, Snapdragon Sound is optimized to deliver ultra-low latency for truly lag-free gaming. Gamers can see what is happening on screen and instantly react, which is vitally important in virtual worlds where milliseconds can mean life or death. It’s also end-to-end system optimized to minimize annoying dropouts and glitches, even in very congested Bluetooth environments like a busy train station or shopping mall.

Which devices support Snapdragon Sound technology?

Since we announced Snapdragon Sound early last year, we have seen great momentum in its global rollout. This includes many device launches from our customers, such as Xiaomi, Motorola, AVIOT, Edifier, Blackshark, Vivo, Nubia, ZTE, and Noble Audio. There are now 40 devices available featuring Snapdragon Sound, and over 50 OEMs and ODMs have signed up to use the technology. All I can say is watch this space as there are some very exciting devices being launched over the coming months.

How do consumers know which devices are powered by Snapdragon Sound?

We have a dedicated interoperability test facility in Taiwan, where every device that uses Snapdragon Sound is rigorously tested by us for key performance metrics for audio quality, latency, and robustness. Once they have passed these tests, they can then carry the Snapdragon Sound badge so consumers can easily identify which devices will work best together.

What’s next for the Snapdragon Sound ecosystem?

Our latest Qualcomm S5 and S3 Sound Platforms for earbuds were announced earlier this year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. With these new platforms, we added some interesting new features to Snapdragon Sound – including stereo recording enabling creators to use true wireless earbuds to record audio content in stereo sound. We also further improved robustness and added a new gaming mode with latency of just 68ms latency and a voice back-channel for in-game chat. We hope to see a new generation of Snapdragon Sound enabled devices with these features available for consumers in late 2022 and into 2023.

Looking ahead, because Qualcomm Technologies is uniquely positioned to look at how devices interact with each other across the consumer electronics ecosystem, we can take the core principles of Snapdragon Sound – premium sound experience, ultra-low latency, and robust connectivity – to many other use cases and applications, including automotive, gaming, and XR.

Qualcomm aptX, Snapdragon, Snapdragon Sound, Qualcomm S5 Sound Platform, and Qualcomm S3 Sound Platform are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.