Today, Qualcomm announces the new ‘Snapdragon Sound’ brand initiative, essentially an umbrella term that covers the company’s various audio-related hardware and software products, promising improved end-to-end interoperability for a better sound experience.
Qualcomm’s initiative is rather vague, but it seems to be focused on a certification program that ensures correct software stacks exist between the phone’s audio subsystem and the listening device. Qualcomm especially wants to focus on wireless audio technologies with greater audio fidelity, most technologies around Qualcomm’s own aptX codec and its derivatives. At least one concrete example of an optimized Snapdragon Sound system is Bluetooth sound latency, which in the company example would extend to 89 ms.
In terms of hardware, mobile platforms obviously cover Qualcomm’s Aqstic audio codec chips as well as speaker amplifiers, but extend the umbrella to the company’s Bluetooth audio SoCs, which are popular among wireless headphone manufacturers.
It is not clear whether the end-to-end optimizations are limited to Qualcomm hardware products only, and whether third-party audio hardware solutions will also benefit from the optimized audio stack.
Qualcomm states that the first devices that support Snapdragon Sound optimizations are expected to be available later this year.