Why I'm Excited For Qualcomm's Newest Snapdragon Audio Chip

Alongside the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 mobile chipset, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 chip at Snapdragon Summit in Maui. Qualcomm invited me to Summit to take a look at everything new, and the Sound Elite Gen 2 processor is designed to run a lot of next year's premium earbuds and headphones.

The headlining features are the usual generational upgrades, with up to twice the capability to process AI, running at up to 40% lower power, and a 30% smaller physical footprint than the Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 platform it replaces. It's also the first Qualcomm audio platform with micro-power Wi-Fi 6E built into the chip.

That Wi-Fi capability fuels what I think is one of the best capabilities the Sound Elite Gen 2 processor offers: the ability to run apps. I know that sounds slightly strange, but earbuds will now be able to locally run micro-apps — at least two at once — without passing anything through a smartphone. To really showcase this new ability, Qualcomm had a demo running after its keynote, which showed one of the first uses of this hardware that I'd actually want on my own earbuds.

Qualcomm demonstrated a scenario where someone was watching a movie on a streaming service in its original French audio with English subtitles on screen. When they looked away, the subtitles switched off and the audio switched to English because they could no longer follow along with the subtitles. When they looked back at the screen, the movie switched back to French with the subtitles displaying again. This all happened in real-time, with no lag between their head moving and the audio switching.

A process like that can work so seamlessly because the earbuds run the app themselves. As I mentioned, Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 integrates micro-power Wi-Fi 6E, which gives earbuds their own connection to cloud services without a phone in the middle. Qualcomm's Snapdragon Sound Apps and Agents framework lets service providers — such as Netflix or any of the other top streaming services — build apps that will install directly onto a compatible pair of earbuds. These apps can also keep receiving new features after the product ships.

Andrew Laister, a senior product marketing manager at Qualcomm who ran the demo, described how apps like this could actually end up reaching users. A streaming service could bundle an earbud app into its existing phone app, so you'd be offered the option to install it on your earbuds. He also raised the possibility of a company like Anthropic putting Claude directly on a pair of earbuds. Device makers can also decide which apps come preloaded. Sound Elite Gen 2 can run at least two apps in memory at once, so a voice assistant, for example, can stay available while you're doing something else.

Beyond this new capability, the Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 processor upgrades most of the things your earbuds already do. It offers the fifth generation of Qualcomm's adaptive noise cancellation, which uses AI to adjust the noise cancellation as the fit of the earbuds, your movement, and your surroundings change. It also offers improved voice processing with multi-microphone earbuds to pick your voice out of background noise. Qualcomm aptX Lossless is included to offer bit-for-bit music streaming, while XPAN can switch between Bluetooth and low-powered Wi-Fi to stretch audio coverage beyond normal Bluetooth range. A new Snapdragon Audio Sense system combines microphones and algorithms to help a device hear both you and the room around you.

Qualcomm is aiming this processor at more than just earbuds, with support for headphones, open-ear buds, audio glasses, hearing devices, and camera-equipped earbuds — such as the currently rumored AirPods with a camera — where the camera gathers context about your surroundings rather than taking photos. But so far, no products with the new Sound Elite Gen 2 chip have been announced.

Qualcomm made it clear that it expects the Sound Elite Gen 2 to arrive in more premium earbuds first, which is how most audio features arrive. Rising memory costs are already pushing up gadget prices, so if you want a pair of earbuds with these new capabilities, I predict you'll be paying top dollar for them. If you need noise cancellation now, there are plenty of options among the best noise-canceling headphones and earbuds at every budget and the pairs Consumer Reports ranked highest for noise canceling.