[Xperia Z3 General] RCJ89:
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z3-review-1140p6.php

under telephony the Z3s speaker didn't get scored highly at all, even though on ther sites they have clearly had louder scores and in videos you can hear its louder than the z2 which scored higher in gsm arenas test than the z3.

they also had this to say about the audio and this i do believe as I have seen it mentioned on other sites also my mate who works in vodafone had a chance to test it out for me and says it is same loudness as z2

The Sony Xperia Z3 did well in the first part of our audio quality test, which is where we plug it into an active external amplifier. The smartphone produced excellent scores all over the field as befits its flagship status. Volume levels however were rather disappointing so we can' give it full marks here.

Plugging in a pair of headphones leads to a moderate spike in stereo crosstalk, but the rest of the readings remain pretty good. Loudness deficiency hasn't been addressed, though, preventing the Xperia Z3 from matching its rivals despite a solid showing.

The parts highlighted in bold are why I have constantly been disappointed in sony phones since the ARC/ARC S as they were loud

quoted from GSM arena about the ARC

Update 04 April: It turns out that the default (normal) equalizer on the Arc actually boosts the bass and treble frequencies, instead of delivering a clean output. We retested the handset, using the flat equalizer and updated the text below to reflect our new findings.

We were pleased with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc performance in our audio quality test. The frequency response of the smartphone is perfect with no headphones attached and still easily within the +-dB limit with headphones on.

The stereo crosstalk does get pretty mediocre when you plug in a pair of headphones, while the distortion levels increase too and we'd only describe them as average.

The rest of the readings are pretty great, though - the noise levels and dynamic range scores are among the best we have seen. With an active external amplifier you are also getting some pretty low distortions and stereo-crosstalk readings. Plus the XPERIA Arc is reasonably loud so it's all looking pretty good.

this is what they said about the ARC S

To say that the Sony Ericssno Xperia Arc S has similar audio output to its predecessor would be quite an understatement. In fact we are confident that not a sinlge element of the smartphone audio engine was modified in any way when the Arc got its new brains. We are not compaining, mind you. The Arc had pretty nice audio quality and the Arc S is just as good.

With an active external amplifier you are getting some really impressive scores. In that case the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S is reasonably loud and there's not a single result that's anything but excellent.

When headphones come into play there's some degradation here and there, most notably with stereo crosstalk and distortion levels. Still those are no worse than average and with the other scores pretty good, we'd give the Arc S very good mark on the second test.

I just don't know what happened since they just became sony.

I was looking forward to the Z3, especially when I heard about high res audio etc, I also prefer the curved edges compared to the z2 so for me overall the design is more appealing