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(semi-) portable device with digital out and spotify ability

post #1 of 7
5/28/10 at 6:04am
Thread Starter 

I am in need of a reasonable easy-to-carry-easy-to-handle device for listening to Spotify through my headphone amp and Sennheiser 650.

 

My first idea was buying an iPod Touch, but it seems like the sound quality is not that good (I'm OK with the sound from my Gen5 iPod, but from what I heard the Touch uses much cheaper components).

 

The second Idea is to find a device that I can hook up to a DAC. But so far I haven't found a suitable device.

 

Any suggestions?

 

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post #2 of 7
5/28/10 at 9:07am

An iPad sends digital out of it's LO.

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post #3 of 7
5/28/10 at 12:19pm

The Sansa Fuze send digital through its LO as well and you can't get much more portable. 

 

Also the iRiver-iHP 120 and larger storage cousin the 140 actually have an optical output.  Though you're looking at used if you want one of those.  You can also Rockbox them.  Mine is.  Just find a DAC and you're ready to go.

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post #4 of 7
5/28/10 at 12:28pm

Ipad and Sansa Fuze have digital out? I did not know that. Do they use coaxial or optical cable?

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post #5 of 7
5/28/10 at 1:55pm
Actually digital out might not have been the best way to put it. Thanks for bringing that to attention. The signal does go through some processing as it's able to go from a LOD that inserts into the connection located at the bottom of the device beside the headphone directly into an amp. I doubt that the LOD is acting as the DAC. If it was a straight digital signal an external amp wouldn't be able to do anything with it. So it's probably better to say that a signal goes through as little processing as possibe but still outputs as an analog signal through the LOD.
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post #6 of 7
6/4/10 at 2:48pm
Thread Starter 

...so I take it that it's an analouge output from the iPad. How is the sound quality compared to other devices? (iPod touch, iPod gen 5/5.5)

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post #7 of 7
6/4/10 at 2:53pm

It's a digital out.  Sound will vary greatly on the type of Dac / amp combo used. 

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