Quote:
There isn't a true, classical amplifier in the Wolfson in the manner that many people think. The source level is actually line level, like other external CD players or DACs. What the headphone jack source does is it digitally attenuates the signal inside the DAC, and then it passes it through the passive filter to the headphone jack. The same goes for the line out, except it doesn't attenuate the signal at all. Turn the volume up on your headphone jack and it should sound about the same as the line out. You could effectively use the headphone jack if you wanted by turning up the volume to the max.
I was hoping to get more clarification about the the 4th Gen (mono) iPod's internal amp. I always thought that line-out produced a cleaner signal because it wasn't affected by a low-quality amp as when you use the headphone jack. I thought this was the case for sure because when I use line-out in my car (connected to AUX input), the sound is much much cleaner than if I use the headphone out with max volume (lots of clipping). Is max volume on 4G iPod (mono) really equivalent to line-out? What else is going on to make it sound so much more distorted?
Edited by junkers - 1/18/12 at 8:31am
