[ruthieandjohn]

The disappearance of the iPhone headphone jack neccesitates the use of an external DAC to drive wired headphones, the most common of which is the Apple Lightening-to-1/8 inch dongle, selling for $8 to $10. At least based on price, this would seem to be a low quality DAC.

The other option is to use Bluetooth, which has its own degradation problems as compared to say Redbook CD quality. There are recent enhancements to at least some BT such as Sony LDAC, Apple Spatial Audio, and perhaps even Apple Lossless (not sure it preserves CD quality over Bluetooth, though).

Which should sound better…. Apple dongle wired headphone or Bluetooth wireless headphone?

Thanks!

 

[pjones5]

Unfortunately, Apple still uses AAC which is optimized for their own branded headphones/earbuds but is lacking for most other things.

Personally, I think a decent pair of IEMs and some HPs on Apple's Dongle sound better than most (not all) bluetooth earbuds/headphones.

I much prefer a pair of Jade Audio IEMs with the Apple dongle (totaling about $50) than the AirPods, but that's just me.

Full-sized headphones are a little more complicated though because now you need more power. For those, I'd set the Apple Dongle aside totally (and I frequently do) and get a portable DAC/amp - something like the FiiO KA3 or Q3 (unfortunately, both do have some interference problems, which can be easily ignored when music begins actually playing).

If you're desperate for bluetooth, I would still rather get something like a BTR5 or the iFi GO Blu than a bluetooth headphone.
I have found that the difference between wired and bluetooth is more noticeable with IEMs and less so with headphones.

 

[Congregator]

Apple Dongles have creepy DAC quality. For wired best solution - E1DA, very powerful DAC+Amp for anything. If you go with Bluetooth - FIIO BTR strong build quality decision with nice amp. iFi good so, but little overpriced. Good luck c:

 

[Bytor123]

Depends what your hearing is like...how old you are....

 

[jkel]

The disappearance of the iPhone headphone jack neccesitates the use of an external DAC to drive wired headphones, the most common of which is the Apple Lightening-to-1/8 inch dongle, selling for $8 to $10. At least based on price, this would seem to be a low quality DAC.

The other option is to use Bluetooth, which has its own degradation problems as compared to say Redbook CD quality. There are recent enhancements to at least some BT such as Sony LDAC, Apple Spatial Audio, and perhaps even Apple Lossless (not sure it preserves CD quality over Bluetooth, though).

Which should sound better…. Apple dongle wired headphone or Bluetooth wireless headphone?

Thanks!

Dongle will always sound better than bluetooth

 

[jkel]

Dongle and decent headphones, I use shire se846 with dongle don’t need a sac or amp and I have both, you only really need a sac amp for power hungry headphones, like 600ohm the rest is nonsense marginal difference at best, save your money and find a headphone you really like and they’ll be good with everything, trust me I’ve been there.

 

[ST33L]

^^^ This… dongle and decent headphones

 

[ProtegeManiac]

The disappearance of the iPhone headphone jack neccesitates the use of an external DAC to drive wired headphones, the most common of which is the Apple Lightening-to-1/8 inch dongle, selling for $8 to $10. At least based on price, this would seem to be a low quality DAC.

The other option is to use Bluetooth, which has its own degradation problems as compared to say Redbook CD quality. There are recent enhancements to at least some BT such as Sony LDAC, Apple Spatial Audio, and perhaps even Apple Lossless (not sure it preserves CD quality over Bluetooth, though).

All BT still uses some level of compression on lossless music. However given factors like use case ambient noise (ie you're more likely to use this in a situation where ambient noise is high than sitting in your listening chair with non-portable audio equipment sitting there), the difference between lossless copy via lossless wired transmission and LDAC for example is negligible.

Which should sound better…. Apple dongle wired headphone or Bluetooth wireless headphone?

Depends. It's not just the transmission protocol you have to worry about, there's also the analogue circuit after it.

If you're using lossless music then the dongle might be better since it won't compress unlike BT.

If you're using compressed music then the dongle won't have any benefit if your music compression doesn't exceed what BT does.

However if the dongle spits out something like 25mW into a 97dB/1mW headphone, then that can sound inadequate next to using a BT wireless headphone that may have a higher sensitivity and possibly higher output from the built in amp. That can get worse if instead of a wireless headphone you use a DAC-HPamp with BT on top of USB and it can feed say a slightly higher sensitivity headphone like a 99dB/1mW Grado 150mW.