[Blanci]

Just as any audiophile I've been searching on how to improve my listening experience. I've looked at a lot of traditional headphones and recently at quite a bit of good chi-fi with the Fearless S8P being my current daily driver.

My issue is as the title says mainly that I drive these mid- to upper-end IEMs with my phone, a dongle burdened iPhone 7 128gb to be exact.
How well does an iPhone 7 square up to your average entry level Walkman?

Am I missing out on some significant audio quality?

I've had a look at the offerings in the 100-250€ range I haven't really found anything that's as responsive and practical for me to use (even considering iTunes, the capacity, flac to alac conversion and even the dongle) on a daily basis.
The Walkman NW-A45R doesn't really do it for me because of the janky controls and questionable OS the same goes for the Astel and Kern Jr. which granted looks really nice but suffers from the same flaws. Reasoning from that everything below that price range is even worse and I'd only solve this by spending more money I could use on IEM upgrades.

Is there anything I could do with 200 bucks that compares in ease of use to a phone or does increase listening quality significantly?
(I've only had a look at the walkman and ak jr. haven't tested them with my iems and files)

tl;dr is it worth it to upgrade my media player from a phone to a dedicated player if I only have 200 bucks and don't like Sony's and AK's OS

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Just as any audiophile I've been searching on how to improve my listening experience. I've looked at a lot of traditional headphones and recently at quite a bit of good chi-fi with the Fearless S8P being my current daily driver.

My issue is as the title says mainly that I drive these mid- to upper-end IEMs with my phone, a dongle burdened iPhone 7 128gb to be exact.
How well does an iPhone 7 square up to your average entry level Walkman?

Am I missing out on some significant audio quality?

Quite a bit.

As to whether that will be audible to you or whether you'd consider it worth the expense, I can't answer that for you.

Personally, apart from really crappy devices worse than the iPhone7, it comes down to whether you want a dongle or an extra device; whether you want to save battery with two devices each doing something else, or just carry a powerbank; and whether you like the UI, etc than the sound quality.

I've had a look at the offerings in the 100-250€ range I haven't really found anything that's as responsive and practical for me to use (even considering iTunes, the capacity, flac to alac conversion and even the dongle) on a daily basis.
The Walkman NW-A45R doesn't really do it for me because of the janky controls and questionable OS the same goes for the Astel and Kern Jr. which granted looks really nice but suffers from the same flaws. Reasoning from that everything below that price range is even worse and I'd only solve this by spending more money I could use on IEM upgrades.

Is there anything I could do with 200 bucks that compares in ease of use to a phone or does increase listening quality significantly?
(I've only had a look at the walkman and ak jr. haven't tested them with my iems and files)

tl;dr is it worth it to upgrade my media player from a phone to a dedicated player if I only have 200 bucks and don't like Sony's and AK's OS

Not liking the UI and not having any interest in managing the files yourself is a good reason for not buying it.

Like how I bought an iPod, and I couldn't figure out how to delete a few albums so I can put in other albums, so I ended up with a second iPod, deleted everything in the first one, then had to try to beat iTunes when it tries to automatically cram all the ALAC files into one device and then without any organization at all jumble everything up when I wanted only metal on one of the iPods, the entire time I was questioning why Apple doesn't just do drag and drop, why Creative (yes this was a loooooooooong time ago) doesn't just make something that sounds decent and has a line output to my home audio system, and rationalizing why I shouldn't smash the iPods with a hammer everytime iTunes has the gall to pretend to know what is best for me like some freaking Isaac Asimov dystopia restricted to music playback.

Bottomline: there's a slow, less responsive player, and there's software that will be totally alien enough to deserve nuking for some people.

 

[Blanci]

Thanks a lot mate yeah I'll look into it. I mean I don't think my listening experience is that bad right now. I've just been wondering how mediocre it is/if I could improve it by a lot through buying some player for a bit of money or if the dongle is messing my music up "a lot."

Would you recommend anything that's below 300 and decent enough for a beginner like me?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Would you recommend anything that's below 300 and decent enough for a beginner like me?

I'd recommend that if you want a player you need to choose one with a UI you like, in the size you like, and not think too much about the performance of the amplification much less DAC circuit since 1) you're using IEMs which for the most part tend to just need 50mW (ie a figure that even the Fiio M3 can reach) given the high sensitivity of most of these and 2) if you spend even more some of them have swappable amplifier modules anyway.

You can buy a portable amp or swap an amp module, but you can't change the UI unless you're a hardcore software engineer or there's a Rockbox version for it (which assumes you actually like Rockbox).

 

[kukkurovaca]

I've had a look at the offerings in the 100-250€ range I haven't really found anything that's as responsive and practical for me to use (even considering iTunes, the capacity, flac to alac conversion and even the dongle) on a daily basis.
The Walkman NW-A45R doesn't really do it for me because of the janky controls and questionable OS the same goes for the Astel and Kern Jr. which granted looks really nice but suffers from the same flaws. Reasoning from that everything below that price range is even worse and I'd only solve this by spending more money I could use on IEM upgrades.

If you're happy with your phone in terms of user interface and managing your content, then something like the Radsone ES100 or another wireless DAC/amp might be a good bridge between just using your phone and getting a whole DAP. The ES100 has pretty good audio quality, single and balanced outputs, a nice and usable EQ, and a solid app to control the device from your phone.

Wired setups are also an option, but the trouble with a wired dongle/etc. is that if you want to use it while carrying your phone in your pocket, it tends to be cumbersome and risks placing stress on the jack and/or connector.

 

[baskingshark]

Just as any audiophile I've been searching on how to improve my listening experience. I've looked at a lot of traditional headphones and recently at quite a bit of good chi-fi with the Fearless S8P being my current daily driver.

My issue is as the title says mainly that I drive these mid- to upper-end IEMs with my phone, a dongle burdened iPhone 7 128gb to be exact.
How well does an iPhone 7 square up to your average entry level Walkman?

Am I missing out on some significant audio quality?

I've had a look at the offerings in the 100-250€ range I haven't really found anything that's as responsive and practical for me to use (even considering iTunes, the capacity, flac to alac conversion and even the dongle) on a daily basis.
The Walkman NW-A45R doesn't really do it for me because of the janky controls and questionable OS the same goes for the Astel and Kern Jr. which granted looks really nice but suffers from the same flaws. Reasoning from that everything below that price range is even worse and I'd only solve this by spending more money I could use on IEM upgrades.

Is there anything I could do with 200 bucks that compares in ease of use to a phone or does increase listening quality significantly?
(I've only had a look at the walkman and ak jr. haven't tested them with my iems and files)

tl;dr is it worth it to upgrade my media player from a phone to a dedicated player if I only have 200 bucks and don't like Sony's and AK's OS

Well I mostly use midfi IEMs, so take my advise with a pinch of salt, but I do find some improvement in sound quality with a DAP or even a DAC/AMP dongle/USB connected to my smartphone. I find the dynamics and micro details are slightly improved, but I don't have any measuring rigs to confirm though.
A few audiophile friends told me to upgrade the IEM first, and there will be diminishing returns to upgrading the downstream source, but maybe the rest can advise whether that is true. But I'm of the opinion that agrees with spending more cash to upgrade IEMs first and foremost.

There are many cheap chinese DAPs <$50 USD in this thread - https://www.head-fi.org/threads/obscure-chinese-daps.720512/
I found one DAP there, called the Ziku HD X9, it is $39 USD, no frills and does improve my SQ compared to a low end android smartphone. I occasionally use a Hidizs sonata HD USB DAC/AMP with my smartphone and it likewise makes music sound better. These 2 I use are outdated tech though, these CHIFI brands release stuff on an almost weekly basis and there are better DAPs and USB DAC/AMPs that are recently released with better DAC chips inside. Well it might be inconvenient carrying 2 devices or carrying extra cables to the smartphone, but I don't mind carrying extra stuff to preserve my phone battery and also for the slight improvement in SQ. YMMV.

 

[GREQ]

Maybe first try Foobar2000 on the phone.
I noticed a slight improvement when I used it for the first time.
Especially the Foobar2000 equalizer decimates all the other usual phone media player apps in case you're into that sort of thing.
The only bad thing is you can't save EQ profiles for multiple headphones or genres, and the UI isn't the easiest out there. Functionality and sound quality first.