Nellie75
100+ Head-Fier
Can anyone confirm how the KA3 works with an iPhone?
Thanks
I can confirm that it sometimes works. After first plugging the KA3 dac in I was not impressed with the thin sound. However, somehow the dac started getting fuller and more robust as the evening went on. Is there such a thing as burn in time on a DAC?
Now, I’ve got an iPhone 12 and I connected my iOS camera adapter cable > USB-A to C adapter (was supplied with the DAC) and finally the Type C cable (also supplied). I figured if they supplied it, use it. I don’t know if this combination of cables and adapters was the cause but the moment after swapping out the supplied cable/adapter and using my own USB-A to C cable, the sounds appear to be gone.
My wife’s old iPhone was a short experiment and ended up being a mistake as I think it’s not supported according to Fiio (iPhone 6). This caused some crazy chipmunk sounds in Apple Music.
However, there does seem to be a correlation to pushing the volume up and it causing problems with the iPhone 12. This was with 30ohm FD5 IEMs.
Another experiment was trying my HD650s (300ohm) to the 3.5 unbalanced output. They sounded great and pretty loud at 80% volume but pushing it up to 100% which was a little louder than I personally like, it was too much current draw for the iPhone as it just stopped the song and started playing out the iPhone speaker instead. I didn’t have an unbalanced cable for my 650s for that experiment. But I dont expect this DAC to push 300ohms.
I’m going to be giving this dac some more time but it isn’t some massive revelation in SQ over a iPhone dongle. Like all things in this hobby, it is a marginal improvement. Something my wife would never notice.
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