Are these iPhone connectors the cck camera kits? Or just a simple usb to lightning? Just grabbed some headphones and am looking at a df red to drive them and don’t want to buy the wrong thing.
Wow! Woke up to loads of reply messages. Thank you all. Very informative. Will go for the smaller CCK then.
Hopefully I’ll notice a difference over the apple dongle. I find the bass a bit flat compared to the headphone port of my old iPhone 6.
You will probably not like what I have to say, but I think the DFB is only marginally better than the Apple dongle that comes with the iPhone X. For a significative difference, you should have chosen the DFR. The Apple dongle that you connect in the lightning output connector of the iPhone X has a very capable DAC from cirrus logic, it’s a delta sigma design, just like the ESS9010 in your DFB. Morover, the output provided by the dongle is similar to the output of other iPhones, typically about 0.9V to 1.0Vrms. The op amp used by Apple is very competent. The DFB has a voltage output only 20% higher at 1.2Vrms. By comparison, the DFR has a 2.1vrms output, similar to any cd player and 2x higher than an iPhone alone. Moreover, the Apple dongle is very well made, providing a first class sound output.
For an alternative to a cheap made pc output the DFB is probably a good choice and a significant upgrade, but for an iPad or iPhone (even the lightning audio dongle) it is not a significant upgrade in my opinion. On the other hand, the DFR provides high impedance headphones which need higher voltage a true upgrade to the 1V output of an iPhone X with the lightning audio dongle.
To answer your questions, both the Apple USB 2 and 3 connectors are adequate for the DFB or DFR. Volume problems and clicks and pops with the USB 2 Apple connector are a thing of the past. With newer iOS versions, both connectors are flawless when used with the DFB amd DFR. In the past I was forced to use the Apple USB3 connector with my DFR. Now I prefer to use the USB2 connector since it is less bulky and has no sound problems anymore with the DFR.
Thanks for the info. Just read that review. Oh dear. Hopefully not wasting my money then. Got it secondhand for £55 though so that’s something at least!
I use my dragonfly primarily with my 400s’ from Hifiman. The impedance of those is 22Ω and I can comfortably listen to the DAC at half volume. The Audioquest dragonfly red is really meant for more sensitive headphones and IEM’s. I don’t think it could drive 600Ω cans. The Red is ideal for headphone of an impedance of 100Ω+ but I’m not convinced that an impedance 6x higher than the ideal is going to work. I would look towards a bigger portable amp like the Sony PHA1A portable DAC witch has an Impedance of 8-600Ω.
Actually, DFR has exactly the same power specs as the Impacto amp from Beyer does, and that one was designed to drive T1 at 600 Ohm. DFR can output around 50mW into 32 Ohm and around 7mW into 600 Ohm. Still plenty for a T1 that has sensitivity of 102dB/mW. So, you can almost reach 110dB SPL with a DFR. Based on the very similar specs, I believe both DFR and Impacto are using exactly the same headphone amp frm ESS, probably a SABRE9601K...
I've posted this one in a separate thread, but maybe it's better to ask this question here:
does anyone know how the volume control between DFR and iOS works?
According to Audioquest, DFR has a 64-steps digital volume control.
However, on any iOS device, I can change the volume in a much finer granularity using the volume slider (not the up/down buttons, those only give 16 coarse steps).
Which leads me to believe, that with iOS, volume is not being changed using the DFRs internal bit-perfect circuitry (so, the volume in a HW is always just set to max), but instead via SW in the phone itself, leading to a lower dynamic range and a higher SNR at lower volumes with very sensitive IEMs or headphones.
Having tried all (dongle, DFB and DFR) -- there is a bigger difference between the iphone dongle and black than the black with the red, in my personal experience using full sized headphones. It really depends on your headphones -- i only use DF on my full sized headphones. I do not bother with external amp/dacs for IEMs.
That said, iphone Dongle should sound a bit better than iphone 6 jack. It does have less bass but its more neutral and a bit more holographic than the headphone jack.(atleast on my 6s).
Having tried all (dongle, DFB and DFR) -- there is a bigger difference between the iphone dongle and black than the black with the red, in my personal experience using full sized headphones. It really depends on your headphones -- i only use DF on my full sized headphones. I do not bother with external amp/dacs for IEMs.
That said, iphone Dongle should sound a bit better than iphone 6 jack. It does have less bass but its more neutral and a bit more holographic than the headphone jack.(atleast on my 6s).
What « full sized headphones » have you used to conclude this? If you look at my signature, you will see that I own 18 ohms « full sized headphones » and 600 ohms « full sized headphones », and a few at 24 ohms, 65 ohms, 150 ohms and 300 ohms. They do not behave the same way with the dongle or the DFR. All of these headphones have quite different sensitivity levels and therefore had different voltage and power requirements to be optimally driven. Your comment isn’t quite meaningful if you are not more specific on the headphones used in your personal experience to conclude the way you do.
What « full sized headphones » have you used to conclude this? If you look at my signature, you will see that I own 18 ohms « full sized headphones » and 600 ohms « full sized headphones », and a few at 24 ohms, 65 ohms, 150 ohms and 300 ohms. They do not behave the same way with the dongle or the DFR. All of these headphones have quite different sensitivity levels and therefore had different voltage and power requirements to be optimally driven. Your comment isn’t quite meaningful if you are not more specific on the headphones used in your personal experience to conclude the way you do.
good catch! yes I tend to agree -- my observation is limited to efficient Full sized cans only since I used Momentum Over Ear and ATH MSR7. Both of these can be easily driven by iPhone headphone out / dongles.
Using the Momentums: RED & Black is almost identical sounding, with the differences I could not put my finger on. On the MSR7, I was able to observe some refinement of the red as it is so much more resolving than the Senns, but sound sig is still very close /almost the same.
On the Dongle vs Black using efficient cans - there is a decent improvement here. there is just a very clean / energetic presentation from the dragonflys that I was happy to end my amp/dac upgrades. If others have high impedance cans, going red is definitely the logical choice.
Well, Momentums are neither really very resolving nor do they have any soundstage to speak of. So, the only thing they might be helpful with, is judging the overall tonality, not much more...
Well, Momentums are neither really very resolving nor do they have any soundstage to speak of. So, the only thing they might be helpful with, is judging the overall tonality, not much more...
Momentums on-ear and over-ear were specially created for street/portable usage, kind of Senn’s « for grown up » answer to the Beats, B&W, JBL and other street headphones (the Senn’s « teen » answer was more the Urbanite, also available as on-ears, over-ears and Bluetooth, just like the newest folding Momentums, now called HD1 in some countries). These two lines of street life products were developped a couple of years after Sennheiser tried without a large success to push into the streets the fabulous (but not catching up with street people) HD25 and its Amperior street version. With Momentum’s 18 ohms impedance and their 113db/1vrms sensitivity, these headphones were designed to be used with portable gear without any need for extra amping. No need for DFR, DFB or any other headphone amp with these. Just enjoy their smooth grown up sound directly from your portable gear, iPhone dongle or whatever. No need for any extra amping here. None. Nada. Niet. Rien, Pantoute...
Momentums on-ear and over-ear were specially created for street/portable usage, kind of Senn’s « for grown up » answer to the Beats, B&W, JBL and other street headphones (the Senn’s « teen » answer was more the Urbanite, also available as on-ears, over-ears and Bluetooth, just like the newest folding Momentums, now called HD1 in some countries). These two lines of street life products were developped a couple of years after Sennheiser tried without a large success to push into the streets the fabulous (but not catching up with street people) HD25 and its Amperior street version. With Momentum’s 18 ohms impedance and their 113db/1vrms sensitivity, these headphones were designed to be used with portable gear without any need for extra amping. No need for DFR, DFB or any other headphone amp with these. Just enjoy their smooth grown up sound directly from your portable gear, iPhone dongle or whatever. No need for any extra amping here. None. Nada. Niet. Rien, Pantoute...
Dragonfly R and even more so B is in a first place a DAC and not an amp. For example a t5p is also a headphone for mobile use, also extremely sensitive and low impedance, and also can be driven by any mobile device. But it makes a world of a difference if you plug them directly into an hp out or into a dragonfly or even into a draginfly used as DAC only with a dedicated hp amp.
As an amp, dragonfly, no mattet whether R/B is very comparable to an iDevice's own amp. Although dragonfly R on paper can drive 2.1V, it's only into high impedance of 100kOhm range.
Into low impedance, e. g. 32 Ohm, both dragonflies can only drive around 1.1V without clipping. An iPhone 6 can drive 1V, into the same load, the difference is negligible...
With momentum and dragonfly, it's like with pearls before swine... They sound not bad off any source, but never really great.
Nothing against Momentum, they are just a mid-fi, very mobile and very good isolating hp and are good in that, I use my own pair almost every day. But they are not a pair of headphones that would suddenly sound 'magical' with a better source..
If anyone is interested the USB-C to USB adapter for the new iPad Pro works with the DFR. Another $20 dongle thing, but it does work and good that it does as there is no headphone out.
If anyone is interested the USB-C to USB adapter for the new iPad Pro works with the DFR. Another $20 dongle thing, but it does work and good that it does as there is no headphone out.
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