Toe Tag
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2009
- Posts
- 233
- Likes
- 16
Lately I have been using Synology's phone app to pull music off my NAS, then do the D/A in the phone (Samsung Galaxy Note), and drive my Sennheiser HD650's with a FiiO e5 on the line to boost the signal. It sounds pretty great.
Their app fails on half the songs though, on Android on the Galaxy Note. But on the iPad it plays flawlessly. However, the D/A in the Galaxy Note (and S II) is IIRC pretty excellent. Not so sure about the iPad 2. Not sure what DAC it uses.
I could also use iTunes on the Dell Mini 10 hackintosh. Then drive the Airport Express from there. That feeds a proper Compass D/A. I wish iTunes on the iPad would drive the Airport Express. But probably Steve Jobs decided to protect me from that. (And make me buy more hardware from them). I think I read the iPad has a proprietary digital out that can be licensed.
NTL, still not finding a perfect marriage of the best UI and the best DAC. iTunes UI is not so great. I like the PowerAMP Android app UI best... in theory it could pull music off a mounted NAS but maybe I'd have to root the phone... the DAC in the Samsung Galaxy Note (did I mention I have a Samsung Galaxy Note which is not yet available in USA) is probably plenty great... but I wonder if there are Android apps that push audio out in digital form... either over USB to the USB input on an outboard Audio-gd DAC... or even directly to Airport Express which I read got cracked in mid 2011.
I mostly listen at home, and this doesn't even address throwing in the issue of listening while travelling or off the cloud. Though in theory my NAS can serve music out like webDAV or something. Though the Synology Android/ iOS software called DS audio doesn't support https yet. I wonder if my Samsung Galaxy Note would support a 1TB micro-SDXC card...
Anyone have any answers or questions about the above, or where things need improving?