[BuckyOH]

Is there a portable bluetooth headphone amp that can stream my music from my phone from for example tidal, quboz or spotify and then send it to a bluetooth device like my car?

 

[ClieOS]

The short answer is: No such a thing exists.

The long version: read this, and probably the page before and after.

 

[BuckyOH]

Read.

The problem I'm trying to solve is that my headphones sound horrible on my phone.
I want to use my phone as DAP to use tidal or qobuz or spotify, connected to my RHA t20i headphones and I also use my phone to stream music to my car. Atm, my equalizer on the phone keeps crashing. When equalized, it's kind of doable. Without it, it's horrible. My car doesn't have a jack to put audio through, only bt and usb.
So was looking at a solution.
So, basically, only solution is to buy a DAP that has streaming possibility like shanling m2x or pioneer xdp02u? Or a phone with a good DAC?

 

[ClieOS]

For your phone, you can either get a good quality small BT adapter (or a full sized DAC/amp with BT) for the headphone, or you can get a small USB DAC (assuming your phone is capable of USB OTG). For the former, FiiO BTR3, Shanling UP2 and EarStudio ES100 are all good choice (*check the same thread I linked above). Don't have any good recommendation for small USB DAC for you as I don't pay attention to them.

Since your car already have BT built-in, all you need to do is link your phone's BT to your car's BT - there is no need to buy anything else. BT is a digital transmission - whether your phone's headphone-out sounds good or not doesn't directly impact the SQ of the BT on your phone.

 

[BuckyOH]

Ok. Bit of a bummer about my car as the sound sounds terrible without eq'ing. It only has a 2 band equalizer, low and high, not able to make it sound ok.

 

[ClieOS]

A phone with good DAC and headphone-out will benefit your headphone, but not your car. Alternatively, you can try EQ app on your phone for better EQ control.

 

[BuckyOH]

Yeah, I tried EQ'ing, but now it keeps crashing. Tried a lot of different one's but they don't work.

 

[BuckyOH]

OK, gonna buy a bt adapter idd.
Not sure to wait for btr5.
Currently thinking about btr3 (or 5) and the es100.
Then I'll just get a pixel 2 as phone

 

[BuckyOH]

my current phone only has sbc, is that gonna sound ok when i buy a es100 or bt?

 

[ClieOS]

SBC won't allow you to get the best out of ES100. Then again, you might want to invest in ES100 (or any good BT adapter) since you want to upgrade your phone in the short future.

 

[BuckyOH]

Bought the btr3 . The es100 is really hard to get in netherlands.
Waiting for the btr5 is a bit unsure. September? Octobre? How long before it's gonna be available in the Netherlands? At what price? Difference with btr3?
Etc.
Will get the btr3 tomorrow.

 

[BuckyOH]

Got the btr3 now
Listened to it for about an hour.
I understand why the Fiio software (Fiio music app) is mentioned. It's not ideal to work through this app to adjust settings on the amp. It disconnects it sometimes while you working on it or switch from apps. But I can overcome that, it saves the adjustments on the amp eventually so it's not like it's depending on the app being open (talking about the equalizer). Then I can just use my regular software to play my music through. The equalizer has some presets and only one custom equalizer save If you have multiple headphones and devices that you use your amp on that sucks tbh. I'l just have to do with it. I'm still trying to find a good setup. Classical, jazz and rock sound ok on my sennheiser momentum. Haven't tried my rha t20i yet.
A pleasant surprise is that my phone apparently connects on aptx hd instead of the sbc i presumed.
Other than that, you get a nice piece of hardware for the little money. It seems to drive my sennheiser like it should, not that it's a hard to drive headphone.
Gonna listen to it more upcoming week, see how I feel about it. At least it's gonna beat listening through my phone's headphone jack without the ability to equalize because somehow it keeps crashing. Also, when I get my new phone, it'll also beat using the usbc to jack dongle! So far, I can't see me being unhappy with this nice little piece of tech for 80 bucks.