[ChrisOc]

I am a DAP fan and I don't mind bringing an additional device on the go just to listen to music.

However, lately dongles have really been quite game-changing in terms of price to performance ratio. Even a ten dollar apple dongle has quite good sonic fidelity (maybe it is weak in power only), and by just jacking said dongles into a phone, you can get quite decent sound.

In comparison, one needs to spend quite a bit of coin just to get the same sound in a DAP, as compared to a dongle.

Maybe a dongle/phone setup is limited by battery and memory, but this can be mitigated by bringing a charging pack or sd cards along.

But I have a feeling, with the evolution of dongles, DAPs are gonna be quite niche, especially the mega buck ones.

I have to agree with you, dongles are pushing the envelope for the better without pushing the cost.

My two issues with dongles are; battery drain on the phone, which is resolved by inbuilt batteries on some dongles, but that increases the price, which makes cheaper DAPs attractive; and XMOS which restricts the use of some dongles to local files only.

Having said all that, DAP prices, at the top end, are getting silly!

 

[ehjie]

I can see that happening in the near future, even though it is could easily happen today as a result of phone manufacturers improving their audio quality thus bringing them closer to DAPs. However, as DAP manufacturers are the poorer cousins of phone manufacturers incorporating e-sims is more more likely to come from DAP manufacturers as the audio enthusiast market is too small for phone manufacturers to focus on us.
Note: RIP LG phones.

Onkyo did a 2.5 balance enabled phone a while back- the Granbeat. My insight on this release was - it was too advanced to be considered or @ least outside of the land of the rising sun.
Some of my friends that manage to own, their impressions were very predictable - a phone that sounds like an Onkyo DAP - decent separation and layering, a little warm, detailed mids, a little relax up top. Holographic imaging is of course not as large as their regular DAP, but with the better IEM, this could be bliss whilst out and about.
And most importantly - whilst streaming...

If you take Oppo (whose phones I have bought for years) they made headphones and other audio equipment in their early days and are in fact the largest manufacturer in numbers. If you add up the different brands they own, Oppo, Vivo, One Plus, Realme and the tech they licence and supply to others. Side issue: Plus the founder of Oppo apparently owns a huge amount of Apple shares, if reports are correct, it means one person "owns" most of the companies producing phones in the market today.

Oppo could kill DAPs in one day, by incorporating good Amps and DACs into their phones (such phones would have to increase in size) or by making a DAP, because they previously made good quality and good sounding amps and planar headphones (and Blueray players....but that is another story).

Unfortunately for those of us who are audio enthusiasts and want to see DAP prices fall and quality rise, better audio in phones is unlikely to happen because we represent a small market. Fortunately for those of us audio enthusiasts who want to see competition and innovation within the industry, it is likely, because it makes sense, that e-sims will come to DAPs soon. Just imagine the trigger, an improvement in Bluetooth codec by a small margin from the very good quality of LDAC and suddenly it makes sense to make streaming a priority as well as, rather than instead of, native files.

I had (2) marvelous phones, the LGV10 and the hTC 10. The V10 was very neutral, sounds better than my M0 of old. Whilst the hTC has a bump in the low end and it's warmer overall. I missed them both - was a victim of bloatware on both units.
Currently using iphone 13 (no dongles), the tuning is pretty much the same as my ip.4 tuning, a little warm, something tuned in between the V10 & hTC10.
Yea, for now we have to live with DAC dongle offerings - by which there is NO supply shortage...

 

[GREQ]

... today it was drum and bass with my modified RP18 vintage planar .

 

[ChrisOc]

... today it was drum and bass with my modified RP18 vintage planar .

That thing called synergy again!

Sometimes people say, "I had tears in my eyes when I listened to......" some earphones, headphones or speakers and the synergy chain is not mentioned. Someone else buys the set and they make it clear that that statement was hyperbolic.

Yes it could be hyperbole but then without using the same chain you can never tell. Of course, we must factor into that, the music genres, the mood etc.

I just read someone's post, which said, and I paraphrase, "I was packing up my earphones for sale and decided to check that everything was in order. I used my [brand name] to listen to them......I am not selling these monsters!"

It must be a declared a sin, for an audio enthusiast, to sell something for which you then have difficulty finding a replacement.

Having said all that I keep a set of earphones in play for about a week or more before I use the next set, so I do not swap earphones for different genres, so it I probably do "listen...with the wrong headphones" often!

 

[castleofargh]

I think one headphone for a specific music genre is a mistake. Who's mistake or what mistake, is interesting.
Why would a headphone or amp+headphone be right for a music genre and not for the next? Are we completely rejecting all concepts of fidelity? We can make a short list of possible circumstances and see where it goes:

-A given headphone is wrong for the listener(tuning-VS-HRTF mismatch). The headphone's FR is always wrong, but some genres having richer content at some frequencies and highlight the problem, making the headphone unacceptable for the listener mainly with those genres. If true, a headphone tuned closer to what a listener feels is neutral, would work better for almost anything.

-Sound engineers expect listeners of a given genre to use peculiar gear and listening conditions more often(listen in a car, or with bassy headphones from a silly brand, or mostly use expensive speakers at home instead...). They tune things for it to sound better under those caricatures of listening conditions. We've gone full circle and now it's not having the weirdo gear that makes the genre sound wrong.

-Stereo albums were and mostly still are mastered with speakers. The result is just not the best fit for headphones. You would all be better off with a custom calibrated speaker simulator(or a pair of actual speakers when possible).

-Personal taste makes someone go crazy with only some genres, like maybe having him push the volume to 11 and wanting +15dB of bass or something.

My personal opinion is that it's usually a mix of all that. We clearly shouldn't need per genre gears, but I get why it ends up happening.
I never had several headphones(well I do own some wireless stuff but it's not a music genre thing). I've always managed with EQ(and more, I'm a slave to DSP). With that said, I have more than a dozen IEMs and I do take some out only for some music genres. Soooooo, whatever, I'm a complicated person, or it's just that the EQ options in my DAPs really suck.
Again, it's kind of both.

 

[GREQ]

... or it's just that the EQ options in my DAPs really suck.

This is not mentioned enough, or ever.
Be it mobile phones, DAPS, whatever... they all pretty much suck in one way or another.
Or at the very least - there's compromises.

 

[Sebasistan]

I am a DAP fan and I don't mind bringing an additional device on the go just to listen to music.

However, lately dongles have really been quite game-changing in terms of price to performance ratio. Even a ten dollar apple dongle has quite good sonic fidelity (maybe it is weak in power only), and by just jacking said dongles into a phone, you can get quite decent sound.

In comparison, one needs to spend quite a bit of coin just to get the same sound in a DAP, as compared to a dongle.

Maybe a dongle/phone setup is limited by battery and memory, but this can be mitigated by bringing a charging pack or sd cards along.

But I have a feeling, with the evolution of dongles, DAPs are gonna be quite niche, especially the mega buck ones.

My issue with phones is that they lack storage. I don't like streaming. So since phones by and large did away with SD card slots, I'll have to stick with DAPs. Which is fine.

 

[GREQ]

My issue with phones is that they lack storage. I don't like streaming. So since phones by and large did away with SD card slots, I'll have to stick with DAPs. Which is fine.

Is this a 'fruit' problem I'm too Android to understand?? o_0

 

[Sebasistan]

Is this a 'fruit' problem I'm too Android to understand?? o_0

Possible. Though the last 'droid phone I had, also no longer had a user serviceable battery or replaceable SD card. At this point I'm heavily invested in Apple's ecosystem, I have several DAPs, so I'm very unlikely to go back to Android. And like, last I checked (which, granted, was a couple of years ago), the flagship Android phones all had these "features," as well as no more headphone jacks...

 

[GREQ]

Possible. Though the last 'droid phone I had, also no longer had a user serviceable battery or replaceable SD card. At this point I'm heavily invested in Apple's ecosystem, I have several DAPs, so I'm very unlikely to go back to Android. And like, last I checked (which, granted, was a couple of years ago), the flagship Android phones all had these "features," as well as no more headphone jacks...

Yeah... its pretty dumb... I guess I'm in the phone equivalent of 'mid-fi' hell, which is surprisingly, comfortably feature rich... not sure how that works, but I'm glad for it.

(Samsung A52S 5G for anyone who cares... mostly got it because the camera isn't a pile of garbage and I think I got about 180GB of SD card at the moment, after the usual reduction of advertised space, but this phone can take 2TB o_o).