[igcp]

The problem is just bad planning. Smartphones aren't always designed for high fidelity audio. Telephone quality is very low and a chunk of the circuitry might be designed with that in mind. Then they graft a high fidelity DAC onto it and the phone circuitry becomes a bottleneck for whatever reason. It's the same with computers. Not all computers come stock able to reproduce sound to a high level. They figure for the purposes the computer is designed, high fidelity sound isn't needed. Then some marketing expert can decide "All computers have sound- let's stick a sound card in." and it doesn't sound good. It might not even be the sound card's fault- RF interference from bad shielding, that sort of thing can mess up something that would be audibly transparent if you put it in the right machine. That's why phones and computers are always the first thing I suspect when someone is saying they aren't getting great sound out of their amp or headphones. It's also why I use Mac computers and phones. From the first model I owned capable of sound, the 8500 AV, Mac has had perfect sound.

Home audio equipment like DAPs, amps and dedicated DACs are designed specifically for high fidelity sound. The spec for 16/44.1 PCM is complete audible transparency. If something is able to meet that spec, it's going to sound just like everything else that meets spec- as good as it gets for human ears. You can get better performance, but you would need that in a recording studio, not a living room.

I have yet to find any consumer DAC, DAP or player that isn't audibly transparent. That isn't to say it doesn't exist, just that it probably is rare enough that you don't need to worry about it. If you buy a computer or phone, you probably should check into the sound quality before buying though.

Does that answer your question?

EDIT: I just thought of one exception to not having ever found a DAC that wasn't audibly transparent... NOS DACs. They have a high end roll off to make them sound "warmer". For the life of me, I don't know why anyone would buy one. You can do the same thing by just adjusting your tone controls without deliberately hobbling your DAC's performance. But some people have weird ideas about what they want.

It does and it raises even more questions in my head. I feel like I'm gonna regret this since most of my listening career would involve cheap DAPs and Chi-Fi IEMs but I'll go ahead and look up what does what in an audio device. No information is bad information afterall. Thank you so much!

 

[Bozzunter]

The problem is just bad planning. Smartphones aren't always designed for high fidelity audio.

An iPhone is as good as ANY DAC or DAP in the market, or am I wrong? Obviously, it can’t power high impedance headphones, but that’s the only limitation. I read the measurements of the lightning adapter and they’re as good as for the human ear as any other DAC on the planet.

 

[OspreyAndy]

My audio journey has always been the hunt for the "perfect" portable DAP. Even as a boy nigh 30 years ago I was oogling over portable cassette players. Fast forward, the hunt continues and I will say this, for the last 5 years we have been lucky with the advancement in Chifi scene we are getting some really serious quality from portable DAPs like never before. There's just tons of genuinely stellar sounding DAPs that offer over 400mW of output power and some of the best ones hover at 600-800mW which literally give us some Desktop prowess in portable form. I love that. And with what Cayin and Hifiman has been doing especially, the evolution of onboard genuinely powerful DAC and Amp assembly which simplify things further

 

[bigshot]

I've solved that problem myself with my iPhone and an iKlips micro SD card reader. I can carry around SD cards with half a TB of music organized into folders by genre and then create shuffle mixes and stream over bluetooth to just about anything from headphones to small portable speakers, to my home stereo system. All I have to carry is a tiny SD card reader dongle. No separate DAP, DAC or amp. I already have my phone with me. That leaves me free to carry a nice big battery brick so I can run it all day long. My headphones don't require amping, so I can bring those along, or use my AirPod Pros, or toss my little battery operated speakers into a side bag. Works great.

 

[OspreyAndy]

I've solved that problem myself with my iPhone and an iKlips micro SD card reader. I can carry around SD cards with half a TB of music organized into folders by genre and then create shuffle mixes and stream over bluetooth to just about anything from headphones to small portable speakers, to my home stereo system. All I have to carry is a tiny SD card reader dongle. No separate DAP, DAC or amp. I already have my phone with me. That leaves me free to carry a nice big battery brick so I can run it all day long. My headphones don't require amping, so I can bring those along, or use my AirPod Pros, or toss my little battery operated speakers into a side bag. Works great.

My solution to that is Tidal Premium with full offline support, pay one monthly price and I get Lossless library all synced up on my Cayin DAPs, my mobile phone, my laptops and pretty much covered all bases

 

[bigshot]

That’s a great solution, but a lot of the music I listen to isn’t on streaming services.

 

[bigshot]

An iPhone is as good as ANY DAC or DAP in the market, or am I wrong?

Yes, and every Apple product has the same great specs.

 

[OspreyAndy]

That’s a great solution, but a lot of the music I listen to isn’t on streaming services.

Me on the other hand, finds Tidal solving my need for some obscure Black Metal, Shoegazing and Indie tracks. For anything that I can't find on their library, yes FLAC sets I kept separately in two 256GB MicroSDs

 

[bigshot]

I listen to recording that go back as far as a century. Streaming isn’t as good for pre-stereo music My media server has AAC 256 VBR files and they fills a 4TB drive, so it’s a pretty sizeable chunk of the history of recorded music.

 

[earthtodan]

I'm glad to have a DAP that I can bring to CanJam with all my playlists downloaded on Qobuz, which has 1A of output available, uses its own battery, and will not interrupt my music with push notifications.

 

[abheybir]

I have a love/hate relationship with DAPs. I like the convenience of physical buttons, ease of use and more power compared to your average phone, but I certainly, at no point, do I believe is giving me better sound quality. Not audibly, at least.
I'm pretty convinced that anything other than the entry level DAPs are a scam if their selling point is better sound quality.
However, I'm just a newb at this. So, is there any evidence whatsoever that ultra expensive DAPs like the A&K, can do anything (soundwise) that you can't do with a phone and a cheap amp?

I have purchased AK SE100 last year and I must say that it has been one of the best decision of my life. If compared to my LG V30+(sabre) or Vivo X50pro(akm) phones, it would be like comparing a Maruti Alto to a Tesla Model S (car analogy).

Call me old school but having a dap given a mental relief to me, phone always have this notifications jumping, noisy power supply and other circuitry. DAPs on other hand have a dedicated job and has very well designed and far advanced AMP and DAC circuits woth performance components eg power capacitors.

Apart from these with DAPs you have option to have balanced out where as all phones are limited to single ended outputs unless some external dac has been plugged in them.

I may have missed a lot other points, but I guess you just got the gist of my emotion behind a dap.

But yes if one is not having the apt transducers to compliment the source then yes buying premium dap can be total wastage.

 

[bigshot]

I'm glad to have a DAP that I can bring to CanJam with all my playlists downloaded on Qobuz, which has 1A of output available, uses its own battery, and will not interrupt my music with push notifications.

Simpler is always better. I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max with a MicroSD reader and 1 TB of music and Oppo PM-1s that don't require amping. It works basically the same as what you've got, except the phone rings while I'm listening to music sometimes!

 

[Redcarmoose]

I have a love/hate relationship with DAPs. I like the convenience of physical buttons, ease of use and more power compared to your average phone, but I certainly, at no point, do I believe is giving me better sound quality. Not audibly, at least.
I'm pretty convinced that anything other than the entry level DAPs are a scam if their selling point is better sound quality.
However, I'm just a newb at this. So, is there any evidence whatsoever that ultra expensive DAPs like the A&K, can do anything (soundwise) that you can't do with a phone and a cheap amp?

The short answer is it’s the combination of everything. So imagine a stereo right, a stereo can be big or small. Which one is better? A table top small 2 speaker job or a $100,000 dollar set of floor-standers?

It’s perspective. The Apple phone is fantastically accurate and fun. But if you want to get a different experience with more soundstage and more warmth, maybe a DAP could offer you more.

I promise you there is more after a phone. How you like it is up to you. So I also can promise you it’s different, if you like the difference, it’s also up to you.

Obviously the DAP market people have phones and they prefer DAPs. Enough said.

 

[bigshot]

When I am going somewhere and want music on the road, I want the smallest possible. I sure don't want to haul around 50 pound speakers with me!

The aspect of all this that gets overlooked time and time again by audiophiles is suitability for the purpose. I see photos of "portable rigs" that fill an oversize backpack. I don't care how much it costs or how good it sounds, that is a lousy portable rig. The nice part is that you don't have to compromise convenience for sound quality. If I go over to a friends' house and want to share music, a simple interconnect and dongle will patch my iPhone into his system with perfect sound. So my portable becomes a big system with floor standing speakers.

 

[redrol]

My portable rig is actually portable and usable for 12 hours. I forgot my LG G8X phone with a 1TB Microsd and a headphone jack. Then again everyone has a phone with them all the time anyways.