Denon D-T1 and B&O H4 question!

JurassicPandas

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Aug 16, 2020
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Hello! New here. New to Hi-Fi.
I have a B&O H4 set and I’ve rediscovered all my CDs after moving recently and unpacking. I’m interested in getting a better listening experience than what my iPhone can provide with Spotify. So my question is:

Will a Denon D-T1 and my H4, over a 3.5mm aux cable, sound better than the H4 plugged into my phone with Spotify?

I can comfortably afford the D-T1 and I’d really like to begin unlocking the sound quality of my CDs I’ve been presumably missing.

Any thoughts?
 
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Gray

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Will a Denon D-T1 and my H4, over a 3.5mm aux cable, sound better than the H4 plugged into my phone with Spotify?
By 3.5mm 'aux' cable presumably you mean a cable that allows you to use the H4 as standard, passive (unamplified) wired headphones?
In which case, yes it's likely to sound better coming from the Denon (as opposed to wirelessly from anywhere else).
 
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JurassicPandas

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Aug 16, 2020
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By 3.5mm 'aux' cable presumably you mean a cable that allows you to use the H4 as standard, passive (unamplified) wired headphones?
In which case, yes it's likely to sound better coming from the Denon (as opposed to wirelessly from anywhere else).

Yes correct! I would be using them as wired. Not using their Bluetooth option. I use them plugged in via cable to my phone too (not using the wireless Bluetooth mode).

So would an iPhone connected to H4 with a standard cable streaming Spotify at 320kbps sound worse than a D-t1 playing a cd to my H4 headphones via the 3.5mm jack?
 

Gray

Well-known member
So would an iPhone connected to H4 with a standard cable streaming Spotify at 320kbps sound worse than a D-t1 playing a cd to my H4 headphones via the 3.5mm jack?
Theory tells us that it certainly should sound worse for the following reasons:
320kbps MP3 is compressed, CD is uncompressed audio.
Also, high quality audio wouldn't be top priority when designing a phone. But it would (should) have been the highest priority for Denon with the D-T1.
Having said that.......some people can't tell the difference between mp3 and CD sound and to complicate things further, the original recording quality of your music makes a lot of difference. A well recorded mp3 can sound better than a duff recording played back off CD!!
It does also depend on the quality of the headphone output on the Denon.
Bottom line, if you want to hear CD on your headphones, the phone won't do it for you will it? So there's your decision made.
 
Theory tells us that it certainly should sound worse for the following reasons:
320kbps MP3 is compressed, CD is uncompressed audio.
Also, high quality audio wouldn't be top priority when designing a phone. But it would (should) have been the highest priority for Denon with the D-T1.
Having said that.......some people can't tell the difference between mp3 and CD sound and to complicate things further, the original recording quality of your music makes a lot of difference. A well recorded mp3 can sound better than a duff recording played back off CD!!
It does also depend on the quality of the headphone output on the Denon.
Bottom line, if you want to hear CD on your headphones, the phone won't do it for you will it? So there's your decision made.
Possibly true but there seem to be a lot of people that think there are a million and one masters of a certain track or album going around that are used as a source for whatever format copy you are going to make from them....... there aren't.
 

Gray

Well-known member
Possibly true but there seem to be a lot of people that think there are a million and one masters of a certain track or album going around that are used as a source for whatever format copy you are going to make from them....... there aren't.
I was thinking more of the best and worst that you've got in your collection as a whole, rather than differences between the same albums.
 
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