Hi Res Audio player or Portable headphone amp?

[toxteth0grady]

Hi everyone,

Some advice please.... should I buy....

Portable high res audio player or Portable headphone amp.... ?

I use Samsung S6 currently for my daily 1hour commute each way and want more quality from the audio. Likely to upgrade in the next year.

Earphones... Shure 425s

Any good apps that would help improve the sound?

I use Spotify "extreme" quality and high Quality CD files.

Thanks is for any help, everyone.

 

[dalethorn]

Hi everyone,

Some advice please.... should I buy....

Portable high res audio player or Portable headphone amp.... ?

I use Samsung S6 currently for my daily 1hour commute each way and want more quality from the audio. Likely to upgrade in the next year.

Earphones... Shure 425s

Any good apps that would help improve the sound?

I use Spotify "extreme" quality and high Quality CD files.

Thanks is for any help, everyone.

My only comment between the amp or DAP/music player is the music player app. On my phone I use Audioforge, and I haven't found a DAP that has an equivalent music player, so I don't use any DAPs. The features in the music player make the difference.

 

[Leif]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

 

[Al ears]

Hi everyone,

Some advice please.... should I buy....

Portable high res audio player or Portable headphone amp.... ?

I use Samsung S6 currently for my daily 1hour commute each way and want more quality from the audio. Likely to upgrade in the next year.

Earphones... Shure 425s

Any good apps that would help improve the sound?

I use Spotify "extreme" quality and high Quality CD files.

Thanks is for any help, everyone.

I tend to use a portable player for three reasons, the quality of the DACs fitted, the storage capacity, the ability to fit nicely into my hifi system when back at home. As you are not employing hi-res files then perhaps the headphone amp would suffice.

I am a firm believer that a piece of equipment designed to do one thing only is going to do it better than an item that is multi-functional.

Also, I would imagine, a lot is going to depend on your budget regards which would be the best option.

 

[Paulq]

All the above comments are absolutely spot on. Personally, I can't be bothered with carrying around another piece of kit (i.e. DAP) so use an iPhone 7 with an Audioquest Dragonfly black and the Apple adaptor. Works fine for me though, as others have said, a dedicated DAP would probably give you better sound though the difference may not be that great.

 

[Al ears]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

 

[Vladimir]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

It's good to hear that GCHQ is DAP friendly.

 

[dalethorn]

All the above comments are absolutely spot on. Personally, I can't be bothered with carrying around another piece of kit (i.e. DAP) so use an iPhone 7 with an Audioquest Dragonfly black and the Apple adaptor. Works fine for me though, as others have said, a dedicated DAP would probably give you better sound though the difference may not be that great.

I had a couple of the FiiO DAPs - meh. The AR M2 however, sounded absolutely amazing - creamy smooth and free of any kind of distortion. But it also cost over one thousand quid.

 

[Leif]

Another point to consider, an iPhone cannot take flash cards, many dedicated music players can, a 256GB micro SD card costs less than £100, the value of that depends how much music you have I guess.

 

[muljao]

Android is a bit of a pain in the ass where DACs are concerned. I have a dragonfly red plugged into my android and it does flac files great through the app usb audio player. Spotify doesn't play ball, it might in some android version, but it's hit and miss. If Spotify is one of your main sources, make sure you see everything works as you want before committing

 

[dalethorn]

Another point to consider, an iPhone cannot take flash cards, many dedicated music players can, a 256GB micro SD card costs less than £100, the value of that depends how much music you have I guess.

I've had 4 of the Sandisk 128 gb MicroSD cards, plus one 200 gb card (also Sandisk), and while these little cards seem to work very well in cameras as long as they don't get too hot, they never were able to accept 110 gb of data without failing, and losing all hope of being reformatted with any tool I could find. To get the really large amounts of data (FLAC files etc.) onto the little cards, they have to be connected to a computer, and the computer has to decide how to transfer that data to the card. Perhaps if the card is inside the DAP and the computer is writing to the DAP's card, then maybe there's magic in the DAP that prevents too quick of a transfer and overheating. For me, the very long process of transferring that much data, just to have the card fail after a week or two of use, just isn't worth it. On my 256 gb iPhone, which probably uses better chips with heat protection, I store a few thousand 320k MP3s, and more than a thousand WAV files of music for critical listening. So far I haven't found a FLAC player for iPhone that also has a parametric equalizer..

 

[Al ears]

Another point to consider, an iPhone cannot take flash cards, many dedicated music players can, a 256GB micro SD card costs less than £100, the value of that depends how much music you have I guess.

Note that many DAPs are limited on the size of card with 128Gb being the max. Having said that my current DAP can take 2 of these along with 32Gb internal, which is plenty....

 

[Al ears]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

It's good to hear that GCHQ is DAP friendly.

Sort of close... ;-)

 

[chebby]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

It's good to hear that GCHQ is DAP friendly.

Sort of close... ;-)

Cheltenham Ladies College?

 

[Vladimir]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

It's good to hear that GCHQ is DAP friendly.

Sort of close... ;-)

Cheltenham Ladies College?

I was thinking NSY or Interpol but that would make sense too (no men with cameras allowed on premises). *sad*

 

[chebby]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

It's good to hear that GCHQ is DAP friendly.

Sort of close... ;-)

Cheltenham Ladies College?

I was thinking NSY or Interpol but that would make sense too (no men with cameras allowed on premises). *sad*

And 'sort of close' too. (2 miles from GCHQ).

 

[Al ears]

At work I use an iPhone 7 with Audeze Sine headphones and the built in DAC and amp. Sound quality is marvelous. At home I use an iPhone 7, Chord Mojo and Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The sound quality is wonderful, albeit with somewhat reduced bass. The DAC in the iPhone 7 is poor, I suspect the one in the Samsung S6 is worse. If you can get a digital signal out of your Samsung S6 and into an external DAC, then I would take that route, since you carry the phone anyway. The advantage of the Chord Mojo over some units is the internal battery, allowing it to drive more demanding headphones such as the HD600. If you can't get a digital out from your phone, a dedicated music player might be the answer, or switch to a phone with a digital out, such as an iPhone. You really want to store lossless audio files, which take a lot of space. I have 256GB.

Another reason I didn't go down the 'phone route. I have a Galaxy S7 and, apart from not being able to use it in some places I work (because of the camera), you cannot get digital out from them, so DAC/Amplifier was out.

It's good to hear that GCHQ is DAP friendly.

Sort of close... ;-)

Cheltenham Ladies College?

🙂 Well that's blown my alias...

 

[Leif]

Another point to consider, an iPhone cannot take flash cards, many dedicated music players can, a 256GB micro SD card costs less than £100, the value of that depends how much music you have I guess.

I've had 4 of the Sandisk 128 gb MicroSD cards, plus one 200 gb card (also Sandisk), and while these little cards seem to work very well in cameras as long as they don't get too hot, they never were able to accept 110 gb of data without failing, and losing all hope of being reformatted with any tool I could find. To get the really large amounts of data (FLAC files etc.) onto the little cards, they have to be connected to a computer, and the computer has to decide how to transfer that data to the card. Perhaps if the card is inside the DAP and the computer is writing to the DAP's card, then maybe there's magic in the DAP that prevents too quick of a transfer and overheating. For me, the very long process of transferring that much data, just to have the card fail after a week or two of use, just isn't worth it. On my 256 gb iPhone, which probably uses better chips with heat protection, I store a few thousand 320k MP3s, and more than a thousand WAV files of music for critical listening. So far I haven't found a FLAC player for iPhone that also has a parametric equalizer..

My Nikon D500 camera takes SD cards, but the ones I had would not work properly with it: when shooting at max FPS the camera would go screwy and throw away the images. Nikon have a list of cards they know will work, and when I bought one of those, it worked. It may well be that your DAP has a list of approved cards. Or perhaps someone in interweb land knows which work well? Just a suggestion in case you've not already been down that road.

Parametric equaliser? Is that also know as a graphic equaliser? Yes that is an issue. My Audeze Sine headphones have a GE app although I just use the defaults.

 

[toxteth0grady]

Thanks everyone so far.

I am feeling a DAC is prob out.... Samsung and lack of digital output making that a no go.

So... A player is the way forward. Now ... research begins.

And I'm scared of the people on whathifi now too... probably hacking us as we type....

 

[dalethorn]

Another point to consider, an iPhone cannot take flash cards, many dedicated music players can, a 256GB micro SD card costs less than £100, the value of that depends how much music you have I guess.

I've had 4 of the Sandisk 128 gb MicroSD cards, plus one 200 gb card (also Sandisk), and while these little cards seem to work very well in cameras as long as they don't get too hot, they never were able to accept 110 gb of data without failing, and losing all hope of being reformatted with any tool I could find. To get the really large amounts of data (FLAC files etc.) onto the little cards, they have to be connected to a computer, and the computer has to decide how to transfer that data to the card. Perhaps if the card is inside the DAP and the computer is writing to the DAP's card, then maybe there's magic in the DAP that prevents too quick of a transfer and overheating. For me, the very long process of transferring that much data, just to have the card fail after a week or two of use, just isn't worth it. On my 256 gb iPhone, which probably uses better chips with heat protection, I store a few thousand 320k MP3s, and more than a thousand WAV files of music for critical listening. So far I haven't found a FLAC player for iPhone that also has a parametric equalizer..

My Nikon D500 camera takes SD cards, but the ones I had would not work properly with it: when shooting at max FPS the camera would go screwy and throw away the images. Nikon have a list of cards they know will work, and when I bought one of those, it worked. It may well be that your DAP has a list of approved cards. Or perhaps someone in interweb land knows which work well? Just a suggestion in case you've not already been down that road.

Parametric equaliser? Is that also know as a graphic equaliser? Yes that is an issue. My Audeze Sine headphones have a GE app although I just use the defaults.

I haven't had any problems with SD cards, or with MicroSD cards 64 gb and below.

 

[Al ears]

Another point to consider, an iPhone cannot take flash cards, many dedicated music players can, a 256GB micro SD card costs less than £100, the value of that depends how much music you have I guess.

I've had 4 of the Sandisk 128 gb MicroSD cards, plus one 200 gb card (also Sandisk), and while these little cards seem to work very well in cameras as long as they don't get too hot, they never were able to accept 110 gb of data without failing, and losing all hope of being reformatted with any tool I could find. To get the really large amounts of data (FLAC files etc.) onto the little cards, they have to be connected to a computer, and the computer has to decide how to transfer that data to the card. Perhaps if the card is inside the DAP and the computer is writing to the DAP's card, then maybe there's magic in the DAP that prevents too quick of a transfer and overheating. For me, the very long process of transferring that much data, just to have the card fail after a week or two of use, just isn't worth it. On my 256 gb iPhone, which probably uses better chips with heat protection, I store a few thousand 320k MP3s, and more than a thousand WAV files of music for critical listening. So far I haven't found a FLAC player for iPhone that also has a parametric equalizer..

My Nikon D500 camera takes SD cards, but the ones I had would not work properly with it: when shooting at max FPS the camera would go screwy and throw away the images. Nikon have a list of cards they know will work, and when I bought one of those, it worked. It may well be that your DAP has a list of approved cards. Or perhaps someone in interweb land knows which work well? Just a suggestion in case you've not already been down that road.

Parametric equaliser? Is that also know as a graphic equaliser? Yes that is an issue. My Audeze Sine headphones have a GE app although I just use the defaults.

I haven't had any problems with SD cards, or with MicroSD cards 64 gb and below.

+1 I currently 64Gb cards (Sandisk), although my DMP will accept 128Gb cards I have never tried one...

 

[paulkebab]

of 128Gb cards in my DAP with no issues, files tranferred to a PC card reader or directly to DAP doesn't seem to cause any probs.