Chances are that if blindfolded you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a £1k DAC/AMP and a £9 Apple dongle.
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what headphones do you own thread - i own dt150's :)
- Thread starter garyfl
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Man of Honour
I've never heard one, but I'm willing to put it to the test so have ordered one.
My instinct is telling that it won't hold up to the M15i, considering the dedicated HP amps I've had recently can't beat it either and the apple dongle has no proprietary tech (current drive, quad engine ESS chip etc)
But we shall see.
Edit, I knew Z would have a review and mention both lol, granted it's the M15 not the i, but even that bests the apple dongle...
My instinct is telling that it won't hold up to the M15i, considering the dedicated HP amps I've had recently can't beat it either and the apple dongle has no proprietary tech (current drive, quad engine ESS chip etc)
But we shall see.
Edit, I knew Z would have a review and mention both lol, granted it's the M15 not the i, but even that bests the apple dongle...
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Soldato
The M15i is a nice dongle, although @ that price your nearly reaching Mojo 2 cost which is arguably one of the best portable DAC/AMPs under a grand.
The M15i will comfortably outclass an Apple dongle using 'headphones' less so on IEMs, another issue is that the EU/UK version of the Apple dongle is less powerfulful, you really want the US version which deliver's 1v, as opposed to the EU/UK version that only delivers 0.5 volts US Model number is A2049 on the box.
If anyone is looking for a tiny dongle DAC/AMP that has a ton of power for pennies the FiiO K11 is a beast for it's size, £29 and outputs 245mW.
My new toy this week,
Hiby R4, getting a lot of praise on the tubes, absolute bargain for a dedicated Class A amplification DAP for only £219!
The M15i will comfortably outclass an Apple dongle using 'headphones' less so on IEMs, another issue is that the EU/UK version of the Apple dongle is less powerfulful, you really want the US version which deliver's 1v, as opposed to the EU/UK version that only delivers 0.5 volts US Model number is A2049 on the box.
If anyone is looking for a tiny dongle DAC/AMP that has a ton of power for pennies the FiiO K11 is a beast for it's size, £29 and outputs 245mW.
My new toy this week,
Hiby R4, getting a lot of praise on the tubes, absolute bargain for a dedicated Class A amplification DAP for only £219!
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Man of Honour
The Mojo 2 (it's £400 btw, quite a lot more than the M15i at £250, a lot of the Chord cost is on the Chord name no doubt, too) was on my saved basket along with some others and I heavily researched all of them coming to the conclusion that either the ONIX or the M15i was the best option for my use case and headphones as well as preference to build quality/size etc.
Mojo 2 it uses custom code and requires tuning via the button combos etc to get right for your headphones and then you'd need to change the tuning if you used them with another pair, there's no shortcut memory for presets based on multiple headphones, I'm all for tuning onboard but those 3 buttons is a silly way to do it and you have to consult the manual every time because nobody can remember all the colour combos of each LED. I'd rather a DAC that does it right out of the box.
Also from what I read/watched, the R2R/Current drive dongle DACs are the logical option for sensitive planars like the Nano vs the others.
I have the Apple dongle her enow btw, the box does not state what version it is but i don't think it matters as I am using it via the PC USB not from phone which requires the USB audio player app to fully unlock the otherwise locked 50% volume (as per Z's review) unless that's different too in the UK version?
Will compare shortly.
Mojo 2 it uses custom code and requires tuning via the button combos etc to get right for your headphones and then you'd need to change the tuning if you used them with another pair, there's no shortcut memory for presets based on multiple headphones, I'm all for tuning onboard but those 3 buttons is a silly way to do it and you have to consult the manual every time because nobody can remember all the colour combos of each LED. I'd rather a DAC that does it right out of the box.
Also from what I read/watched, the R2R/Current drive dongle DACs are the logical option for sensitive planars like the Nano vs the others.
I have the Apple dongle her enow btw, the box does not state what version it is but i don't think it matters as I am using it via the PC USB not from phone which requires the USB audio player app to fully unlock the otherwise locked 50% volume (as per Z's review) unless that's different too in the UK version?
Will compare shortly.
Soldato
That is a good price for the that dongle so really can't complain at all.
The UK Apple dongle version is limited to 0.5v, that can't be unlocked, the volume limit is a separate thing.
Regarding the Mojo 2, it doesn't require any tuning, it has a built in lossless EQ which you can use or just ignore, other than that it's plug and play like any other dongle/DAC, you just turn the volume up or down that's it.
The bonus about the Mojo 2 is it can be used as a dedicated DAC for a headphone amp and/or hifi system, having dual lineout is very handy as you can just set the voltage output to 3v, have one lineout going to a headphone amp and one going to a stereo hifi amp at the same time so it can be the heart of a total setup for speakers and headphones simultaneously which makes it a very versatile device, and also a dedicated headphone AMP/DAC on the move, it uses a custom FPGA DAC chip that rivals dedicated DACs at twice the cost, really good medium sized soundstage that has good depth and separation, gives music a holographic quality rather than just being on a flat plain.
Also regarding cost, it's genuinely cheap for what you get in terms of quality components and being British made, Chord are a very honest company, originally during the pandemic component prices were very high so the Mojo 2 was released at £499 at that time, as soon as component prices dropped they dropped the price to £399 to reflect that.
Now that being said, this isn't a slight on the M15i, it is a very good device.
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Man of Honour
Yeah for what you get the Mojo 2 is good value, but it doesn't fit my use case so it is effectively a waste of an extra £150 as I'll never have a need for the dual outputs or using it solely as a DAC, my MX3s is more than capable of handling the DAC+Speakers side of being an amp with multiple inputs. My need was just to drive high sensitivity planars without any compromise and with as little faff as possible, the M15i seems to have ticked all those boxes
I've now tried the apple dongle, whether it is 0.5v or not didn't really matter as that's just the loudness, the soundstage and imaging detail is nowhere near the level of the DX3 Pro+/Fiio K7 or even the MX3S, let alone the M15i.
It's very good don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't resolve the kind of detail and imaging that I am hearing from the others. For £9 it is bargain of the century for good quality/acceptable audio. I tested it on my PC btw so outside of any limitations that might have been imposed by a phone. In more detail, I found the Apple dongle to also feel more narrow in soundstage, i felt more central in my head as opposed to wide of all the other amps, the sub bass is also restricted and that's on the Nano, a planar with sub-bass out of the box, even at max volume the sub-bass lacks the depth the other amps all do have. There's also some sibilance on the Nanos I can hear which indicates the Apple dongle is "bright" in sound character which reminds me of the Fiio K7 which is also bright which is one reason I returned it and went back to Topping several weeks ago.
Overall, excellent for £9, but nowhere near the other amps for sound dynamics.
It's been fun and entertaining though, and that alone was worth the £9 to satisfy my curiosity. The dongle will now go in my adapters/cables box for use at some point in the future for another test
I've now tried the apple dongle, whether it is 0.5v or not didn't really matter as that's just the loudness, the soundstage and imaging detail is nowhere near the level of the DX3 Pro+/Fiio K7 or even the MX3S, let alone the M15i.
It's very good don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't resolve the kind of detail and imaging that I am hearing from the others. For £9 it is bargain of the century for good quality/acceptable audio. I tested it on my PC btw so outside of any limitations that might have been imposed by a phone. In more detail, I found the Apple dongle to also feel more narrow in soundstage, i felt more central in my head as opposed to wide of all the other amps, the sub bass is also restricted and that's on the Nano, a planar with sub-bass out of the box, even at max volume the sub-bass lacks the depth the other amps all do have. There's also some sibilance on the Nanos I can hear which indicates the Apple dongle is "bright" in sound character which reminds me of the Fiio K7 which is also bright which is one reason I returned it and went back to Topping several weeks ago.
Overall, excellent for £9, but nowhere near the other amps for sound dynamics.
It's been fun and entertaining though, and that alone was worth the £9 to satisfy my curiosity. The dongle will now go in my adapters/cables box for use at some point in the future for another test
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Associate
My guess is that on very easy to drive headphones, particularly at the budget end of the market the difference between an Apple Dongle and any kind of DAC/AMP is going to be negligible. But on something like the PC38x you're just not going to hear much difference particularly as they sound so consistent whatever they are plugged into. But I absolutely get that with harder to drive headphones, or where the amp is more important a dongle is going to make much more impact.
Although I've never taken the £9 test so maybe I should. One of the use cases that put me off the Apple Dongle is that it isn't PS5 compatible, which is something it would be useful for.
The Hiby R4 looks fantastic. I've been going through old, lossless music recently and something like this is somewhat appealing.
Although I've never taken the £9 test so maybe I should. One of the use cases that put me off the Apple Dongle is that it isn't PS5 compatible, which is something it would be useful for.
The Hiby R4 looks fantastic. I've been going through old, lossless music recently and something like this is somewhat appealing.
Man of Honour
Agreed there, for £9 it's probably one of those things every audio geek should have kicking about, and credit where due it does a good job given its size:
Soldato
As was I which tipped me over the edge to buying one, especially at that price, it also gives me something to do when the other half drags me around the charity shops, I can pick up a few old CDs from time to time and convert them to FLAC for the DAP as a bit of a side hobby.
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Man of Honour
Fiio has just announced a K11 update, the K11 R2R 
- £150 too...
darko.audio
Smoothness and warmth is the target sound signature with R2R, so this should sound amazing on a wide range of headphones given how existing R2R DACs sound across the board.
- £150 too...
Is FiiO’s K11 the most affordable R2R DAC available right now? | Darko.Audio
FiiO has announced an R2R version of its K11 DAC / headphone amplifier. Ditching the Cirrus Logic silicon of its Delta-Sigma sibling, the K11 R2R uses a 24-bit R2R resistor array to decode the digital audio signals arriving at its three digital inputs: USB-C, TOSLINK and coaxial. A pair of RCA...
darko.audio
Smoothness and warmth is the target sound signature with R2R, so this should sound amazing on a wide range of headphones given how existing R2R DACs sound across the board.
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Tidal was just an example of a 44.1KHz source, but equally cd rips and vinyl rips I've done (rega3/echo audio soundcard) if you can avoid windows sound-mixer and send the music bit perfect to the dac,
you've removed floating point conversions and (44.1>48) re-sampling - which improves the soundstage/imaging.
I've used audacity as a player on windows with a direct sound/asio interface to dac, which is also what I understand universal audio player can accomplish on android.
Man of Honour
I tend to avoid ASIO, in favour of using WASAPI . ASIO needs exclusive mode and as such is useless for my needs as I need to be able to hear other app notifications etc since exclusive locks everything else out of sending to the output device. It's also unnecesary as Windows processing is high enough resolution and quality to be inaudible in difference to the human ear anyway having in the past tested all this out then realising it's just typical audio forum chatter for the most part.
The bottom line I discovered was that setting the WIndows sound options to best match the most common sample frequency of the audio you play is the most logical and sensible option, in my case that's 48KHz, and that the local music player (MusicBee for me) ideally outputs via WASAPI. 24 or 32 bit in sound properties in Windows makes no difference, most DACs default to 24/48 anyway whilst some higher end stuff defaults to 32/48. Much of a muchness.
The entire point of all this was to just give a clean (no interference) signal to the amp/DAC, Windows is completely capable of that as evidenced by the inaudible noise floor and zero distortion at any volume using the above methodology and it doesn't need to get any more complex than that really as there are no further gains to be had that the ears would be able to hear.
The bottom line I discovered was that setting the WIndows sound options to best match the most common sample frequency of the audio you play is the most logical and sensible option, in my case that's 48KHz, and that the local music player (MusicBee for me) ideally outputs via WASAPI. 24 or 32 bit in sound properties in Windows makes no difference, most DACs default to 24/48 anyway whilst some higher end stuff defaults to 32/48. Much of a muchness.
The entire point of all this was to just give a clean (no interference) signal to the amp/DAC, Windows is completely capable of that as evidenced by the inaudible noise floor and zero distortion at any volume using the above methodology and it doesn't need to get any more complex than that really as there are no further gains to be had that the ears would be able to hear.
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OK thanks I'll give that player a try .. are you using an equalizer with it ? (parametric I hope like from discusions on car HU's)
Wasapi (via MB) seems to have an exclusive mode which might be what tidal exploits anyway - but my experience is that as soon as exclusive is enabled the soundstage improves,
I always use volume 100% in audacity & vlc , to avoid them truncating bits.
Man of Honour
No I do not use software EQs at all as I prefer any colouration/tuning being done by the DAC/amp. All audio playing software are set to 100% volume at all times, volume modulation is via the amp (the Topping for speakers) or in Windows master volume (M15i now).
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Man of Honour
Zeos has finally reviewed the Nano 
I've been rocking some HyperX Cloud Alphas since 2018 or so, though they're starting to slowly disintegrate now. I've also had a pair of Apple AirPod Pros for a couple of years which are pretty decent.
I just took delivery of some Moondrop Chu IIs and some cheap £7 USB-C to 3.5mm jack to allow me to use them with my iPhone. Very impressed so far for an £18 pair of headphones. It's also clear that Bluetooth has been sucking some quality away! I'll have to redownload all my TIDAL music into lossless now, up from the 320kbps I've been using, and see if I can hear even more difference.
I also need to see how much of a faff it ends up being wiring the headphones down my t-shirt twice a day when I'm using them for commute/office work. I'll probably end up just leaving them dangling from the neck all day to avoid re-wiring
I just took delivery of some Moondrop Chu IIs and some cheap £7 USB-C to 3.5mm jack to allow me to use them with my iPhone. Very impressed so far for an £18 pair of headphones. It's also clear that Bluetooth has been sucking some quality away! I'll have to redownload all my TIDAL music into lossless now, up from the 320kbps I've been using, and see if I can hear even more difference.
I also need to see how much of a faff it ends up being wiring the headphones down my t-shirt twice a day when I'm using them for commute/office work. I'll probably end up just leaving them dangling from the neck all day to avoid re-wiring
Still getting on well with them? Do they leak sound into your surroundings? Eg. Are they good for a commute?ok so couple days later and have to say the S5 is a big refinement over the S3, and the S3 was already very good for sound, just had various technical quirks/issues that I mentioned before. All of those (well all but maybe 1 or 2) have been resolved and the ones that remain seem to be engineering limitations or design choices.
The plastic quality is improved too.
The soundstage is wider than the S3, these give a greater sense of open air which is strange at first since they're closed back. I wondered how the planars are venting air given this but noticed vents on top of each cup that hide under the headband arm bit:
They're over £100 more expensive than the S3 though, so whether they are worth the price will be user preference. Wired mode sounds the same as wireless now (LDAC/aptX-HD) and you can use them wired via USB-C now too so 3 methods of input, dual-device pairing via BT and now has custom EQ control too which seems to remember across all inputs. The pad fit and finish has been revised too:
Think these are a keeper for closed back listening
Man of Honour
Yup really good, they don't leak sound but they also don't have active noise cancellation due to being planars as apparently it puts a lot of stress of the diaphragm (though planar IEMs can have it easier due to size). The leather pads block out more outside noise though so that is an option, but the mesh pads to a good job of passive isolation as well.
Caporegime
The Arya is currently down to £619, which is tempting. The Arya organic is also slightly discounted at the same place.
Man of Honour
Interesting, Arya Organic is £1000 on Amazon, or £676 on Ali Express. Obviously there might be some import on the Ali purchase, but that won't take it above 700.