Jump to content
IGNORED

Better DAP choices for Qobuz?


Recommended Posts

Doing a lot of listening on the go with Qobuz lately using Iphone, Helm Bolt DAC dongle and Meze 99 classic headphones.  The iPhone 7 sounds pretty good, plus

it has plenty of offline storage space for downloaded high res Qobuz music to minimize wireless coverage gap issues. But more resolution is always nice

 

Wondering though if I can do better, ie if newer iPhone or buying a standalone DAP could improve? Would lose cellular connectivity with a DAP but as long

as it had SDXC support for 512GB cards that would be an even trade off.

Regards,

Dave

 

Audio system

Link to comment
  • 1 month later...

Hello,

 

Given what you describe I would propose a slightly different option. My thought being; since you are using an external DAC/AMP to power your headphones already I would consider the player/phone/device as no longer important in terms of its contribution to the majority of the sound you hear so if it were me I would maybe consider a reallocation of funds towards different headphones instead.

 

IMO, portable listening is tough to find a balance. You of course want the best sound possible while on the go to the extent possible with a noisy outside world around you. But at the same time I feel it makes sense to also consider the unexpected things like losing the mobile rig or dropping it, both of which are very possible things that could happen while on the go.

 

So when I was looking for a mobile rig for myself I weighed these various things against a price that I thought I could live with should I lose, drop or otherwise have some negative outcome with the whole rig while on the move.

 

So I guess the questions to answer are:

 

1. Does the sound I get now with the current setup pass as "good enough" for a mobile rig or is it pretty horrible in certain areas that must be upgraded?

 

2. Could you continue to sleep at night if you lost the current rig? What about a new rig that costs double or more?

 

In my own case, I choose to just use the phone (Samsung Galaxy + 5G) with a pretty solid set of IEM (Shure se425) and a good music playback App (USB Audio Pro). I find this setup falls nicely in the "good enough" camp for me.

 

Just a few thoughts

Link to comment

Yes I would echo those thoughts. I see many problems from people using various specialist audio players with a Miriad of Android versions, sd cards etc. Qobuz don’t have the development resources of the big boys so sticking to a common hardware and O/S platform will allow you to have a greater probability to just enjoy the music rather than spending all your time faffing around trying to install stable versions of Qobuz that work on your combo, losing downloads etc. 

I use it on iPhone iPad and Galaxy and have no issues with those platforms (only problems I’ve had are with Chromecast). You’ll easily get up to 24/48 resolution with off the shelf products and it sounds like you’ve got the dac to potentially go beyond that. A DAP or newer won’t change the bits you’re sending the DAC on Qobuz. That’s assuming the phone is reliable, has enough internal storage etc of course!

Link to comment
  • 3 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...