[Closed] Explain DACs to me (audio)...

Why not connect to the 3.5mm connector? The inbuilt DAC is pretty decent in Apple kit.

There are those who claim that introducing a £250 DAC between an iDevice and a pair of headphones/amp/whatever makes music more tuneful, smoother, and less likely to rot your teeth and make your bones turn green and run out of your sleeves.
They are also likely to claim that spending £300 on an HDMI cable will improve your TV picture, do wonders for the sound, and cause world peace to break out.
Personally, I'd rather spend £250-300 on a pair of UE, Shure or Westone earphones, with a side order of custom eartips.

Bump for the daytime crew!

As above - the DAC in your phone is pretty good, in addition, the weak link is likely to be the format the music is stored in to start with - MP3's through a £300 DAC will still sound like MP3's, and the limits they have. (Not that I have anything against MP3's per se).

They work like this: - Digital connection (lightning in your case) -> DAC -> Analogue connection -> Elsewhere (amp in your case).

Unless you want a more complete description of how they work...

I've not seen iPhone tests, but the iPod tests show a pretty decent DAC.

http://www.daefeatures.co.uk/rmaa.php

here are some more showing that the 3rd party Headphones are the limiting factor:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_14_1/ipod-bench-tested-3-2007-part-2.html

It depends on the device.

An earlier iPod and iPod Mini's and Nano's had pretty shitty DACs so was easy to improve the sound

Pure did an iPod dock with a built in DAC that was apparently very good and not very expensive either.

But on a modern iPhone its probably not worth the effort

(All this is assuming you have decent MP3s of course)

I must agree that for IPhone use decent headphones should be the first priority, the only slight quid pro quo being if you're using large, high impedence studio headphones the iPhone may have slight issues with powering them and a separate amp would overcome this.

I use a USB DAC at work because the standard audio hardware in our work laptops in abysmal and it does make a noticeable difference.

[url= http://www.whathifi.com/fiio/e7/review ]Fiio E7[/url] if anyone's interested.

I can't/don't use headphones as I'm partially deaf in one ear.

The main reason I am asking is that I currently use a 3.5mm to phono cable into my amp. If I plug this into my MacBook the sound quality is noticably better than if I use my phone as the source.

I am streaming from Spotify on 'Extreme' 320kbits setting.

I am streaming from Spotify on 'Extreme' 320kbits setting.

and you have set that on both the Mac and the iPhone?

The default for the phone app is 80kb/s IIRC.

and you have set that on both the Mac and the iPhone?

Yes - for both downloaded songs and streaming.

iPhone 5 DAC analysis, although not sure how much I trust Ken Rockwell to know what he's doing with the test kit.....

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm

If i had a decent pair of earphones and was using FLAC files then i would definitely use a USB DAC as well. When it comes to sounds quality it is about the complete package.

They are also likely to claim that spending £300 on an HDMI cable will improve your TV picture, do wonders for the sound, and cause world peace to break out.

That's when I finally realised audiophiles generally talk shit.

DAC varied in different versions of the iPod but most (referring to full-size iPod here) are reckoned to be quite good - at least good enough that it's not the weak link unless you're putting the output through high level kit.

The amp in the iPod can be a weak link - I use an external amp for headphones and it's noticeably better than the internal amp. This means taking the output from the big connector not from the headphone output.

I read that devices which use a digital output from an iPod are rare because Apple demand large licence fees to give up critical information about how to decode the data. I know this is a vague statement, it was ages ago that I read it and I'm not an expert.

Sounds like I don't really need one - saved me a few quid!

I read that devices which use a digital output from an iPod are rare

Yesh I read that too. I may be wrong, but I think the B&W Zeppelin (at least the newer Air version) uses digital output, which would make sense as Apple seem to be in bed with B&W.

the-muffin-man - agreed you don't need a DAC, just something to get the analogue signal out. Taking the signal from the lightning port should be better quality than the headphone socket and there seem to be plenty of cable options available.

moshimonster - thanks for backing me up, I was expecting one of those "you're an idiot" responses 🙂

and there seem to be plenty of cable options available.

Could you point me in the direction of one as I've struggled to find one.

I used to go from the charging socket of my iPhone 4 and the sound was better than the headphone socket.

Thanks

Now I'm no woppit, but...
I have a current generation Touch, sound into amp from 3.5mm jack was not great at all. Splashed out on a [i]really[/i] cheap dac (Amazon, about £15), and there was a noticeable improvement. I don't know where the weak link was in the chain, and wasn't bothered to find out- changed to Sonos and was even happier, which is probably an indicator of my critical ability wrt sound.

Oh, and the macbook thing- at low volumes I think mine sounds great as well.

Cloth ears, that's me...