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iPhone 5 - the audiophile quality music player

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Impressive how low jitter is! Noise too. I imagined it would be a bit digitally and analog noisy in there with so much crammed into the slim case. Nonetheless, all jitter artefacts seem to be below -110dB and general noise floor is -107dB. It's far better than something like the Fio D3 or Airport Express. Possibly slightly better even than the SB Touch.

Serge - It's not just audibly transparent though, it's as good as many proper DACs.
 
Tenson said:
Impressive how low jitter is! Noise too. I imagined it would be a bit digitally and analog noisy in there with so much crammed into the slim case. Nonetheless, all jitter artefacts seem to be below -110dB and general noise floor is -107dB. It's far better than something like the Fio D3 or Airport Express. Possibly slightly better even than the SB Touch.

Serge - It's not just audibly transparent though, it's as good as many proper DACs.
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Apart from balanced outputs and perhaps a choice of inputs, I really don't see the difference between 'proper' DACs and the sort of DAC fitted to the iPhone, SBT or to any digital product. They're all pretty good. One would have to be pretty determined to make a poor DAC these days.....Non-oversampling with no output filtering and a valve output might do it though.

S
 
Robert said:
That shows the iPhone 5 outperforms many audiophile quality dacs on 16 bit material, and the performance is pretty amazing into low impedance loads, putting many headphone amps to shame.
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I'm not surprised. I use a 4s with custom iems and find it difficult to go back to my full system.
 
None am I surprised. A friend of mine whom hasn't heard my system since 2006 was visiting two weeks ago and remarked how nice my system sounded while listening through either an iPhone 4 or IPad mini used through an HRT iStreamer driving the system.

Moments ago, he called and said he has put his CD Player up for sell and is pursuing downloads as well.

Technology has changed rapidly indeed.
 
I phoned a friend who has an iPhone 5, and played my system to him, and he said it sounded just as good as his iPhone sounded playing tracks stored on the phone itself.

CDs were perfect many years ago, so its not surprising the iPhone is even better than perfect.

Joking aside, my iPad playing through my HD600 phones is way better than any walkman I ever had, but I may not sell up my system quite yet...
 
JezmondTutu said:
It would have to be a lot better than my IPhone 4S
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I really like my iPhone 4S with my normal 'out and about' cans (AKG 450), it's a great portable system. Sure, the iPhone lacks a little puff when it comes to my Sennheiser HD600s, but I doubt there's a phone or MP3 player on the market that would be entirely happy driving them. The iPhone has a surprisingly good stab though, just sounds a bit compressed and I suspect many listeners would run out of volume range. I've no idea if the iPhone 5 is better than the 4S.
 
Steven Toy said:
At 16 I could hear up to 20 Khz. I can't now though so no news there. There isn't much music at 20 Khz though. Objectivists denigrate the ear because they have a misanthropic outlook and are risk-averse. Simple FR measurements are the be-all-and-end-all. Not.
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Translation: no I have no intention of reading anything containing actual information. I would prefer to believe that age-related hearing loss only affects the ability to hear very high pitched tones, as it suits what I am pleased to believe is the very clever point I am making. Absolutist.
 
Steven Toy said:
Yep, if you listen to hammer drills and such there will be a marked loss of perception at frequency extremes - the be-all-and-end-all to measurists/objectivists.
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Steve, you are becoming a little obsessive about segmenting people, in all pfm discussions, into one of two neat little boxes. It's quite different in the real world.
 
Tony L said:
I really like my iPhone 4S with my normal 'out and about' cans (AKG 450), it's a great portable system. Sure, the iPhone lacks a little puff when it comes to my Sennheiser HD600s, but I doubt there's a phone or MP3 player on the market that would be entirely happy driving them. The iPhone has a surprisingly good stab though, just sounds a bit compressed and I suspect many listeners would run out of volume range. I've no idea if the iPhone 5 is better than the 4S.
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Yes I think as Ken points out in his review, the output level into cans is the prime limitation. Nevertheless I'm surprised at just how clean the analogue output is. I've never thought to just plug the phone into the hi-fi via a cable as I'd assumed it wouldn't be very good. In reality, it has a spec in many areas far beyond the quality of electronics used to record and master much of the music in our collections.
The digital and analogue performance of the phone surpasses that of many well regarded CD layers.

Where I think this gets interesting are with the possibilities opened for very high quality yet inexpensive digital based systems. There is no longer a need for expensive, dedicated digital sources since any benefit they might offer, if any, will be very small indeed. Phone, Spotify premium into some active loudspeakers gives a massive music library at great quality (mosty). I'm thinking of those little Adam and Dynaudio monitors - that sort of thing.
 
In his summary he states:

"The iPhone 5 is a better audio source than most DACs will be when connected to a computer or CD transport."

I'm wondering on what basis he makes this claim. Ignoring portable use, I would have thought that a modest DAC and a netbook (or SBT) would be at least as good and have a lot more storage (and probably cheaper).

Is it because he thinks most DAC's are poorly designed, or because the iPhone does not run on mains and has a solid state drive. If the latter, this would seem to run counter to the general view on here about computer audio.

For the record I have an iPhone4s (as well as an iPad). For home audio I have a couple of SBT's with various DAC's. The storage medium is a desktop PC.
 
Derek, I think he's looking at the jitter results and the fact that the variable that is the digital interface has been removed. One fixed clock, no interconnect, super-close circuit integration.
Connecting different boxes can, depending on the method, introduced unwanted effects at least in the measurements.
 
Actually READING the source article, I notice that it is graphing THD, not THD+N and that the SNR is measured with digital silence. It is known for some DACs to cheat by detecting this and muting, so I wonder if the quoted SNR is correct
 
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