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iPhone 6 Plus to Chromecast Audio : better to hardwire iPhone direct to amp ?

jtrade

jtrade

pfm Member
In recent months, I have been enjoying my CCA connected via optical to my Beresford Caiman SEG DAC, the signal cast via wifi from my iPhone - not as good sonically as my CD player (also connected via optical to the Caiman), but much more convenient & so much choice from Spotify Premium.

My teenage daughter, recently returned from some summer travels, & without the CCA App on her iPhone 6, wanted to hear some of her playlists, so I connected her phone directly to my amp via the headphone jack to RCA plugs, thereby using the 6's DAC.

The improvement in sound was staggering, very hard to tell the difference with the CD player on most tracks. So I have ordered a 3m cable to replace the CCA with a hardwired solution (allowing me to sit on the sofa and control from there). As my iPhone is a 6+, it has huge battery capacity, so the non-casting aspect is no problem.

Perhaps, Ken Rockwell was right in his detailed review of the improvement in performance of the iPhone 6 DAC :

While all iOS devices have always sounded great if you have good transfers, the audio output of the iPhone 6 Plus is now so improved that it sounds and measures about as well as professional reference DACs like the Benchmark DAC1 HDR, and better than many consumer DACs.

The iPhone 6 Plus even has flatter response than the Benchmark DAC1 HDR! Of course an iPhone and a plug-in-the-wall professional DAC are intended for entirely different purposes, but if the 1 volt RMS output (6 dB less than good outboard DACs and CD players) and 3.5mm jack do it for you, there's no reason not to use the iPhone 6's output for critical listening.
Click to expand...

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6-plus.htm#measurements

My question, please, is this : has anyone else tried a hard wired iPhone 6 (or 7) versus streaming to a CCA, & if not, would someone please do so and report if they also experience a very clear improvement with the hard-wired option ? It's not the Caiman DAC, as it's performance is excellent with the CD signal.
 
Interesting. You have not said what type of music files that you are playing... I am assuming that these files are up in a cloud service and not downloaded on the phone.
 
You can leave the iPhone connected by the HiFi and control everything from an iPad, basically leaving the iPhone doing the same job as the cca but with superior sound quality.
 
This doesn't surprise me.

The dac and audio section of the iPhone give excellent quality audio. Published bench tests support this and show no failings of concern.
I've said before, the audio quality from an iPhone exceeds the capability of the specialist studio equipment used to produce much of the music in our collections.

That's not to say the iPhone s technically perfect. It clearly isn't, but it will give any decent CD player a good run with a lossless file.
Ditto the iPad.
 
iPhone 6 Plus now playing via a 5m long cable to my newly acquired Luxman L-210, then on to also newly acquired Sonab OA-14.

A great combination of old and new...

... and, of course, battery power.
 
TheDecameron said:
How do you play music on an iPhone with iPad as controller?
Click to expand...

On Spotify premium, go to library > settings. Click devices. You'll see the iphone there, click it and you control it from the ipad.

It's the reason I quit Tidal, remote control is so much better on Spotify.
 
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