....and, as been touted, recycling beats creating just more digi-trash....
One reason I've no issues about 'recycling' drivers in my fashion.... ;)
Old phones as streaming sources
I'm curious how many of you have converted old phones to streamers. I have found that when I remove the sim card and shut off blue tooth and wire the phone to a dac with an appropriate USB adapter cable, my old iphone 6s makes a pretty good streamer. Just wondering what others experiance has been. It is a really economical way to source digital to a 2nd or 3rd system. You can even cut electronic noise further by running on battery power when listening and shutting off the screen once the music is rolling. Going one step further would be to transfer local files to the phones memory and turn off wireless altogether. I have not done this but theoretically it should help. I usually just run the Qobuz app and stream from that to my Chord Mojo. What's your experiance?
- ...
- 95 posts total
@benanders You make a lot of sense. You'll never last around here. LOL |
I use an old Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra phone as a streamer in my garage system. I mainly listen to Internet radio stations, Radio Paradise and JB Radio, via the USB Audio Player Pro app. Although I have utilized an Audioquest Black DAC with the phone, I'm currently just using the DAC in the phone. Sounds pretty good to me. Using an aux input on an SAE receiver I bought in 1978. Using the USBAPP app UPnP function I can also play 192,96,44.1k FLAC files stored on SS drive in the house. |
I've used an older android phone as a remote control for streaming Spotify but not as a host for local digital files. The real issue you run up against is that most of the streaming services update their apps with some frequency and eventually the phone (after no longer receiving firmware updates) can't run the latest streaming app. Of course, I don't use Apple Airplay which forces you to stream tvia the phone so I avoid the issue of having the phone being the source when I'm at home. There, the phone is just a remote and volume knob at that point since I have some Denon home smart speakers that are connected directly to the home wi-fi and I use the onboard DAC. Which is fine for background music. |
I have started using iphone (13) as a streamer a long while ago before purchasing Ifi ZS as a dedicated streamer. When playing music through an iphone and an external DAC, its SQ is better than the following different setups: iphone > window laptop/Mac Air > iphone w/ Apple dongle > iphone internal DAC When compared with the Ifi ZS, I am pleased to report that, through the same external DAC, the iPhone sounds almost on par with the Ifi in my system (Buchardt S400 ii / Parasound amp / Schiit DAC). The Ifi ZS has a bit more body in mids but iphone is no slouch. The bass is as weighty (try China Hok-Man Yim: ’Poems of Thunder’ eg), high ends/mids are as neutral, soundstage is as wide, and the noise floor is dark as well. When streaming from Qobuz in particular, the app works much better than a UPnP application like MConnect for Ifi. I continue to use the Ifi ZS simply because I prefer playing music from an SSD / HDD. I collect hi-res files and don’t stream as much. |
- 95 posts total