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?
with an appropriate USB adapter cable, my old iphone 6s makes a pretty good streamer.
Sorry but no, it doesn’t. It sucks. I started that way with my iPhone6 and also thought it sounded pretty good through Qobuz, but when I graduated to a relatively modest iFi Zen streamer the difference was night and day and performance was on another level entirely. Doing various tweaks or whatever to the iPhone is just polishing the turd IMHO and is probably a waste of time for relatively little benefit. If you wanna use it in a second or third system for non-critical listening it’s good for that, but for any more serious listening it’s an absolute bottleneck to performance and don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s not. I think even adding something as simple and inexpensive as a Wiim Pro would be a considerable improvement over your iPhone. That was my experience anyway and hope this helps.
Well that is fine @soix, but I think you would be better served by prefacing your comments with "in my opinion" which is what it is. My points of reference are a Auralic Aries streamer and a OktoResearch Dac8, both of which are in another league than the reference streamers you mention. Mind you I am not claiming the phone to be as good as these but I find it quite listenable. May I ask if you even tried the tweaks I describe when you were listening with your iphone? Did you run it though a decent dac, you know some dacs do a better job than others in handling a digital stream. Thanks for your response but I think my little old iphone is on a par with my Raspberry Pi/Allo Digione. Anyone who says that kind of performance "sucks" is using a stronger word than is merited IMHO..
So, did you compare running the iPhone direct into the DAC8 versus going through your Aries? If you don’t hear a significant improvement through the Aries, well, let’s just say we greatly differ in our experiences. And yes, I bought an upgraded LavriCable silver Lightning/USB cable to upgrade from the Apple Camera Adapter to run directly into my Musician Pegasus R2R DAC and it was a big improvement, bit it still in no way approached the performance going through the iFi Zen streamer. So I stand by my own listening experience that compared to a decent streamer the iPhone sucks relatively as a streaming source, but I also mentioned it’s fine in less critical situations and is indeed very listenable in that situation. But IME it in no way compares to running a dedicated streamer — not even close. Hey, you asked “What’s your experience” and I gave it to you. If your experience is different or you disagree that’s fine, but I stand by what I heard/said.
I repurposed an older iPad that had a short battery life into a dedicated streamer next to my desk. Since it had to be connected to the DAC anyway, the charging cord wasn't an issue. For my ears, the sound is terrific in this near field desk setup and the display is awesome with the iPad propped up in a stand.
I vote a yes to extending the usefulness of this kind of electronics. With the money I save, someday I will able to afford the kinds of electronics that will help me discern higher quality music reproduction.
iPhone into chord mojo is a good streaming setup with headphones on the go. That is essentially the purpose of Mojo. If you’re using it as your primary dac that’s fine as well. But let’s just not build any illusions about that setup’s capabilities.
I still have a 6s as well and while it’s a Swiss Army knife as far as phones go, it’s like a Swiss Army knife, it does everything, it just doesn’t do it well. I have a Sony boombox that has the big Apple plug on it and that’s what my garage system is. But for anything more, the 6s wasn’t designed for it. Neither is the 13 that I currently have.
My central point is that by stripping away as many of the non-essential functions of the phone as possible I perceive it to improve as a digital source and I wonder if others have similar experiences. The persuasive explanation for this would be the reduction of electrical noise improves clarity and coherence of the digital signal. After all, it is generally accepted that one of the best and quietest power supplies possible is a battery. I believe that Audirvana claimed to do something similar for users of computers as digital sources. This is just doing the same but manually.
If anyone has measurement capabilities for this sort of thing it would be fascinating to know what you find.
So, did you compare running the iPhone direct into the DAC8 versus going through your Aries? If you don’t hear a significant improvement through the Aries, well, let’s just say we greatly differ in our experiences.
The Auralic Aries is a source with no dac so no to that. I don't have the adapters to connect the phone to the Okto, but it is worth noting that the streaming source inside the Okto Dac8 is a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to the rest of the dac and preamp circuits though an I squared S connection. So a modest streaming source (cost about $100, maybe less now) can garner an A+ rating from Stereophile when associated with the right electronic surroundings. Point being some devices not created for the audiophile world can still deliver world class performances and don't have to cost an arm and a leg.
Point being some devices not created for the audiophile world can still deliver world class performances and don't have to cost an arm and a leg.
World class performance? Really??? I think not, but you believe what u wanna believe. Your iPhone6s is streaming shite no matter how good you think it might be. But u be u. Peace out.
I recently switched from Android to an iPhone but there is one streaming app that doesn’t run well in Macland so I did the exact thing the OP mentioned when I listen to this service. It works well. The caveat is the app is for Pristine Classical, a label the specializes in digital restoration of old classical recordings, some of which are a century old. The digital restorations are amazing, and I have compared the android phone as a player to some of the same recordings that were downloaded to my server and played via my CA streamer and can detect no difference; however despite the quality of the restoration work they are perhaps not the best recordings to make sweeping generalizations from
Yes, you can do it. I have streamed from about every device you can think of. Honestly, in general, they sound pretty good… especially with a good DAC, until you start comparing with purpose built streamers.
@fuzztoneIt needs to be noted that a Pi is not a "single purpose" built device. It was conceived and built as a small computer that would be a teaching tool to get young folks interested in computers and programming. They are frequently used as a very affordable around computer. In contrast the electronics in an iphone are much more sophisticated, but that is why for our purposes it might be worthwhile to shut down most of the unnecessary functions.
I go back to the beauty of the battery power since in much of our hifi world it is the quality of the power supply that is the foundation of audio fidelity, and you just can't do much better than a battery. The extreme energy efficiency and nano scale design elements of todays phones permit tiny batteries.
@soixreferenced an Ifi Zen streamer. I have not heard one, but have read good things about them and he attests to this. I don't know for sure but based on the reasonable price of the Zen streamer I wouldn't be surprised if it is not based on the Pi or some small computer very similar. The further refinement comes from the power supply and the handling of the digital output, as I understand it.
A Pi has to add on other purposes and is not built specifically to be a stinkin’ phone AND a camera+. I power mine with a filtered iPower Elite. You are free to show actual stats that it is inferior to a battery. Saying it does not make it so.
The best sounding streamers I have are all based on RasPi. (All better than my first, a BluNode.) RP tech is just a shortcut to sufficient processing power for a network player. Then design tech takes over to make them sound superior. I refuse to operate a "streamer" that cannot play local files including HiRez and DSD.
@bruce19you recruited a lot of single samples united by a culture of expectation bias x rejection of scientific process.
There are ways to tell if an iPhone is an audibly inferior streamer. No one who responded has done the required steps to make the aforementioned claims of inferiority, so far as this thread reads. That would require an understanding of experimental design, basic statistics, and a fair amount of time/effort.
I totally understand buyers not being down for doing that! What I tend to scratch my head over is how some folks pay manufacturers (who avoid said due diligence) so much for devices that aren’t verifiably (audibly) different. To each their own.
I just use the old phone as the remote for a headless streamer. Personal preference based on nothing pretending to be a meaningful, broadly applicable test 😉
What I tend to scratch my head over is how some folks pay manufacturers (who avoid said due diligence) so much for devices that aren’t verifiably (audibly) different.
@benanders Speak for yourself. Plenty of us have heard big improvements moving up to streamers from Aurender, Innuos, etc. Maybe it’s time you tried something better than your Raspberry Pi and see/hear for yourself.
'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.'
Good on you mate. My experience is yours. I'm using my 2 old Samsung S3 including a Cambridge XS and a Violectric Chronos DAC for on the fly listening. I am listening as well with the Samsung Galaxys Tab S 2, in this case going into integrated amps with USB 2.0. For this, I have a (now very hard to find) docking station where I connect the USB A-B cable.
In addition, I have downloaded the USB Audio Player Pro app, running all locally stored music files and Quobuz. You would pay a small amount for the USB Player Pro app and you can use it for all your android gear, paying only once. It is this app which makes a big difference, IMO.
To my ears and in my system and listening environement, the above solution is more than decent and inexpensive.
For iOS, instead of USB Audio Player Pro it could be the TEAC HR Audio Player app.
“What I tend to scratch my head over is how some folks pay manufacturers (who avoid said due diligence) so much for devices that aren’t verifiably (audibly) different.”
@benanders Speak for yourself. Plenty of us have heard big improvements moving up to streamers from Aurender, Innuos, etc. Maybe it’s time you tried something better than your Raspberry Pi and see/hear for yourself.
@soixthats a fair suggestion. Indeed, I do speak for myself bc I don’t stipulate that the absence of [real] evidence (for streamers performing audibly differently) is evidence of absence. No indeed. Such difference may well be real, absolutely, despite how unlikely. Generally persons with concern for scientific rigor or at least a reasonable amount of prior training will speak for themselves, and I tend to remember and do just that. Insistence that something is different, let alone invariably poor, because I perceived variation in a subjective, bias-prone comparison was in your reply to this thread, not mine. 😃
Funny thing: I had some folks cycle their high-end DAC’s and streamers through my system for the fun of it. Really more for the owners’ fun - they were curious to hear snazzy source kit on speakers that out-scaled their own. They are mostly the forever high-end kit-swapping type (surely nothing inherently wrong with that interest - just a less precise, more expensive way of using DSP, IMO), so they have plenty of experience pulling out and reinserting banana plugs; I was perfectly comfortable letting them cycle through stuff while I turned my back. I didn’t want to know which device was in the chain as they sang played the A/B/C’s.
I couldn’t perceive any difference past what timing / repeated listening alone could have accounted for. On any of those fun occasions. And even in that I was still violating every expectation of a meaningfully done blind test setup. Who cares, it was just for fun. But aureckon Aurender and similar just haven’t helped me see day vs. night predictably. Kit-swapping (or pretending to) does make for difference in sound, absolutely, I just can’t do it in a way that aligns it with being due to kit in the chain. Also - each time, those devices were personal units, not sales floor units, so they didn’t likely need breaking in if that were to account for my inability.
I tend to think the more likely culprit is that I have realistic expectation and confidence in what I can hear among digital data transfers vs. folks who might be happy to inform me how untrained my listening is.
Good to read - some of - this post, esp. that by the OP.
I’d been using my daughter’s old iPhone 5 for a BT streamer for various internet radio programs like NPR’s Hot Jazz Saturday Night, Radio Bob and Bayern 3 in Germany and several others.
Lately, as I transition to an Android phone ( because I got tired of having Apple’s coders scramble my playlists, contacts and bookmarks. I have Steven Wilson album covers showing up for 1940’s Jazz LPs, for example, folders which normally hold hundreds of songs reduced to four, multiple copies of folders with only partial content in each and worse. The Apple “genius” bar and online help is no help), I’m using my most recent iPhone 13 because I changed the battery and the home button died and replacements don’t work and Apple won’t service old phones) and the sound quality is improved a bit.
While not the same resolution as my TT/vinyl setup, it’s good enough for background sound and allows me to tune into other radio stations like college radio - WTMD - I can’t get through FM.
FWIW (YMMV) I find it pathetically laughable and sad that with every post like this here on Audiogon and on a handful of other websites the moment someone says “hey, I use this xyz gadget and” some low-T egocentric snob type (no names mentioned or implied directly) jumps in the convo with “well, MINE IS BIGGER, BETTER, the best of the best of the best and you’re a doo-doo head” - not in those exact words, but, while older, the preadolescent/preschool mentality still shines through.
Not sure why so many people get their panties bunched up
by what the OP is doing by re-purposing an old iPhone? I am using an old iPhone SE at the gym by streaming tidal or qubuz on their WiFi. Sounds like my old iPod shuffle but with WAY more music to pic from than iTunes playlists. I use my iPhone 7 in my bedroom as a streamer to a shiit DAC with a Realistic old receiver to power it up. It’s music guys, we are not building rockets for space travel. Just loosen up and enjoy what you have. If you are using a raspberry pi, vanilla wafer, or chocolate cookie and getting music to make you happy, isn’t that the why we listen? Cmon!
Good enough for a garage system I guess. One issue is that at some point the phone will be so old that the O/S won’t support your streaming services apps, but by then you probably would have upgraded to something else.
I tried this initially when I was learning about all this streamer/DAC mess 5 years ago and yeah, it works (an Android phone). I put it on equal footing with USB coming out "raw" from a Raspberry Pi. But some cheap easy to use options available today like a $79 WiiM Mini that you can remotely control come to mind.
Many people trade in their old phones for a modest store credit when upgrading. If that "credit" is more than $80, I’d trade in the phone and buy a WiiM. Otherwise, repurposing an old phone instead of throwing it in the landfill is good.
It does have me wondering how using an old iPAD to USB adapter to DAC compares to say a WiiM Pro to the same external DAC. With the iPAD I can have a nice album art display I can see across the room.
That more like it. I was beginning to feel completely mis-understood, not to mention stirring some mysterious anger towards inanimate objects that is just not good for you, people.
you recruited a lot of single samples united by a culture of expectation bias x rejection of scientific process.
There are ways to tell if an iPhone is an audibly inferior streamer. No one who responded has done the required steps to make the aforementioned claims of inferiority, so far as this thread reads. That would require an understanding of experimental design, basic statistics, and a fair amount of time/effort.
I read it when I got up this morning and am still trying to parse it, but it sounds damn good. As for what follows you are right on. I started the post in hopes that someone with the time, interest and right knowledge might be tempted to try to objectively validate what I think I hear. Maybe there are some reviewers (I know you are out there) on this thread who may see fit to address the question.
@eagledriver_22Good on you too mate! I don't have andoid but I bet there are folks on the thread who will appreciate your sharing and i will check out the ios app you mention. I have Roon and can make my old phone a roon endpoint so that serves nicely when I am home and for simplicity I run the Qobuz app on the road.
I started out with a 6s and a Schiit Modi 3+ a few years ago. It was very listenable but not impressive.
On the rare occasions I listen to music on my HT system, I sent it to a Chromecast plugged into the HT receiver. Also just listenable. But one day I connected the old 6s/Modi setup and it was a big improvement over the Chromecast. The 6s has excellent WIFI reception which probably helps.
Earlier in the thread some negativity if not distinct animosity was directed at the poor little phone. It stinks, is shite, it sucks, ….really? I feel some need to defend this diminutive communications device and it’s heritage, particularly as it pertains to our hobby.
To start with consider the amplifier; invented by Bell telephone in Murray Hill NJ to strengthen voice signals as they traveled long distances. the tube…ditto, the transistor…yep, cables… nobody knew more about those than good old Ma Bell. Satellites, networks, yea, yea, yea, Bell Tel.
Why were all these miracles of tech derived from the phone? In good measure because the American Telephone and Telegraph company had a monopoly that brought in almost unlimited funds and management was very nervous of the government breaking up this sweet deal as they had with most other monopolies in the early 1900’s. To their credit Bell set themselves a mission to continually deliver communications that were better AND cheaper. It worked for a while.
Today we have Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. They are our modern day monopolies and oddly enough phones and networks are still a big part of how they deliver the fruits of their R&D labors to us consumers. One very small, tiny, minuscule fraction of their markets is the audiophile world and it’s spinoff companies. So lets have just a bit more respect for the cell phone and it’s inner workings which include knowledge of quantum mechanics and nano scale technology.
If any of this little rant appeals to you and you would like to know more about this dimension of hi-fi tech history I highly recommend “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation” by Jon Gertner. A great read.
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.
@lanx0003I’ll just say my experience was way different. I thought using my iPhone into my DAC using Qobuz sounded really good. Then I brought up my old Oppo player to use as a CD transport into my DAC and playing CDs totally eclipsed the performance of streaming with my iPhone — not even close, and to say I was disappointed and discouraged is an understatement. Several people here strongly suggested I get a separate streamer, so I bought an iFi Zen Stream (with their iPowerX power supply) and the performance immediately leapfrogged CDs and went to another level entirely. Again, not even close. Comparing playing through the Zen versus direct with the iPhone was like listening to hi res vs. MP3. Again, not even close. Not saying you didn’t hear what you heard at all and I’m sure you did, but it is in stark contrast to my experience so thought it worth sharing.
It's strange. While it is understandable that the perception of sound quality is subjective, it cannot deviate too much. I wonder if this has something to do with the settings?
here’s someone who actually measured the results of using a phone as a streamer vs several other options. His takeaway, no surprise, is that the DAC matters a lot. Jitter rejection and noise filtering at the DAC can level the playing field:
That is a nice piece by archimago, almost exactly what I was looking for except it would have been better if he could have measured output from one or more of the high end devices he mentions at the start of the piece, as well. It is difficult to agree with his blanket dismissal of them without actually including them in the test. In the end he measured several devices that many would consider sub-optimal streaming source and concluded they were all the same.
One can also wonder if there could be a better technique than measuring the dac outputs. Conceivably the dac exerts a leveling influence so that it could be argued it is making all digital streams look the same to the measuring instruments. I am not techically astute enough to say but I wonder if it is possible to measure the digital output directly from the streamer and be able to say anything meaningful. Perhaps one of knowledgeable forum mates can say.
It's strange. While it is understandable that the perception of sound quality is subjective, it cannot deviate too much.
@lanx0003Sure it can. I’ll mention that power supplies consistently are reported to have a significant impact on the sound of a streamer, and I never listened to my ZS without the iPowerX so I suppose that could account for at least some of the differences we heard although there are obviously numerous other variables involved.
@lanx0003Well I'm open to the notion that it could all be fictitious. Personal experiance suggests there ARE differences between streamers BUT I have never been "blown away" by those differences as some profess to have been. My experiance with subjective listening is that my judgement is clouded by all kinds of influences. I like it when measurement backstops perception and vice versa, but we don't get that all the time in this hobby. And then there is the vexing question when listening subjectively whether different=better. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I like the term that I think Archimago used somewhere in his blog arguing that some of us a Euphonophiles, meaning we like the sound what we like, not necessarily the most faithful reproduction. I think that is true. Me, I try to have it both ways. I have some equipment that leans toward accuracy and others that produce very pleasing distortion. Both are ok.
you should check out streamer reviews on hifi news.paul miller does a measurements section at the end of each. in some cases, he shows the inferred jitter and snr of the streamer, and the impact on different dacs. cross walking that to the archimago piece, you might be able to compare cheap streamers to more expensive ones.
@mdaltonThanks. Was not aware of hifi news. The really do have a who’s who of high end streamer tests!
So lets assume that frequency and noise floor are pretty much settled issues with differences that are pretty much below the human level of detection in any competently designed streamer (at least that’s my opinion), and focus on jitter which seems very likely to be able to impair things like coherency, image and sound-stage. so here is the chart for the Grimm mu1, a very nice $10,000 streamer, Grimm Mu1
and here is the similar chart for the four "working class" streaming sources in the Archimago blog article, Working Class streamers
Taken at face value the "working class" group seems to surpass the aristocrat.(for the benefit of anyone reading this I looked at the measurements of several aristocrats on the HIFI site and their measurements were strikingly similar) Now I know enough about testing and charts to know there are variables that may not have been equal in the setup and testing from these two different sources so I would not say that this is a rock solid conclusion, but at the least it does argue that there is not much difference insofar as this measurement relates to perceived sound quality.
Jitter in audio or video streams is indeed measured in milliseconds (ms), representing the variation in the time it takes for data to travel from the source to the destination. The acceptable level of jitter before causing distortion can vary depending on the specific application and standards, with some says 30 ms.
How would the aforementioned Jittle test measured in dB be translated to time delay? thx.
Ok, sorry about that. But if you read the Archimago stuff, or if you look at the HiFi News reviews with measurements, the point is not that every streamer measures the same, or will sound the same. What they demonstrate is that with some DACs, any differences with stream can be almost completely eliminated. So it might be helpful if you gave a little more info on your experience.
Software based DACs in smartphones will always be inferior, but better than nothing in a house system, decent for headphones and for streaming in the car.
@lanx0003Your question is a good one and the bottom line is I don't know how to answer it with confidence. This is one of the more pertinent statements I found.
To measure jitter need put pure sine to the input of a known system. At the system output, we check artifacts (harmonics) and noise. Jitter products (artifacts and noise) depends on the input signal. To check the dependency we can take a spectrum analysis of different input signal level and frequencies.Dec 29, 2017
Apparently there are multiple ways to measure jitter and display it, sometimes across the audio spectrum and sometimes as a single number. I opted for the audio spectrum displays because they were available from both sources. Perhaps someone with deeper knowledge will help us out with a clearer explanation of how to compare the two.
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