Suggestions for Bluetooth device to hook up iPhone to amp

hotei
Thanks, that sounds good.

That's too easy...the topping bC-3 @ Apos Audio, $69.....designed for exactly what you are looking to do......https://apos.audio/products/topping-bc3-wireless-bluetooth-decoder-dac-amp?_pos=3&_sid=eefbc38bd&_ss=r

audioguy85
Thanks, I’ll check into it!

The codex in iphone is limited to AAC.  AAC is a very processor-heavy codec since it uses psychoacoustic modeling to transmit data.  Iphone typically weighs energy efficiency over performance and will encode AAC Bluetooth (BT) to a lower bit rate and quality.  Therefore, the sound quality thru iphone bluetooth is not good, worse than the sound quality transmitted from laptop bluetooth.  The bluetooth from laptop/PC is very close to CD quality (44.1Hz sample rate).  So if you want to use laptop as a streamer, invest a quality DAC/BT with the money you have planned for a BT receiver.  Loxjie D30 is a solid all-in-one DAC/BT/headphone device (new version $260) for your consideration. 

If you still want to stick with iphone as the streamer, purchase a good external DAC and use the lighting to USB cable to connect iphone to DAC and then power amp.  Amazon sells a lighting cable that has a Y spliter into both USB Type B (to DAC) and USB Type A (to charger) so you could charge your iphone while listening to music.  Quite convenient.

Try to get something with the more recent Bluetooth 5.1, or 5.0 at the least.

The new iFi Zen Air Blue has 5.1 but I'm not certain how it compares to the highly rated Zen Blue 2 which has 5.0.