These phones are proper standalone portable media servers! There are really cheap refurbished units in the normal shopping apps that cost less than RM500.

They can also play hi-res 24/96 files and like most Android phones, they have a micro SD card memory expansion which enables you to load up your own CD rips or hi-res FLAC files easily and cheaply. Notable ones are the V30 to V50 models as these models had their DAC “tuned by Meridian” and will play Tidal Master MQA files natively. All these models have a 3.5mm jack and carry LG’s Quad DAC which contains various incarnations of the ESS Sabre chip. If you want an all-in-one solution, then a specialist audiophile-targeted phone may be the answer, like the LG phones – G6, G7, G8. A cheap RM100 China-made dongle DAC bought online will give an immediate overall improvement compared with the internal DAC. This can cost from around RM100 to RM1,000-plus. Not as apparent with headphones necessarily, but even in a modest home set-up, the inadequacies will be obvious.Ī step up from the phone internal DAC would be to get a USB DAC dongle. The sound will be tinny, muddled and lacking in weight.

In a decent set-up, the failings will be very obvious. The downside to this is that most phones have terrible DAC chips in them. The portability of a phone means that you can take your music selection to the car or listen on the go via headphones. This option will use your phone’s internal DAC to convert the digital signals into electrical signals to your amplifier. You will need a phone/tablet with a headphone jack or a USB/Lightning 3.5mm jack to which you will connect the 3.5mm audio cable to the amplifier. This is done by connecting the phone’s 3.5mm audio jack using a 3.5mm-to-RCA cable into the line input of the amplifier.

The simplest way to get into streaming will be via the phone. The diverse equipment options will be benchmarked and referenced with a physical CD player, specifically an old and trusty multi-bit Quad CD66. We will deal solely with the home set-up rather than a headphone system (which is a separate ball game altogether), along with various source options to connect to your amplifier. The next step is to get it playing on your beloved audio set-up. SO you have now subscribed to Tidal Hifi.

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