It has a self power mode even when used with the cable. In the menu select charge offImpressions about BTR5 from Fiio!
For home use, I use M500 (MQA) from SMSL with ES 9038 Pro -- On the go, I have been using E1DA 9038S 3d gen Susumu which according to my ears beats Dragonfly Red and most of what's out there wrt portable USB Dac/Amps. After a year of hesitation, I finally got myself a BTR5 last week because of its versatility and when I plug it into my Demon headphones it sounds equally well as my beloved E1DA. In fact, It sounds damn good, better than expected. It's a perfect USB DAC on the go for me and as well it manages to play 92 Khz 32-bit Tidal MQA streams as a USB DAC/Amp.
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My earphones: Sundara, AH-D7200, AH-D9200, Sennheiser Momentum 2. Previous Dac/Amp: Oppo HA-2 SE, SMSL M2, Elecom LBT-Par500. My phone: Galaxy S20.
Cons:
- cannot get it to play full LDAC at 990 bits/s without distortion, only about 660.
- It drains the battery from the phone when in USB DAC mode.
- It has no MQA final fold decoder and thus can not play MQAs beyond 92Khz.
- It has a 2.5 jack and not a Pentacon 4.4.
It's the price of the power in a so portable design. I can confirm that the distortion is audible. Try to play the bass shaker sine from mynoise headphone test album on spotify. It's powerful but not clean but it's very hard to detect the distortion in the music.1% SINAD?? That's unacceptable. Even the $9 Apple dongle has 0.001% SINAD. No wonder Veri perceived this as not sounding any better than an on-board integrated chip.
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thanks, found it.It has a self power mode even when used with the cable. In the menu select charge off
for how long have you used BTR5?It's the price of the power in a so portable design. I can confirm that the distortion is audible. Try to play the bass shaker sine from mynoise headphone test album on spotify. It's powerful but not clean but it's very hard to detect the distortion in the music.
A USB isolator probably helps with unbalanced connection due to removing ground loops. Ground loops can mess up a measurement and make it unrepresentative for ground-free headphones.TLDR: Unbalanced measures poorly, balanced measures decently. Very sensitive to USB jitter/noise, and measurements improved after using a USB isolator.
I use BTR5 and I am OK with it but is there a better alternative to it?
does that mean if I use balanced I am fine and won't get distortions?A USB isolator probably helps with unbalanced connection due to removing ground loops. Ground loops can mess up a measurement and make it unrepresentative for ground-free headphones.
I have not noticed a significant benefit for USB isolation when using a balanced connection. Ground loops don't happen anyway when you connect headphones, because they don't have a ground connection of their own, so this may matter when you connect an external amp with its own power supply.does that mean if I use balanced I am fine and won't get distortions?
Well WolfX measured it with an AP if you haven't seen it yet. https://www.l7audiolab.com/f/measurementreview-of-fiio-high-fidelity-bluetooth-amp-btr5/I'd like to see Amir put the BRT5 through his testing process, esp in USB DAC mode. Would be surprised if he hadn't already.
I have not noticed a significant benefit for USB isolation when using a balanced connection. Ground loops don't happen anyway when you connect headphones, because they don't have a ground connection of their own, so this may matter when you connect an external amp with its own power supply.
What happened?My BTR5 2021 pooped the bed half an hour after I got it.