I have a use case which I feel is perhaps very common, but not commented upon much in Amir's amazing reviews here.
I want the world's best audio quality DAC Dongle to use in my in-car setup.
The DAC will sit between my Android phone (Fold 2) and the 'aux in' of my car (BMW M6 E64 2008). As the dongle merely needs to power the vehicle's input which I'm assuming will be similar to line-in, I feel that many of the metrics assessed by Amir's reviews may not be too relevant to me - I'm not trying to drive insanely high impedance headphones, and I am guessing therefore the power charts maybe do not matter to me so much? I merely want to provide the highest quality audio feed to my vehicle's line-in. Crucially I think the Dongle's amplifier abilities are probably of little importance to me (?), while the DAC is crucial.
Details of my setup
I currently use Tidal (including Masters quality) but am tempted by the recommendations for Qobuz on this forum.
I have no idea what the 'aux in' specs of the car are, but I suspect the aux in was developed assuming it would take a basic headphone output from any portable audio device on the market in 2008. I'm guessing it roughly adheres to 'line-in' specs, but can't be 100% sure - after all, it is probably expecting to be connected to the headphone output of an iPod or something (given a vehicle developed around 2005/2006).
The M6 has a decent stock sound system by vehicle standards, but I am planning to upgrade it to something probably costing around £5-10k ($7-13k) in the next year or so. I would like my DAC solution now to remain the best solution for when that happens (at which point I will be feeding a genuine line-in connection on a fantastic car amplifier).
My goal
I greatly care about DAC quality, and spent far too many days researching my home HiFi DAC before settling on my RME ADI-2 DAC (v2) to complement my Naim amp/Focal 1027Be setup. From the reviews I could find, this $1k DAC was said to rival $10k DACs, and the RME also has other features very useful in it's role as Pre-Amp in my hifi setup (such as 5 hardware levels of output volume, to give a very low noise floor at any volume, plus EQ etc).
So for this project, having read all the 'typical' review sites, I was about to buy a Dragonfly Cobalt, but just at the last minute I found this site, and am now so glad I didn't buy that rubbish.
I purely want the best possible DAC quality, and I think (but maybe I am wrong by not understanding the technical side enough), that the amplifier side of the Dongle doesn't matter much to me. Money isn't really a consideration (but I don't want it to be insane, I think max £300/$400 should be more than enough for vehicle audio).
My options
The three top contenders I have identified having studied Amir's reviews are the THX Onyx, the Hidizs S9 (obviously in unbalanced mode for connecting to the line-in) and the E1DA 9038D.
But I am definitely open to any better options.
Given I use Tidal Masters quite a bit, I feel like a Dongle that supports MQA (such as the Onyx) could be relevant and beneficial for me. But then MQA gets totally slated in the comments to Amir's Dragonfly Cobalt review, so maybe I shouldn't care and should switch to Qobuz...
My questions
1. Obviously my main question is below, but before answering that, maybe I need to confirm some of my assumptions. Am I correct that to drive line-in, the power of the amplifier does not matter much, because it is essentially not needing to do much work to simply provide a line-level output, as the car's amp will obviously be doing the amplification? Wikipedia confused me because it states that "The impedance of a line input is typically around 10 kΩ". To me this sounds like it is saying therefore driving line-in is a 17x harder job than driving a 600 ohm pair of professional cans. But I feel that I am just not understanding the concepts sufficiently, and surely a line-in level input can't require much power?
2. Main question: Which Dongle has the best DAC quality? / Which Dongle would have the overall best quality for driving a line-in input (in case amplifier does matter to drive line-in)?
3. Amir talks in many of the reviews about power draw, and the fairly significant impact that can have on a phone battery. This matters a lot to me as the phone is providing sat-nav for me as well on very long journeys. Amir mentioned a couple of times 'the impact if you don't have the phone plugged in'. This is the bit which leaves me confused - given the dongle plugs into the phone's USB-C socket, how can the phone be plugged in to get power? Do any of the high-end dongles allow a USB-C charging cable to be connected to it, and then pass the charging current back to the phone? Or can I use a USB-C hub, so that I can connect both USB-C charging cable and DAC dongle to the phone at the same time? USB-C hubs exist with ability to take input power and pass it to the phone, but could the use of a hub reduce sound quality?
If it's not a great idea to use a hub, then I think I will need a Dongle that supports a USB-C cable to allow charging the phone. That might drastically reduce my options. Currently I'm using a £20 Chinese thing from Amazon that does do this, and the quality is better than phone, but not great.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for all your help everyone, and sorry to write so much!
I feel like many people out there must be in the same situation of wanting to get the best possible connection to their car, so perhaps this discussion could be quite beneficial to the community.
All my best,
David
I want the world's best audio quality DAC Dongle to use in my in-car setup.
The DAC will sit between my Android phone (Fold 2) and the 'aux in' of my car (BMW M6 E64 2008). As the dongle merely needs to power the vehicle's input which I'm assuming will be similar to line-in, I feel that many of the metrics assessed by Amir's reviews may not be too relevant to me - I'm not trying to drive insanely high impedance headphones, and I am guessing therefore the power charts maybe do not matter to me so much? I merely want to provide the highest quality audio feed to my vehicle's line-in. Crucially I think the Dongle's amplifier abilities are probably of little importance to me (?), while the DAC is crucial.
Details of my setup
I currently use Tidal (including Masters quality) but am tempted by the recommendations for Qobuz on this forum.
I have no idea what the 'aux in' specs of the car are, but I suspect the aux in was developed assuming it would take a basic headphone output from any portable audio device on the market in 2008. I'm guessing it roughly adheres to 'line-in' specs, but can't be 100% sure - after all, it is probably expecting to be connected to the headphone output of an iPod or something (given a vehicle developed around 2005/2006).
The M6 has a decent stock sound system by vehicle standards, but I am planning to upgrade it to something probably costing around £5-10k ($7-13k) in the next year or so. I would like my DAC solution now to remain the best solution for when that happens (at which point I will be feeding a genuine line-in connection on a fantastic car amplifier).
My goal
I greatly care about DAC quality, and spent far too many days researching my home HiFi DAC before settling on my RME ADI-2 DAC (v2) to complement my Naim amp/Focal 1027Be setup. From the reviews I could find, this $1k DAC was said to rival $10k DACs, and the RME also has other features very useful in it's role as Pre-Amp in my hifi setup (such as 5 hardware levels of output volume, to give a very low noise floor at any volume, plus EQ etc).
So for this project, having read all the 'typical' review sites, I was about to buy a Dragonfly Cobalt, but just at the last minute I found this site, and am now so glad I didn't buy that rubbish.
I purely want the best possible DAC quality, and I think (but maybe I am wrong by not understanding the technical side enough), that the amplifier side of the Dongle doesn't matter much to me. Money isn't really a consideration (but I don't want it to be insane, I think max £300/$400 should be more than enough for vehicle audio).
My options
The three top contenders I have identified having studied Amir's reviews are the THX Onyx, the Hidizs S9 (obviously in unbalanced mode for connecting to the line-in) and the E1DA 9038D.
But I am definitely open to any better options.
Given I use Tidal Masters quite a bit, I feel like a Dongle that supports MQA (such as the Onyx) could be relevant and beneficial for me. But then MQA gets totally slated in the comments to Amir's Dragonfly Cobalt review, so maybe I shouldn't care and should switch to Qobuz...
My questions
1. Obviously my main question is below, but before answering that, maybe I need to confirm some of my assumptions. Am I correct that to drive line-in, the power of the amplifier does not matter much, because it is essentially not needing to do much work to simply provide a line-level output, as the car's amp will obviously be doing the amplification? Wikipedia confused me because it states that "The impedance of a line input is typically around 10 kΩ". To me this sounds like it is saying therefore driving line-in is a 17x harder job than driving a 600 ohm pair of professional cans. But I feel that I am just not understanding the concepts sufficiently, and surely a line-in level input can't require much power?
2. Main question: Which Dongle has the best DAC quality? / Which Dongle would have the overall best quality for driving a line-in input (in case amplifier does matter to drive line-in)?
3. Amir talks in many of the reviews about power draw, and the fairly significant impact that can have on a phone battery. This matters a lot to me as the phone is providing sat-nav for me as well on very long journeys. Amir mentioned a couple of times 'the impact if you don't have the phone plugged in'. This is the bit which leaves me confused - given the dongle plugs into the phone's USB-C socket, how can the phone be plugged in to get power? Do any of the high-end dongles allow a USB-C charging cable to be connected to it, and then pass the charging current back to the phone? Or can I use a USB-C hub, so that I can connect both USB-C charging cable and DAC dongle to the phone at the same time? USB-C hubs exist with ability to take input power and pass it to the phone, but could the use of a hub reduce sound quality?
If it's not a great idea to use a hub, then I think I will need a Dongle that supports a USB-C cable to allow charging the phone. That might drastically reduce my options. Currently I'm using a £20 Chinese thing from Amazon that does do this, and the quality is better than phone, but not great.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for all your help everyone, and sorry to write so much!
I feel like many people out there must be in the same situation of wanting to get the best possible connection to their car, so perhaps this discussion could be quite beneficial to the community.
All my best,
David