To DAP or not to DAP?

Kuoppis

New member
Joined
Jan 19, 2015
Messages
5,203
I do have a 1K+ DAP which conveniently sits somewhere in a headphone travel case most of the time. Current mode amplified and all. The only problem is, I never use it. I added some music to it when it was new, DSD and high res files. But have not been doing that for some time.

What I’ve noticed for myself, I mostly listen in a mobile setup when on an airplane. And then the use case is, that I am about to board, and then remember that I might want to maybe listen to some music via my noise canceling headphones when on the plane. So I quickly go on Tidal to select a couple recently added albums to download.

Last week I then searched for DAPs supporting Tidal and Wi-Fi download, and noticed there are nice ones from 1,5K upwards. And that still does not address my need to be able to quickly add some albums OTA before boarding.

Then I saw this cheap little fellow, the ifi HIP DAC, for amping a mobile phone, incl. a DAC supporting high res and MQA. It does the same for your Mac as well for hot spotting. It’s also got some positive reviews from early adopters, and reviewers like the Audiophiliac and Darko. It sports a Burr-Brown 384 PCM/ double DSD/ MQA DAC chip, a 2200 mAh battery (8-10 hours) and 400 mW output from single-ended, respective 700 mW output from its balanced sockets. I also have a balanced adapter coming. Therefore it drives Audezes, Sennheisers, and Focals as well.

Via the Apple USB Camera accessory, and with the Bose noise canceling headphones, it sounds decent. For less than 200 quid it’s a no-brainer. And, it is very small and therefore easy to carry around.

ea6bf9f43db1c7f35af4d2ae89e2fa2b.jpg
be032ad1b7c1e91732ddcf308800e02b.jpg
9c132f6bf4d6dcaaad4999d17cb48eea.jpg



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Full mobile setup.
b56e9cd8a9c9abe305e537d771ff0631.jpg



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Back
Top