While I am by no means an expert but you may want to be looking for a Dac or Pre-amp/Dac that supports apple airplay giving you the ability to wirelessly stream to it.
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why not spend the money and get a streamer. Your phone is not the ideal server nor a basis for an audiophile set up. It wont stream Tidal decently I've tried with mine, fine for low rez head phone work but not ideal for a home system. You'd be better buying an older mac mini with an optical out. Something like the oppo server an all in one item that checks all your box's and has an amp built in. also apple airplay and tidal. it will also act as a preamp so get some good powered speakers and/or and headphone amp and your set. https://www.oppodigital.com/sonica-dac/ there are many others ranging in price also many that have more features. Bluesound, etc. |
With no disrespect to the above contributors, Apple TV, AirPlay, the iphone DAC and Chromecast are not audiophile solutions. Many would also agree that a Mac Mini is also far from ideal as a steamer. For top quality you need a dedicated streamer and a DAC/amp. I use an iPhone 7 and stream Tidal via Auralic Aries but you can also look at Auralic Aries mini. With no budget listed it’s very tricky to reccomend a DAC and headphone amp. For mid market prices look at the Chord range (hugo/mojo/hugo desktop). If you are looking for a small portable headphone set up with IPhone then the Dragonfly Black or Red. |
The digital outputs of the Apple Airport Express or Apple TV and of the Chromecast Audio are bitperfect, and hence have no sonic signature. That would come from the DAC that one uses. An external DAC may improve the sound, but the inbuilt DAC of these devices is actually pretty good. The question here seems to be how portable the system has to be. |
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