Chain of command


Greetings,
     I have an ongoing lack of understanding about what piece of equipment in the following system, actually gives the music it's final quality out to my speakers.
  
**Thumb-drive with 48000Hz, 24-bit .wav music---to Samsung Android phone---analogue out of phone's earphone jack---to input on amp---to 16 ohm speakers.**

      Will a quality amp, tube or other, influence the quality, or is it already set by the phone's DAC?
      I only want to use the phone for it's interface to select my files to play.  I have read that any DAC connected to the phone's analogue earphone jack, ...will by-pass the phone's DAC?  This comment has been both substantiated and ridiculed, so I'm at a loss here.
      Seems to me that the earliest the quality is set, that anything after will just be upsampling.  
Is my most logical route to buy a DAC with a visual screen for file selection?

Any help here....would.....ah, ....help!
Thanks.
128x128sound22card

Showing 1 response by audiozenology

You have no idea what you have unleashed sound22card :-)

Not that DACs in phones are "awful", but with the exception of a few LG models (and no doubt others), they are not very good either. There are some good DACs that connect directly to phone USB ports (not the headphone port).

Unless your source is "bad", usually the speakers in combination with the room has the biggest impact on your impression of quality. i.e. great speakers in a well designed room, connected up to a good DAC playing 320kbps MP3 and a reasonably good amplifier, is going to "sound better" than the worlds best DAC and amplifier playing high res audio through poor speakers in a poor room.  This is of course a generality, but for most people will be the case. 


Your impression of quality is usually first, is there something "bad" that irks you, and absent that, it becomes total presentation. Part of the "path" is eliminating really bad things from your system, and those bad things are different for different people. I could play $20,000 wonderfully clear and accurate speakers with an awesome system backing it up to someone who loves deep bass, and if those speakers do not have deep bass, they are going to hate it. Most electronics, even the DAC in your phone are usually not "awful" (emphasis on usually). Speakers can be awful. Cheap turntables can be awful. It's all relative. For many members here, if you said 320kbps MP3 could sound tolerable, they would look at you like you have 4 heads.