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Advice on choosing between a bluetooth and normal portable AMP and DAC
I need and want to buy a portable AMP and DAC. I have no experiance in this, a beginner. I want to choose between Fiio Btr5 and Fiio KA3. I also don't want to deal with battery issue in long term but bluetooth portability feels more convenient.
Can't decide what should i buy. Any advice
If you're a beginner and don't fiddle with equalizers much, get the btr5. It's by far the most user friendly device.
However I would like to also suggest you the qudelix 5k. It has a parametric equalizer which will let you get the most out of your IEMs/headphones. It's not the prettiest but if you ever want to tinker with an equalizer to get the most out of your audio gear it's by far the best choice. And if you don't want to tinker with audio settings that's fine too, but at least the 5k gives you the options. (it has more features the btr5 doesn't have too but I won't get into those here unless you want to) plus it has a much bigger battery than the btr5.
Thank you!! I'll consider qudelix. One more query, Should i worry about battery dying off and what makes btr5 more user friendly over KA3? thanks again!!
The btr5 works as a bluetooth dac/amp as well a usb dac/amp so you get more versatility out of it.
I mention it's user friendly because it's really quite plug and play. The k3 is also plug and play to be fair but I think the btr5 will fit more use cases so I'd usually recommend beginners go for that.
Battery depends a lot on usage as well as the bluetooth codecs you're using in the case of Bluetooth dacs (LDAC will consume more power than AAC for example). But you should always have a whole day of listening at least.
I think that the newer revisions of the btr5 work properly via USB. Older revisions, however, have a defective USB C interface that does not work with proper type C cables, only legacy A-to-C cables. They won't even charge.
My btr5 is left pretty much unused at this point as a result, considering I'd have to carry around a different cable, adapter, or charger just to charge it, when I specifically bought it because it was supposed to use type C. Now I'm much more wary.
The revisioned one is btr5 2021, right? Other than the cable inconvenience, how did you like btr5?
I think it is, yes.
Overall, it's a decent device. It's compact and has decent battery life, and I have no complaints about the sound quality. I bought it to use with some sensitive IEMs (Etymotic ER4SR) that were both, of course, not wireless, and had trouble with many standard audio jacks because they are too sensitive.
Realistically, however, I found that I could get audio quality with the IEMs that was just as good with an attenuator on a standard laptop output or a reasonable inexpensive USB-C dac+amp (eg, the Google one). I've actually often ended up using it more to play audio from my phone through larger amps and speakers that don't have bluetooth, rather than using it with IEMs, and here it has a significant advantage over a USB-C setup; with headphones, my phone is likely already near me, whereas I can set the btr5 next to an amp+speakers, and control it with my phone.
Thank you very much. This has been really helpful.
Is this to connect to a computer primarily? Or will you want to connect via your phone too? And if it's to a computer will you also want to plug in speakers?
I will connect my phone too. No, I won't be plugging speakers.
I see. Connect via Bluetooth? The fiio is a solid choice.
I think to best answer the question, it would help to know the reason for your upgrade? Is there a specific problem that you want to address in the upgrade?
To give you an example, I will share the rationale in my DAC/amp purchases. My first one is a small portable Optima Nuforce (that is not in production anymore) as I noticed the DAC in my laptop was really bad. As a student, I wanted something portable that did not rely on needing wall power. Later on, I got passive desk speakers, and so needed to upgrade my amp to drive it well so went with a separate Schiit DAC and amp.
As you can see from my examples, I was solving specific issues which drove my decisions. What issues are you trying to solve? Or do you just want to try something better?