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High quality USB-C in-ear monitors or good aux-to-USB-C adapters?
I recently upgraded my phone and to my dismay everyone followed apples moronic choice to remove aux ports.
I want to keep using my KZ in ears, and while they have bluetooth adapters I rarely like how bluetooth sounds and also don't want to worry about having to charge them either.
Both adapters I've bought either buzz like crazy or my phone is convinced is constantly disconnecting and pausing my music. Anyone know of anything in the budget range thats as good as KZ or good adapters?
I just went the easy route and got Apple's $10 adapter. I'm no audiophile but it's much better than my phone's built-in DAC which has a constant hissing at low volumes and doesn't even get all that quiet (almost every Motorola phone I've gotten has had these kinds of audio issues, would not recommend). Only concern is the delicate wire but it hasn't failed on me yet.
That's basically what I gathered from lurking on r/headphones for the past few years. If you're playing audio out of USB-C, then the apple dongle is generally good enough but the build quality is meh.
Is it in USB-C or is it only lightning wire or w/e proprietary thing they use?
Apple has a USB c adapter
Okay I'll probably check this put too, thanks.
Is there still basically zero universal solution to charge while playing back from an AUX cable? I stream from my phone while driving and using my display as a GPS. My Bluetooth in my car is noticably bad. The few devices I've tried only work with very specific Android devices, and cost quite a lot.
You could just charge it wirelessly using a wireless charging car mount. That would free up the charging port for aux playback without needing to resort to bluetooth
I did the same thing, but ran into a bit of a weird issue with it. I drive a 2009 Volkswagen Beetle. For whatever reason, the apple adapter doesn't work with the aux port on the stock stereo. Both directly connected devices and those connected through a different adapter work just fine. I have tried other apple adapters too - no dice. The device switches over to the usb-c output, but nothing comes through the stereo.
Without sounding too much of a Fiio shill here. I 100% stand behind their products. They have several different products that might fit your bill depending on budget. Of course the most popular are probably the BTR5 and BTR7 which are DACs that can also work as a Bluetooth “adapter” which acts as a DAC while connecting to your phone via Bluetooth or usb-C passthrough.
They also have the KA1 which is a super tiny usb-C dac. Cheaper, smaller, just a little less versatile.
If you just want a super cheap dongle then I’d go with Venture Electronics Abigail. It’s decent. You get what you pay for but it’s really not that bad. I keep a pair of their Monk ear buds and that DAC in my travel bag because for the price I don’t care if anything happens to them but they sound good enough for me to keep on hand
I used the BTR-3 for a while and am now on the BTR-5 and it's pretty much exactly what I need. I do think it'd be nice if they made a version focused solely on being small and light to be more suitable for clip-wearing, but I can't complain all that much.
Oh you know I was thinking about getting something from Fiio because of a youtuber I watch called dankpods. He turned me onto the KZ's and so I'll have to check out Fiio too. Thanks for the budget recommendation too, I'll definitely take a look at Abigal as well.
This sounds like it's almost what I want to build a musical instrument. If there were a USB headphone amp that was also a power bank, it could power a single-board computer that takes button presses and sends an audio stream back over the same USB port. I wonder if anything like that exists?
There is a good pair of cheap IEMs called the 7hz Salnotes Zero. It's about 20 bucks and has pretty good sound quality. I don't specifically own the USB-c version but I do own the aux version and they sound pretty good to my ear. The main issue to worry about is that they don't fit everyone's ears perfectly so YMMV.
I've had this for a couple years and I like it:
https://www.hidizs.net/products/hidizs-s3-pro-ultra-portable-hi-res-dac-dongle
Looks like it's on clearance now maybe? MQA is on the rocks so maybe they're looking to clear out, I don't know.
Only criticism would be the power output is too low for headphones with higher impedance, like over 50 ish Ohms. But for my IEMs (KZ sxn?, truthears, blessings) and Grados, it's plenty.
Yeah thats the nice thing about the KZ's, they actually need less power than most normal earphones with way better audio quality. Thanks for the recommendation, definitely looks good.