This thread suggests it should work?

Another iphone as source question

I have read tons hear on this but can't seem to find a conclusion. I use iphone, apple lossless only. Right now iphone -> usb -> HU -> minidsp -> amp -> speakers. Is it an SQ upgrade to go from the phone directly to the minidsp? I read conflicting info on this. Is it possible to have an...

www.diymobileaudio.com

I can't help really as I haven't tried it, but was looking into it.

More info here;

iPhone USB adapter for Topping D10S DAC

Hi all, Recently bought a Topping D10S DAC to use as an optical bridge for my iPhone to Helix DSP. The Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Kit is proving very troublesome. I’ve been told the only fix is the solder a permanent 5V power cable to the USB cable, however I don’t want to do this as it...

www.diymobileaudio.com

 

This thread suggests it should work?

Another iphone as source question

I have read tons hear on this but can't seem to find a conclusion. I use iphone, apple lossless only. Right now iphone -> usb -> HU -> minidsp -> amp -> speakers. Is it an SQ upgrade to go from the phone directly to the minidsp? I read conflicting info on this. Is it possible to have an...

www.diymobileaudio.com

I can't help really as I haven't tried it, but was looking into it.

More info here;

iPhone USB adapter for Topping D10S DAC

Hi all, Recently bought a Topping D10S DAC to use as an optical bridge for my iPhone to Helix DSP. The Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Kit is proving very troublesome. I’ve been told the only fix is the solder a permanent 5V power cable to the USB cable, however I don’t want to do this as it...

www.diymobileaudio.com

Thanks for the pointer.

Are you using an apple camera connection kit adapter? View attachment 387474

That is the long term intent, but it is not here yet. I was just going straight from the iPhone to the DAC. I figured start simple and make sure it could output digital, then work up to the end goal. It outputs digital just fine with other sources, just does not want to work with the iPhone for some reason.

Or try a FIIO LT-LT1 USB Type-C to Lightning cable 😊

The two cables I have tried so far are from reputable brands. They both work when connected to other USB devices, just not the PO100 AK.

 

Are you using an apple camera connection kit adapter?

 

Or try a FIIO LT-LT1 USB Type-C to Lightning cable 😊

 

I know on my Topping D10s DAC the iPhone is not going to work without the camera kit adapter to get the audio out of the USB input. So it might not work till you have it

 

I'm looking at a Helix dsp with the optical in and plan to use a Lighting to USB converter and then a USB to TOSLink converter to get an optical audio signal at up to 192kHz.

 

You aren’t going to get 192khz audio into optical on a helix, you need coax to get that, and then it will be resampled down to 96khz as that’s the sample rate of the dsp

The Smsl po100 and pro version will send 192khz via optical but the helix won’t decode it at the other end… my denon will… helix or mosconi won’t

 

yeah same here, bought the smsl po100 and it didnt work, you need the camera connection kit adapter. But it wont work on its own power with just the dongle, you need to power it externally and then it will.

 

I am doing this now with my vehicle. Use the iPhone to hdmi then buy a hdmi splitter to optical. It works great!

 

Oh, false alarm. Like 5 minutes later my phone popped up with a message that it needed to update the camera adapter. After it did that, the device now works. Weird

 

Glad it’s working!

 

I think you really need to step back and re-read what was said without your preconceived notion of one-upsmanship. That was not the intent of my post at all. There was no venom in what I said, just the facts as they appeared at the time. Your perception of disrespect is coming from somewhere other than my words in my humble opinion.

I left the original post in place so it would not come across as backtracking and editing the post after the fact. But, in that moment, what I said was accurate. The unit has already had the firmware updated, etc, and it still did would not work for over 5 minutes. Finally, after unplugging and reconnecting for about the 10th time, the iPhone seemed to realize it needed to update the software for the adapter. That fixed the issue with powering on and playing music. It is not sounding very good though. Cymbols are coming through very muddy sounding even on Master quality recordings via Tidal, and it is still making the afformentioned clicking noises, which is generally not a good sign with a DAC. It's also barely audible until you get to about 80% volume on the phone, then goes all the way to full loud in the space of 3 button clicks, which is odd.

Bottom line, I still think this unit is defective, and I'm probably still going to return it.

 

I think you really need to step back and re-read what was said without your preconceived notion of one-upsmanship. That was not the intent of my post at all. There was no venom in what I said, just the facts as they appeared at the time. Your perception of disrespect is coming from somewhere other than my words in my humble opinion.

I left the original post in place so it would not come across as backtracking and editing the post after the fact. But, in that moment, what I said was accurate. The unit has already had the firmware updated, etc, and it still did would not work for over 5 minutes. Finally, after unplugging and reconnecting for about the 10th time, the iPhone seemed to realize it needed to update the software for the adapter. That fixed the issue with powering on and playing music. It is not sounding very good though. Cymbols are coming through very muddy sounding even on Master quality recordings via Tidal, and it is still making the afformentioned clicking noises, which is generally not a good sign with a DAC. It's also barely audible until you get to about 80% volume on the phone, then goes all the way to full loud in the space of 3 button clicks, which is odd.

Bottom line, I still think this unit is defective, and I'm probably still going to return it.

You jumped to the conclusion that he was wrong and upon realisation that it wasn’t the case you dismissed that mistake entirely and moved on. And when you dont adress this misstep ,it invalidates the other person ,who is there engaging in solving your problem…

 

Hey bud, your phone needs to be at max volume to work properly with the smsl po , and you need power to it from the cck3 as dumdum said (he is not dum’ , you know )

 

Understood on all, and it was indeed powered from the camera adapter as he and another parrty mentioned above. It simply didn't work at all until the phone updated. Not sure if they changed something with the new version of IOS or what, but it took a while for the phone to catch the adapter was connected and update the software. Initially it just said "charging" or whatever the message is when you connect a charger.

Intent would be to use it at full volume on the phone once it is intalled in a car, but that isn't quite practical in my testbed home audio system, as the amp it is connected to does not have volume control, and it would be quite loud at full volume. Doing the same with my android phone and PC, it did not display the weird volume control issues. Volume contol is pretty progressive there. Only with the iPhone is it like that for some reason.

 

In the car you need a dsp volume controller, not the phone.
see, you come here and pretend is something wrong with your phone, cck3 and smsl po but you don’t have time to listen and understand.
Go get a controller for your dsp , that is going to adjust the volume not your phone

 

In the car you need a dsp volume controller, not the phone.
see, you come here and pretend is something wrong with your phone, cck3 and smsl po but you don’t have time to listen and understand.
Go get a controller for your dsp , that is going to adjust the volume not your phone

There was no pretending on anything. Honestly not sure why you would think that.

I understand what I need to do in the car perfectly well. I just have not purchased the equipment yet as I am still working on system design choices that will dictate my choice of amplifier. Need to figure out whether I can go three way or am stuck with 2 way before I can finalize my choices there, and still talking to a few installers about what is possible there without permanent modifications to the car.

This was a proof of concept purchase of sorts, to make sure that this would work as I thought it would before pulling the trigger on the rest. I initially believed the only requirement for the camera adapter was to both charge and play music at the same time, which would be the case with Android. On that front I was wrong. Then even when connected correctly it still refused to play, so I though the unit was just defective, especially when coupled with the clearly off sound quality.

The volume control thing just threw me off for a minute because the lights on the DAC turned on finally, but there was nothing audible even with the volume turned up to around 70%. Just rather odd, especially when other sources didn't have the same behavior.

The sound quality is a much bigger issue of course. This thing sounds like crap feeding my home system to be honest. My normal home processor sounds way better, and it's nothing super exotic. It's a MiniDSP 2x4 The SMSL did actually sound better feeding the MiniDSP with the toslink output as I had it set up yesterday through the PC though. I initially tested that way to more accurately simulate desired use in the car. I'll have to do a little more testing in that configuration, but it sounds basically like a cheap bluetooth adapter when output directly via RCAs, which was a bit quicker to set up as the Toslink is hard to reach.

 

That is the way it works, your phone it needs to be at max volume otherwise the resolution will decrease and sound like crap .

 

Okay, that makes a little sense at least. The MiniDSP does not seem to have this limitation though, it sounds fine at all volume levels. I guess different internal architectures? Obviously this would be a little easier if I had an integrated amplifier in my home system, but unfortunately I don't. It's much like a car amplifier, it only has input gain control. In the end I don't need volume control from the SMSL if it goes in the car though, so maybe it's worth giving it a shot?

 

I always leave my iPhone at full volume going into my digital converter. It’s quality is very noticeably degraded going down a click or 2

 

I wonder what Android OS and Windows do differently then? I've been using the master volume on my HTPC as my main volume control for over 5 years with no noticeable degradation in SQ, but immediately noticed an impact in sound quality with the iPhone in comparison to the HTPC, and my old Andoid phone running through the MiniDSP yesterday. I didn't immediately connect it to reduced volume levels for this reason. There has got to be something different about the way the signal is structured/processed I would say.

 

The volume control is to do with the control that’s implemented in the device

UAC1 doesn’t implement a volume control, my Smsl po100 pro uses this

UAC2 is used in dacs for analogue volume control… it also adjusts the digital volume output of the device has them, often steps are silly big, one click off my iPhone with a topping D10s is a very big initial step, not practical for daily use and as above it also has massive drawbacks

There is nothing embedded in the signal from the dac or usb-spdif bridge 👍🏼 the signal is pure digital… it’s not for example like hdmi where volume commands are included via pathways in the hdmi and you can adjust the volume of an AV receiver from a device like an Apple TV as I use in my front room

 

Hello all. I'm working on the product selection for a system install, and I'm down to a few choices for DSP amp, front stage speakers, etc, but one thing that is eluding me is a quality connection for my main source, an iPhone, to whichever DSP amp I end up choosing.

Ideally I want to connect digitially, and I have looked at a number of options for this and even made one purchase, but that has not gone as planned. I bought an SMSL PO100 AK, as I also need an external DAC for my PC based Home entertainment system, I thought that would offer a good way to test it out as a possibility for the car. It works fine with the HTPC, and even an android phone, but does not work with the iPhone at all. It will not even power on when connected to the iPhone, which leaves me back at square one basically. I've tried different cables to ensure there was no issue there, and no dice. Not sure if I just got a defective unit or what. I am an absolute magnet for defective products though. It's like the world's crappiest superpower. LOL! 4 out of the last 6 times I have made a major purchase, the product arrived defective and had to be replaced. This is with high end brands too, so it;s not like I'm buying crap and getting what I pay for.

Has anyone else got some advice to offer on this front? Before you ask, I'm not willing to move off the iPhone as the source. It's simply the only practical source in an old car with a bad headunit location like mine. I plan to use a wired remote for volume control via the DSP amp itself, with the rest controlled via the phone screen. Music source will be Tidal primarily, at least for now.

Any thougts here?

Are you from Germany?
If yes, what car?

Regarding the iPhone... the SMSL PO 100 will work if you use the Camera Connection Kit from Apple and feed it additional power through the USB-C port on that adapter.
But you will not be able to control volume with the phone anymore, so you either need a controller like almost everyone is able to sell you for their DSPs.
Or, if your cars stereo is controlled via CAN but you can ask your dealer for the Mosconi RCCAN open module for their line of DSPs. This will retain all stock functionality like steering wheel controls, volume, balance, fader, tone controls, backup sensors, navigation prompts, warning chimes, preset switching and all this stuff.

2nd option with Mosconi if your car has no CAN bus controlled stereo system would be the pilot tone control. Like with every other DSP product on the market you need to operate stuff from your phone like skip forward/backward, pause, play and stuff like that, but can control volume via your stock headunit volume control.

 

Hello. I'm not German, I just live and work here. I'm actually American. The car is in my profile picture. No canbus or anything like that to worry about.

 

Readjust your gain with the iphone on full volume so its not too loud

 

“Intent would be to use it at full volume on the phone once it is intalled in a car, but that isn't quite practical in my testbed home audio system, as the amp it is connected to does not have volume control, and it would be quite loud at full volume. “ ahh my bad didny see this bit. Anyways i wouldnt worry about it now because when you get to install it in the car you will have that control

 

Also, to be clear, what I'm hearing is not distortion, it's likely compression. That could be alleviated by playing at 100% volume potentially, but it is also not present when I play other digitial sources at reduced volume. Specifically, playing from PC or Android phone does not seem to introduce the same compression effects when you turn down the volume on the source as the iPhone seems to be doing.

If I pay the iPhone at 100% all the time in the car as intended,that is likely not an issue. It's just confusingly different than I have become used to, and I was inquiring as to the why of that so that I could understand the reasons.

When it comes to anything in car audio that is not digital signal structure related, I feel I have a quite thorough understanding. I can literally trouble shoot an analog amplifier to the component level, I know how the signal chain works. I just am not clear on exactly how the different signal types work in the digital realm, and it is somewhat difficult to find clear info on this subject matter.

 

When it comes to anything in car audio that is not digital signal structure related, I feel I have a quite thorough understanding. I can literally trouble shoot an analog amplifier to the component level, I know how the signal chain works. I just am not clear on exactly how the different signal types work in the digital realm, and it is somewhat difficult to find clear info on this subject matter.

In regards to volume information... lets assume that the digital signal has a bit depth of 16 bits (like with a CD) to provide maximum possible dynamic range. So the whole dynamic range has to fit into the 16 bits.
Each time you reduce volume in the digital domain you reduce the bit depth, so the dynamic range gets limited. If you had a track that made use of the whole 16 bit dynamic range you limit it to 15, 14, 13 bits and so on which not only limits the maximum volume, but also the dynamic range that the signal can achieve. The resolution for dynamic content gets smaller and smaller, hence the quality starts to suffer.

 

This guy is absolutely correct, I control my helix with the urc.3 and it works flawlessly.

 

Hi. A bit of a necro between hot99 and myself, sorry about that, but I just found out that the Alpine PXE-C80-88 allows you to use an Iphone as your source. No need for a seperate headunit or a bunch of boxes. 8 channel hi res dsp with a 8 channel amp built in.