Around the time I was talking about the listening environment I had written about a few days ago... there was one thing I was skeptical about.
I acquired a Fiio BTR17 DAC to connect with an iPhone for portable use and to listen to better sound quality...
Even after configuring the settings in various ways and listening to lossless audio, the B&W PX8 wired (3.5mm to USB-C) was producing sound at a level that was really hard to listen to.
So... is this the limitation of a Chinese-made DAC? But why are reviewers praising it so highly? It was an incomprehensible situation.
While changing various environmental settings and listening to the same source... it only performed worse than Bluetooth AptX codec, which was maddening.
In a state of almost giving up... today I was listening to music on my MacBook instead of my phone by connecting a Sennheiser BTD600 via USB for AptX codec and listening wirelessly. Then suddenly I wondered, what if I connected the Fiio BTR17 wired (USB-C) to my MacBook instead of my phone and listened? So I connected it.
It was at the level of crying out 'Oh~ My~ God~'.
First, I kept the BTR17 settings at default but turned off only the EQ. Then I selected BTR17 as the output on my MacBook and ran the "Audio MIDI Setup" app to set the format of the audio output device.
When BTR17's EQ is on, 192 kHz is the maximum, but when I turned off the EQ, I could select values even higher than that.
And I configured Apple Music settings as follows.
Since I don't have professional knowledge, there's a situation I don't quite understand...
The source audio is 24Bit / 192kHz, but... no matter how much the output is set to 32bit / 768kHz... shouldn't it be downsampled to produce 192kHz sound? That's what I think... but when I actually listen to it... there's a clear difference.
The list above is my listening list when I test headphones, receivers, and speakers.
When I listen to Pavlo's Fantasia, I really feel the difference very clearly.
Acoustic guitar pieces sounded noticeably better on the BTR17 than when listening through the Ali~'s tube amp that I had highly praised last time.
If the tube amp provides a blurry, analog-like soft sound, the BTR17 seems to deliver a sharp and clear sound.
In that respect, personally, acoustic guitar sounds better to me when listened to through the BTR17.
The point that remains unsolved is that I haven't been able to find what settings and connection environment I need to achieve sound quality on an iPhone wired connection equal to what I'm hearing now on my MacBook wired connection, and it remains a task to solve.
Whether it's a problem with the Lightning to USB-C cable... or if there's something more in the output settings, I think I need to go through various trials and errors.
If I used an Android device, the connection itself would be USB-C so I could rule out cable problems... but I'm still using an iPhone 14... (I hear the latest iPhones use USB-C..) so I can't escape Lightning.
I will try various approaches to find out what settings are the same as listening on my MacBook.
