Newbie DAC questions

[chuckles304]

I have an old pre-hdmi days Yamaha receiver (RX-V2200 or something like that) driving four Infinity P363s. I primarily listen to music via Pandora One on my smartphone connected from its headphone jack to the red/white analog inputs, and also tracks (256khz I think) downloaded from iTunes on my iPod, connected in the same manner. If there's one thing I've learned it's that mp3's suck and this magical DAC device removes the suckiness. So, as a newbie/dummy, I ask if it is possible to go from phone/iPod to DAC to receiver, and whether that will result in noticeable improvements in quality. I'd also appreciate DAC make/model suggestions. In perusing the other forum topics looking for answers to this question I saw that one can go from laptop headphone jack to DAC to receiver(?) which I assume means I can play all those lossless files I have that don't fit on my iPod.

Thanks for any input!

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

Going from a laptop’s headphone out is the same thing as going from the phone’s headphone output.

A DAC is a “digital to analog converter.” This means that the source is digital and it is converted to analog, to plug into a receiver’s analog input (e.g. the red/white RCA jacks) or headphones.

The output from a headphone jack is analog to start with, so a DAC is useless. You’d need an ADC, “analog to digital converter.” Which is pointless, because the file started as digital on the phone or laptop, was internaly converted to analog for the headphone jack, and now you want to re-convert it back to digital so it can be converted to analog yet again?

What you need is a USB DAC converter than can plug into your phone’s USB port. I know such things exist for computers, but I don’t know if they will work for phones. Perhaps someone else can tell us.

However, it won’t necessarily remove the “suckiness” of MP3s. Many of them are low bitrate or weren’t converted with a good MP3 encoder to begin with. No DAC is going to make them sound like a WAV or lossless file.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

If your avr has optical in and your phone is an iPhone then you don't need dac. All you need is apple airport express and optical cable (ftom amazon /monoprice) to connect