Headphone out to line in (iPhone)

btswire · Post by **btswire** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 11:57 am

Hello All,

I am looking to hook up my iPhone 6 to my stereo system.

After looking to see what's out there, I found some LOD cables (such as the FiiO L3) that are compatible with older iPhones, but nothing that supports the lightning connection.

Further research reveals that quality might not be compromised by going directly from the headphone out to the line input on a receiver. (It seems debatable whether or not impedance matching or bypassing the headphone amplifier actually makes a difference.)

Also, I have found that attenuating the level of my CD player makes the sound less harsh. I got this idea after reading the post from Massive Mastering here:

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopi ... evels+dbfs

So a lower output level might actually work in my favor here. Any thoughts or real world experiences? Have any of you gone from a headphone output to line in and experimented with different output levels coming from the source?

Thanks,
Ben

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 4:44 pm

Headphone out is a totally fine line-level signal, I do it all the time at home and professionally. Just buy whatever cable you need (1/8" TRS to dual RCA is typical) and give it a shot.

drumsound · Post by **drumsound** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 6:00 pm

Yea, I've got an 1/8" to 2 RCA hooked into the tape monitor of my stereo. I have been thinking of getting a bluetooth receiver, so I don't have to get up to repeat things, or skip songs on Pandora and such.

tjcasey1 · Post by **tjcasey1** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 9:58 am

Slightly off-topic, but something to prepare for in the near future:

I have an Oppo blu-ray player with a USB port. I connected a 1TB hard drive to it; the drive has a lot of 24-bit tracks I bought from hdtracks.com.

The directory of the drive shows up on my TV screen and I can play the files in alphabetical order. (Each album has its own folder and the tracks are numbered 01, 02, etc. so they play in the right order).

It's like an ipod on steroids....

honkyjonk · Post by **honkyjonk** » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:55 pm

I think the D to A and the little amp in iphones/pods etc is just super sucky. There's not anything wrong (for the most part) with driving a cd/cassette etc level line in on a receiver with a headphone out. It's just the sound of the unit that bugs.

Makes me think 320 mbps mp3's aren't that bad really (compared to full resolution CD files I can't really tell the difference) I think it's more of the amp and DA converter and of course the sound of Itunes (not flat, even when it's flat)

analogika · Post by **analogika** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 4:26 am

honkyjonk wrote:I think the D to A and the little amp in iphones/pods etc is just super sucky. There's not anything wrong (for the most part) with driving a cd/cassette etc level line in on a receiver with a headphone out. It's just the sound of the unit that bugs.

Ken Rockwell begs to disagree. According to his measurements, the iPhones' headphone out (starting with iPhone 5 and newer) is absolutely top-notch, on par with high-end studio equipment (unless I'm missing something vital):

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone ... uality.htm

IDQ · Post by **IDQ** » Fri Feb 13, 2015 7:58 am

This got me thinking about my own recent issues with this.

First, to vent a little: Are we all pissed off that Apple makes it prohibitively expensive and a huge hassle to license/sell anything that bypasses the D/A converter and accesses the digital stream via lightning cable? Quality D/A or shitty D/A, I should be able to use my own if I want, right? Yes, we're all pissed, right?

So, I have successfully used the headphone out to stereo RCA with a regular received in the past. I'm in a kinda temporary living situation right now, so I hooked up recently with the iphone to an ADCOM power amp, to a pair of older KEF speakers, controlling level with the iphone out, since there's no preamp or attenuation knob. It sounds like shit. So is the problem the crappy apple D/A, the absence of a preamp, or some problem with the Adcom (which was sitting dormant the last 10 years). The speaker surrounds look to be okay. Anyway, kinda off topic in a recording forum (I also discussed this at audiokarma), but thought I'd mention my own issues since the same topic was raised.

Scodiddly · Post by **Scodiddly** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 4:36 pm

I think the iPhone headphone out is completely fine. Sure, there are people out there who want to sell you some boutique solution, but in the real world it's a very tiny difference at best.

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Headphone out to line in (iPhone)

Headphone out to line in (iPhone)

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