I’ve downloaded to my iPhone 13 Neil Young’s Chrome Dream from Qobuz as part of my imports menu in 192/24 (I haven’t purchased it separately) I’m now playing via the phone into headphones, according to the Qobuz app it’s playing in hi res.
My question is, is my iPhone capable of playing 192/24 Flac or is just the app telling me that and the phones compressing it.
It depends on how you have your headphones connected. The lightning to 3.5mm jack dongle is limited to 24 bit / 48Khz, bluetooth depending on the protocol used.
It must be compressing as Bluetooth has limitations on what resolution it can transmit. I googled it and What hifi suggest a lightning to usb camera adaptor is needed to a-third party dac like the Audioquest dragonfly……then decent headphones.
It’s not a dumb question!
Your iPhone can play it, but it will downsample it as part of the DAC process.
But the iPhone will send the full high res out as a digital stream from its lightning port and if you plug a portable DAC into that, then that DAC will process the high res stream properly.
An excellent and very low price DAC/headphone amplifier is the Audioquest Dragonfly. The Cobalt one is the best but the one I like the sound of best myself is the Red which is half the price. I haven’t tried the Black which is the cheapest. You need an adaptor to plug it into the phone and Audioquest say that the Apple USB Camera Adaptor sounds best, but it costs a lot more than an Apple USB to lightning adaptor.
The photo shows the USB Camera Adaptor. When I bought it, my phone told me there was a firmware update available for the Camera Adaptor. So it’s more expensive because it has actual digital processing of some sort on board.
I’d just connected it to my headphones using the lighting to 3.5mm so it has to be the phones dac.
The lighting connector is actually the dac.
There is a tiny DAC chip built into the adapter.
Yes, that’s what mean. It’s one of the best value for money Apple products.
This is similar to how we’re getting Tidal hires into naim.
iPad lightning → Apple Camera adapter → SMSL 100 Pro → SPDIF → nDAC
So our nDAC is still the DAC and we retain everything we love about the naim sound.
Works a treat. 24/192 sounds fab, but Tidal currently have limited content at this resolution. 24/96 much more common.
Really? I thought it was just an a thing to connect to normal headphones. It only cost $25 from Apple. 
If you think about it, there has to be a DAC in there. Lightning is a digital connector, and the 3.5mm headphone jack is analogue.
I never gave it a thought and I wouldn’t have thought I get a dac for $25.
There are better solutions if you want to improve sound quality. The lightning to USB adapter mentioned above allows you to connect a USB DAC. It also allows you to connect a charger at the same time.
I only wanted to use it with headphones and was just curious about the iPhones/Qobuz ability.
Interesting thread.
Can somebody more knowledgable than me tell me when I stream qobuz Hi Res via my iPad and connect my Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones via bluetooth, what would I actually be getting? These headphones advertise Hi Res via bluetooth.
It sounds pretty good (to me anyway) but just wondered what I’m actually getting.
DACs like the Dragonfly are primarily intended for use with Headphones. They are pretty good considering their size and price, but if you’re happy with the Apple adapter perhaps that’s all you need.
I have a DAP that I generally use. I’m just interested that the app (Qobuz) was showing 192/24 and I didn’t think the iPhone could handle that.
I prefer using a DAP too. If you want to use a phone, it has no built in DAC but the app you use for playback will have some affect on sound quality. Apple Music is limited, but third party apps such as VLC or Onkyo HF Player can handle Hi-Res formats well, or just use the Qobuz app if that is the source of your music.
I do use the Qobuz app along with iTunes. Guess my question is does the Qobuz app have a dac when playing offline or is it compressed via the iPhones dac.
