iPhone connection?

[redragon]

To connect my iPhone to my home stereo, I used a device called a Pure i-20, which was an iPhone dock with a toslink connection to my receiver. Had a remote, worked great.

Moved to an iPhone 5 and added a 30 pin to Lightning dongle. Imperfect, but okay.

Moved to an iPhone 6 and something about the new phone, dongle and dock didn't connect anymore.

Ditched the dock and have no solution. Would rather not bluetooth.

Any good solutions that use the optical connection?

 

[chichi]

There are cable-connected DACs for phones. Chord Mojo could be one of the most mentioned high-end gear in the past year (around $600, but only half-priced of the bigger brother Chord Hugo). I listened to both Hugo and Mojo in person, the sound quality is incredibly great! At beginning many iPhone owners were turn away due to 2 cables are required for Mojo as specified by the manufacturer:
https://www.moon-audio.com/chord-mojo/faq.html

Later some people mentioned the L19 cable for another popular Fiio E17K ALPEN 2 USB DAC can be used to connect from Apple Lightning to Chord Mojo. The cable is around $30 on ebay.

These products may be described as "headphone amp". But they all can be switched to line-level output.

 

[guitarjazz]

You could just keep an old iPhone or iPod touch as dedicated audio players.

 

[JCW308]

Why not a Bluetooth audio receiver? They're super inexpensive and sound great.

 

[Rex Anderson]

I've been looking into this too. I have an older iPad and wanted better than the mini plug to RCA cable to my preamp. I was looking at the Pure i-20, lol.

Seems stupid there are so few simple USB to SPDIF or optical converters. Bryston has one and the description make me understand why: http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=BYBUC1

I'm not gonna drop that kinda coin for better fidelity, so I'm still using the mini plug cable. It doesn't sound as bad as I remembered.

One other option I saw was an Apple airport express for $100 (plus a good optical cable). It's WiFi, but it probably sounds better than the analog out of the iPad.

 

[Tonekat]

I have an Airport Express near my stereo to pick up my network, and run a toslink from the Express into a Schitt DAC (has a toslink input), then out the RCA outputs of the Schitt into my MacIntosh preamp.

 

[redragon]

I've given up on this. Digital signal comes out of the lightning connector, so why not port that digital signal to the toslink in the receiver?

Dunno.

Pure doesn't make an upgrade to the i-20. I guess it's RCA for me.

 

[johan]

Check out AudioQuest Dragonfly Black

 

[redragon]

I ended up buying the Audioengine B1 Bluetooth receiver. Haven't gotten it yet, but will review when I get it.

http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Wireless/B1-Bluetooth-Music-Receiver

 

[redragon]

BTW the AudioQuest Dragonfly Black has no relation to the result I am trying to achieve.

 

[guitarjazz]

Lightning to USB to Fiio DAC.

 

[redragon]

Fiio stuff looks cool. however, no TOSLINK.

 

[paulg]

As with all things in digital audio there are many ways to go. How into are you and how much do you want to spend? Audioengine makes some good reasonable priced solutions. I think you will be happy (for now).

 

[redragon]

paulg, yes I have an Audioengine B1 which I should get tomorrow.