I recently bought a ‘Fiio’ portable DAC. I had a hunch the following might work and while I had to shell out quite bit to try it, if it didn’t work I still had a top quality DAC I could use for straight forward listening.
So, purchase either a Fiio E17 (£100) or E07 (£70) portable headphone amplifier and USB DAC. I got a steal on eBay, but Amazon have all their products.
Simply connect the Fiio DAC to your iPad using a 30 pin/lightining to USB camera adapter (you can use a standard 30 pin to 3.5mm connector but you will not get the benefits of the DAC), then plug in the Griffin Djay cable into either of the two available headphone ports on the Fiio.
On the Griffin cable, as normal plug headphones into one connection and a 3.5mm to phono cable into your mixer/amp from the other and you are good to good!
The brilliant little Fiio acts as a stereo pre amp - boosting the volume and quality of sound in your headphones (the lack of which is the complaint with the iMic) while also improving the overall sound output beautifully too - all in glorious analogue stereo…
Search on Amazon for Fiio DAC’s. I use the E7, but there is also the new version - the E17 - both under £100. If you doubt my remarks about the sound quality - check the majority of the reviews…
These Fiio products are absolute quality - I use another of theirs (the tiny E06 headphone amplifier) between my iPhone and car stereo, or when I’m listening with headphones on the go. I now hate listening to my music without using either of their products that I have.
And no, I do not work for them. I’m sharing this because I was so frustrated with no stereo out when using Djay. For me it was the missing piece of the jigsaw. Goodbye CDJ’s…
On my MacBook Pro, I bought splitter cables never to really be satisfied or get it working properly for some reason. Today I just went ahead and bought a USB headphones-set which DJay even asked of me to use as the all-important pre-cueing route. Very nice.
Pretty decent pack all in all for a facile price, with DJay, m-audios xession pro and those skype headphones. I’m makin my own cds now.
Thanks for this topic. I was wondering why the sound got so thin without bass when I used a splitter cable. On the 3.5" stereo to mono female 1/4" splitter cable, when I use a another 3.5mm to stereo out the main output sounds very thin.
If I use a mono 1/4" connect to the splitter cable main out it sounds better.
I sometimes use a DI with the mono cable and it improves the sound.
hello sir I read your article with great interest, it is well explained and very simple to understand. I totally agree with you on the improvement of the sound by connecting the main output of your ipad to the USB input of your fiio, the converter (digital - analog) of the fioo is of much better quality than the one built into the ipad. but the double stereo is not resolved as written on the title of your article because the connection system that you offer does not get 2 stereo channels for pre-cueing and 2 stereo channels for the master, I explain myself :
in the pre-cueing menu of the ipad, once you enable the split mode, the stereo sound of the ipad is automatically split into two mono channels (1 for the master and 1 for lepre-cueing) that you take out the sound through the headphones jack or through the main connector (with mini usb adapter or others).
if you do not validate the split mode, yes you leave the ipad a stereo sound and whatever you do after you lose the pre-cueing function.
the solution that you propose is interesting to improve the sound of each channel but you hear a double mono or bi-neural sound (good quality) on the headphones and on the master but not at all of the double stereo.
the only solution to get a real stereo on the pre-cueing and the master is to release the sound of the ipad both on the earphone jack and by the dock 31 pin and manage the precueing in the menu of the ipad. I do not know if this is possible now.
