Schiit Magni 3 headphone Amp, Modi 3 DAC with Apple Lightning Dock
With iOS Neutron Music Player

• Write article how you setup your offline music collection.
• Hardware, player software, tagging, streaming… Similar to this.
• Start with theory: why self-hosted
• Stack as per this.
• You need separate powersource for apple dock.
• Then, download your flac tunes in iphone and install Onkyo player pro, 10€ (see if there's a free try out before).
• Inspect with the player your file sample rate: "original sample rate of the audio file and the actual rate being played." Source.
• But having 192-kHz/24-bit FLAC files doesn't really matter: "Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space." Source.
• Document to schiit article, and mention hardware cahnges first under philosophy. Reason? Formulate it as in here under philosophy.

If you want to play hi-res music you are currently limited by the DACs inside iPhones.

iPhone DACs can at maximum play music files of 24-bit/48 kHz and if you try to play anything higher resolution, say, flac files you've downloaded from various streaming services, your 24-bit/96 kHz and 24-bit/192 kHz tunes (or what have you), iPhone will just downsample them to 24-bit/48 kHz.

If you want to listen to anything higher than 24-bit/48 kHz, you'd need to connect your iPhone to an external DAC.

DACs are built into Apple devices like the iPhone, but they are only mid-range DACs that max out at 24 bit at 48 kHz. Apple's Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter has a DAC, but it likely maxes out at the same bit depth and sample rate. Some Lightning and USB headphones have DACs, but again, they likely won't get you Hi-Res compatibility. That's why a higher-quality DAC is needed.¹

Music is stored on an external HDDs operated by OMV and accessed by Neutron over Wireguard. See omv.html and pihole.html for more info.

I have music in multiple samplerates which I want to listen to as they are. So do have any files higher than 24-bit/48 Khz?

I ran a query against my music library in Beets to see:

$ beet list -f '${samplerate}' > samplerate.txt

44100
48000
88200
96000
176400
192000

Yes, I do.

44kHz and 48kHz are what every other samplerate builds on, so 44100, 88200, 176400, 352800 are all multiples of 44100hz, so if you have music in these samplerates (or its multiples), it is basically 44100. Same thing with 48000: 96000, 192000, 384000, 768000… it is basically 48000.

What about bitdepth?

$ beet list -f '${bitdepth}' > bitdepth.txt

16
24

As everything I have is in flacs, those are the two bitdepths returned. No 128, 192, 256, 320 kbps mp3s, or 1 bit DSDs. Just flacs.

I picked one of each above 49kHz to test with if I can get them to play with iPhone and via external DAC.

$ beet list -p 'samplerate:88000..' (so basically 44 kHz)

Anubis - 2020 Homeless
media: CD
bitdepth: 24
samplerate: 88200

$ beet list -p 'samplerate:96000..' (so basically 48 kHz)

Cosmograf - 2021 Mind Over Depth
media: Digital Media
bitdepth: 24
samplerate: 96000

$ beet list -p 'samplerate:176400..' (so basically 44 kHz)

Procol Harum - 2017 Novum
media: CD
bitdepth: 24
samplerate: 176400

$ beet list -p 'samplerate:192000..' (so basically 48 kHz)

MONO - 2006 You Are There
media: CD
bitdepth: 24
samplerate: 192000

Order from

Magni 3+ headphone AMP and PREAMP (SKU: ARTMGN3+-Silver)

Modi 3 - AFFORDABLE DO-ALL DACS (SKU: ARTNMD3-Silver)

• Alternative players, should have webdav (nextcloud) shows audio rate: Neutron, Hibymusic, Onkyo
• "The iPhone will natively output data up to 24/48 through the Lightning port… and hi-res output is possible but for this the iPhone needs software like the Onkyo HF Player app, which overcomes the 24/48 limit. (There are loads of forum threads about that piece of software.)" Source: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/best-cost-effective-way-to-incorporate-iphone-7-into-stereo-system.888944/#post-22313773
• Modi 3's light lit when it was connected to its own power source (5V / 1A), and apple dock with lightgning cable to its own (2,1 A) <– 1A also might be enough: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/modi-2-magni-2-connection-issues.853957/
• After plugging in lightning cable to phone and modi 3 and waiting a few seconds, a firmware update was received (had to go to settings too for it start over-the-air update: http://www.3u.com/news/articles/1886/apples-lightning-to-usb3-camera-adapter-gets-a-firmware-update-to-version1.0.5)

• Review of Neutron.
• Document and enable bit-perfect audio in Neutron player as well as these settings to enable bit-perfect audio. Another document on bit-perfect settings.
• High-res audio is available when frequencies are above 44khz.
• Setup equalizer settings in Neutron as per https://autoeq.app/ for Sennheiser HD 650. https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/faq/#wiki_how_is_this_list_different_to_the_github_.2F_autoeq.3F

• https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/hiy7gs/guide_to_using_mpd_for_whole_house_audio_and/
• Or, setup on NAS on rpi4 mStream which is able to stream FLACs.
• Third option is to setup navidrome whic has good development and rep according to this thread: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/discussions/4760

and it has multiple compliant iOS clients to choose from: play:sub, amperfy and substreamer.