Bypassing a phone's DAC

SoundCard

Member
Greetings,
I have a lot of HD music files on thumb drives. Currently I am using my Samsung Galaxy 7 phone to send the music into my stereo receiver (which doesn't have any USB port). The receiver plays through a very good set of speakers. What I want to do is somehow bypass the medium to low quality DAC in my phone and use a better DAC. I'm not interested in streaming or using Wi-Fi or BlueTooth. I just want to go from thumbdrive into my receiver. How can I do that? If I need BlueTooth then I'll do it that way, but there must be a simpler system: a DAC with a USB port (and some sort of screen to allow selecting the audio files), with an analogue output for the receiver.

Any ideas?
 
I see the Galaxy 7 uses a micro-USB port and therefore, AFAIK it should be able to connect that to a PC and dumpe the audio files that way, keeping them in the digital domain. Then shunt them over to a thumb drive.

I have Sony Experia 10 phone and that uses a USB C port and I know an a C to A adaptor works for that although I have not tried moving audio files but the Galaxy should just appear as a "Mass Storage Device"?

Dave.
 
No HDMI I/O. I don't want to involve my tv in this system. I just want to improve on the DAC that is in my phone, but I want a female USB port in a DAC, to be able to receive the thumb drive,then provide analogue OUTs.

My current set-up: thumb drive (music source) to a short adapter (female USB on one end, to a small male jack (the kind you use to charge a phone) on the other end. That small male jack plugs in to my Samsung where you charge it up. I then use the phone's earphone OUT to go to a left and right phono plugs, for the receiver. Works perfectly, with the phone screen acting as the audio file selector interface.
 
The problem with a USB DAC is in how to select the files to play. Most are designed to use a computer as digital source material. They don't have screens for file navigation. You can't use the phone unless your phone has software to directly feed the DAC. You won't get any output. In addition, there will be significant drain on your battery, and you can't charge while the DAC is connected.

If you have a Galaxy 7, why not put an HD microSD card in, say 256GB, and bypass the USB thumb drive? Then you could use a bluetooth DAC to your receiver. There are a number of them, like this Dayton Audio Bluetooth Receiver or the Bludento Bluetooth Receiver

Then you just use the phone as your music source and controller and its not tethered to your sound system.
 
You should be able to connect a class compliant audio interface to the USB port on your phone using a USB On The Go adaptor which converts the micro USB connector on the phone to a standard USB socket so that you can plug a normal USB cable into it. I've used a Zoom U44 with Android devices in this way and it works well for playback. The Zoom can be powered from the phone, from batteries or from a separate power supply and it also has a digital output if you want to use it with an external DAC. There are plenty of alternative audio interfaces but it might be best to use one that can be externally powered to stop the phone's battery from draining too quickly.
 
See attached. I have just plugged a USB A to C cable into the USB 3.0 port of my (old!) W7 i3 HP laptop and I can accesss files on the SIM card or the memory SDC card.

That software program comes from Sony, cannot see Samsung not doing similar?

Oh and the USB port charges the phone the while.

Dave.
 

Attachments

  • android file transfer.png
    android file transfer.png
    335.6 KB · Views: 10
Back
Top