Old phones as streaming sources

with an appropriate USB adapter cable, my old iphone 6s makes a pretty good streamer.

Sorry but no, it doesn’t. It sucks. I started that way with my iPhone6 and also thought it sounded pretty good through Qobuz, but when I graduated to a relatively modest iFi Zen streamer the difference was night and day and performance was on another level entirely. Doing various tweaks or whatever to the iPhone is just polishing the turd IMHO and is probably a waste of time for relatively little benefit. If you wanna use it in a second or third system for non-critical listening it’s good for that, but for any more serious listening it’s an absolute bottleneck to performance and don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s not. I think even adding something as simple and inexpensive as a Wiim Pro would be a considerable improvement over your iPhone. That was my experience anyway and hope this helps.

Well that is fine @soix , but I think you would be better served by prefacing your comments with "in my opinion" which is what it is. My points of reference are a Auralic Aries streamer and a OktoResearch Dac8, both of which are in another league than the reference streamers you mention. Mind you I am not claiming the phone to be as good as these but I find it quite listenable. May I ask if you even tried the tweaks I describe when you were listening with your iphone? Did you run it though a decent dac, you know some dacs do a better job than others in handling a digital stream. Thanks for your response  but I think my little old iphone is on a par with my Raspberry Pi/Allo Digione. Anyone who says that kind of performance "sucks" is using a stronger word than is merited IMHO..

So, did you compare running the iPhone direct into the DAC8 versus going through your Aries?  If you don’t hear a significant improvement through the Aries, well, let’s  just say we greatly differ in our experiences.  And yes, I bought an upgraded LavriCable silver Lightning/USB cable to upgrade from the Apple Camera Adapter to run directly into my Musician Pegasus R2R DAC and it was a big improvement, bit it still in no way approached the performance going through the iFi Zen streamer.  So I stand by my own listening experience that compared to a decent streamer the iPhone sucks relatively as a streaming source, but I also mentioned it’s fine in less critical situations and is indeed very listenable in that situation.  But IME it in no way compares to running a dedicated streamer — not even close.  Hey, you asked “What’s your experience” and I gave it to you.  If your experience is different or you disagree that’s fine, but I stand by what I heard/said. 

I repurposed an older iPad that had a short battery life into a dedicated streamer next to my desk. Since it had to be connected to the DAC anyway, the charging cord wasn't an issue. For my ears, the sound is terrific in this near field desk setup and the display is awesome with the iPad propped up in a stand. 

I vote a yes to extending the usefulness of this kind of electronics. With the money I save, someday I will able to afford the kinds of electronics that will help me discern higher quality music reproduction.