line out dock for iPhone 5 and fiio amp

line out dock for iPhone 4 and fiio amp

Could i have some suggestions for a lod for iPhone 4 and fiio e7 pls?

 

found this seller on ebay, seems good
Apple LOD Line Out Dock Cable iPhone iPod iTouch Nano b | eBay

 

FiiO L3 Line Out Dock Cable for iPod, iPhone & iPad in Black
£7.00

These are good - we will have the new and very nicely made Just Audio Black and Gold cables soon although they are not releasing and LOD right away.

 

This is the one I bought - works great.

 

A line out, like AUX cable to play on something else?

 

"Line Out" is an old term that meant the signal from the preamp, with tone controls and etc., but not amplified to drive speakers. That speaker amplification required a power amp. An Integrated Amp combined the two. Today, the Apple devices are sort-of in between. They don't have enough power to drive speakers, but neither is the headphone jack output a true Line Out since it's meant to drive headphones.

So when you use a LOD cable, you bypass the headphone jack and use the dock connector instead. You still get the Apple's DAC and preamp amplification, but you bypass Apple's volume control circuitry. Apple tells me that the quality is the same either way, but I've found that bypassing the volume controls is good and prevents distortion due to not getting the exact volume setting to feed to the headphone or whatever you have connected.

 

It's funny that apple said that because it definitely sounds better to come from the bottom dock. Even if this is just because you are bypassing about 5 metres of PCB there is definitely a difference - I have an LOD with 3mm female so you can directly compare the same 3.5mm jack to jack.