Would you get better sound quality by using the Monoprice Monolith Portable AMP/DAC hooked up to an iPhone 7? Or the FiiO M9. I am looking for detail and nice soundstage.
If you go for a portable AMP/DAC then personally i’d take a https://ifi-audio.com/products/nano-idsd-bl/ all day long over the Monolith plus if it’s of interest the Nano has a 3.5mm balanced output and suppports DSD 256/128/64/12.4/11.2/6.2/5.6/3.1/2.8 audio formats.
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cheers, differences between the Nano iDSD BL and the xDSD?
Felix
Depends on what source you use? MQA then the idsd-bl supports this… it also has an analog 3.5mm line out, a dedicated ie match matched one and a Balanced 3.5mm too…I know where my money would go/did go 
Depends on your music source. I tried listening to Tidal (my main source) on my iPhone and it was garbage quality. However on my Mac and PC the quality was fine. I’ve tried both the M9 and the THX Portable and I returned the Fiio because it didn’t stream in lossless format. It only went lossless if I played files from the memory card. I now use an unlocked Galaxy S9 and the THX Portable with absolutely stellar results. It required a little DIY work, but now I can stream my downloaded content on the plane through THX sound and it is fantastic. My advice: don’t use the iPhone for high quality music. and (honestly) all of audiophile equipment starts at the source. if you are running shitty files through a $2k sound system, it won’t make it worth the money. However, running 24 bit files through $300 of equipment can sound amazing. all about the source.
True, but then again there isn’t really much difference between lossless and 320kbps for pretty much all people.
What is your reasoning behind choosing the idsd-bl over the ifi xDSD?
Couldn’t justify paying twice the price for features on the xDSD that I didn’t need ie Bluetooth, Xbass and 3D soundstage etc, plus 80% of the time I use the iDSD-bl’s phono out to feed a Little Dot MKII.
it is not only features
the sound is different
I prefer my Samsung S10 and S8+ with Tidal MQA Masters out of USB Audio Player Pro App with mqa enabled over ifi xDSD - more power than most DAPs, faster Android, easy acces to all apps…
The Fiio M9 is not bad but you have to have good quality files on your internal storage and you have less power