Qualcomm WCD9375 vs Dual ES9218P?

Equipment / Electronics / Gear / Accessories DACs
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What I’m trying to determine is if it’s worth me purchasing the FiiO BTR5 when considering a few things.

This would be my first Bluetooth device of this nature, in the past, I never had a need for one but now, I have a feeling the audio quality of this paired with my phone might be better than just running wired to my phone.
I’m also considering the use case of this being an ultraportable DAC for my laptop.

Those are the two major points and the reason I’m so on the fence, because it’s actual built purpose as a Bluetooth device is second to what I would actually be using this for, which is better audio quality in a portable scenario.

Ok now for the technical comparisons;

My phone is the Xiaomi Mi 9t and it has a Qualcomm WCD9375
Here is the manufacturer’s product page:
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/wcd9375

The FiiO BTR5 sports Dual ES9218P
And here is it’s manufacturer’s product page:
http://www.esstech.com/index.php?cID=422

The laptop I own is a Razer Blade 15 Advanced (Early 2019 model) and for the life of me I can’t find out what DAC chip it is running, although I have asked on some Razer forums and will continue to search while keeping this post updated along the way.

Now considering that the FiiO has a Dual DAC makes things a bit complicated for me since I’m still quite new to this and it isn’t completely clear of what the technical significance of it is, but my most educated guesses are;

Either that its a requirement for the balanced 2.5mm jack?
or that each jack gets it own DAC?
or that the two DAC’s combined, while having the same technical specs, can push headphones harder with both DAC’s as opposed to one?

I could be completely wrong as these are all just guesses so to continue in light of that, im just going to speak in terms of each DAC chip as a single unit.

and from what I could tell, the two DAC’s are very similar and comparable in many ways.

The thing that stood out to me most, are that they both can support up to 32-bit 384kHz PCM.

If anyone can shed some light on the significance of the Dual DAC or even what kind of DAC my laptop is running that would be super helpful.

What do you guys think?
Would it be worth it in my scenario? Specifically why or why not?

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So the main benefit of having dual dacs is that one dac is typically dedicated to each channel, so you should get better stereo separation and resolving power in theory.

The dac does not power the headphone, the amp inside the btr5 is fed by the dac and powers the headphone. Both jacks will take advantage of the dual dacs. The 2.5mm jack uses the balanced output of the amp, where the 3.5mm does not. You are not only paying for the better dacs, but also a better headphone amp inside the btr5

This is just a guess on the laptop but it’s probably a realtek chip, so pretty decent prob (didn’t look it up though)

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ah ok now theres something I completely overlooked, thanks for clearing that up.

So does my phone not have an amp?

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All of your devices have an amp and dac, the btr5 and other devices like it just have a better dac and amp with more care put into it for better driveability and sound quality

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Anything that powers ur headphones has an amp. Your car, phone, Bluetooth speakers, Bluetooth headphones they all have amps

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ah yes I realise that now, I always knew it but for some reason through my research i’ve led myself into the confusion of thinking that the amp can be built into the DAC in the more portable scenarios.
Safe to say I definitely still need to do a lot more research.

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