yup, up and running with shairport-sync as airplay endpoint. using little pi again with ropieee xl. ropieee xl has NAA too 
super easy setup roon bridge of course too seems to be a super fantastic piece of software again using shairport-sync you have very mighty options for tweaking airplay you can even switch the used ALAC decoder and more (need a toslink/coax hat for the pi, before entering sw optimization like upsampling. want to avoid usb.)
Iām a fan. Find them very slickā¦nice touch!
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Unnecessary. But as you can turn them off I donāt care 
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Maybe interesting for Airport Express fans, Apple Music switches with Shairport-Sync to Atmos track via Airplay. Airport Express (2nd gen) plays always Stereo track, regardless of settings for Atmos on iPad. Did not dig into this further as not so much doing with Atmos. But liked to mention. If nothing new, please ignore.
Hm, seems to be double the fun with movies tooā¦Like said myself not so much in Atmosā¦.And no headtracking via this way of courseā¦
Heheā¦ Good thing theyāre built to lastā¦
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That is one clean setup, kudos.
Get this camera adapter if you want to keep power to your iPhone.
Not necessary here: that little stand the iPhone is stuck onto is a Magsafe charger. 
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hihi, if you take a look at Dragonfly Cobalt manualā¦.Audioquest says, that one with lightning has better SQ compared to regular CCC. Actually myself pretty much done now with all setups. Waiting for Hifiberry Tos/Coax Hat, as I believe that sounds better than USB (comparing with Airport Express via Tos right now). For iPad/iPhone setup prefer not to have any cable anymore at the iOS devices itself. Just a matter of personal preference. For Highend taking NAA anyway with Qobuz.
Just donāt use the wifi on the Pi when using for audio. The wifi will give a horrible noise floor when activatedā¦
I have a portable RPi4 with screen and battery powered that I use around the house. No noise at all.
no bluetooth, no wifi.already super great SQ with Pi But comparing to Toslink Inputā¦just a bit worth imoā¦maybe placebo 
Are you using sensitived IEMs in your chain? If not you will likely not hear it but its thereā¦
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will check! thank you!
No, Focal Clear headphones or Sony WH-1000XM3.
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Wellā¦ When Audioquest tells me to jump, Iād rather duckā¦ 
I use the dongle that Jim posted downstairs. I swapped them around a bit on the LSX setup when installing the Douk box, but couldnāt hear a bit of difference.
As for the cabling ā since iOS devices are the only real solution for Apple Music to have your cake and eat it too (ie. have auto switching and play lossless/highres), these are fun setups until Apple get their act together and whip up a network transportable option (or at least make macOS app have exclusive access to the audio device so it can so autoswitching). Knowing them, this could take a while. In the mean time I am controlling AM on the tied down iPhone via my Watch ā which works surprisingly well.
So for now, these nice little horrible cabled-up iOS setups work fine and sound well ehā¦ pretty great actually. A man needs options. 
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Right. It will not be audible on those but it is very likely that it is still messing with your sound.