Poor sound quality with lightning Adapter / 44.1kHz / iOS 9.2

I found the issue, it's Siri. Turn off siri in setting and the sound quality is restored. You can go into settings while music is playing and turn Siri off and here the quality improve. I have the iPad Pro 9.7 and the iPhone 6s and neither device has this issue.

Hi again.

I've done some test with my idevices:

• iPad mini retina iOS 9.0.2. Audio to my ipod dock through the lightning-30pin adapter. Audio is crap (like a 64kbs 22050hz mp3). Disabling Siri solves the problem.
• iPad Air iOS 9.3.3. Just the same. Audio is crap. Disabling Siri fixes the crappy sound.
• iPhone 6 iOS 8.4. In this case audio is good when Siri is enabled or disabled.
• iPhone 4S iOS 9.3.3. Without the lightning adapter, just to test if the problem comes from an enabled Siri in iOS 9. There is any problem, audio is good. You can listen a little gap when enabling or disabling Siri, but audio remains good.

✅

I'm running FLAC files via the VOX app, 0,2m lightning cable to Fiio L9 LOD cable to Fiio A3 amp with B&W P7 headphones - I don't find any distortion in the highs. I also run podcasts via the Downcast app, and youtube via the TubeX app. If anything, it sounds better to me because the phone's amp's job is now being handled by the Fiio using the lightning to 30-pin. Perhaps it's a problem with your phone's lightning port? Or the amp/output you're using? Have you tried testing the adapter against another lightning port? Different amp? Headphones?

Yes, I'm facing the same problem since iOS9. The sound quality was great during iOS8 with the lightning adapter. What a shame that now have to use back my old iPod Mini 3rd Generation which now sound better than my iPad Mini 2.

Hope that Apple will rectify this issue in the upcoming new iOS update.

I would try to update to the latest iOS 9.3.4 and see if that works for you. It seems like other users are experiencing this issue. I'm going to do a little research and see if I can find something for you.

Thanks ! I was dissapointed too with the sound quality. I tried to disable Siri and now basses and highs are more realistic and defined. Back with Siri activated, all the basses sounded like blurred and covered..

I don't know if the DAC inside the adapter is better of worst to the one inside my ipad mini retina, but al least with this 'fix' the sound is not crap !

¿Did the last iOS update fix this?

Thanks again.

Wow. I've been noticing this problem for a while on my iPad mini 2. Audio through the Lightning port all of a sudden is very low quality. I do not have this issue with audio through the Lightning port of my iPhone 6.

I guess I'll try disabling Siri on the iPad mini 2...if that's the solution, that's one heckuva bug that needs to be squashed in iOS 10.

Thank you jmirogers, your solution worked and restored the sound quality on my ipod touch (6th Gen). This has been bugging for quit a while and now I'm so happy, appreciate it!