Excellence EVERYWHERE w/ AudioQuest's DragonFly Cobalt

If you are not " blown away" by the form factor and only interested in the quality of the audio produced by the device then choose ifi zen air dac powered by burr brown at fraction of its price.

Dragonfly Cobalt. Never looking back to DAP. This device changes the whole audiophile game.

I had one of these..sound was good but there was feedback alot...returned it and purchased the IFI Hip-Dac 3...Much better ...same price ..lot more functions for better sound..

The focus pulls are so nice, video is good too!

Love this channel so informative 😊👍

I've just ordered mine. I listen to a lot of music on my PC and have never been happy with audio that is output from computers. Audio is pretty much an afterthought on a computer. Let alone noise they generate into audio.

Hey John, just come across this video, great btw. Information is so helpful.
So, if you have time to reply, can you help please?
As well as using my brand new Cobalt for headphones, I'm hoping to use it with a Bluetooth speaker, namely the Marshall Woburn iii
My question is this, the Woburn has a 3.5mm in and phono in. Will I get more info, better sound, using the 3 5mm or a 3.5mm to phono lead. Any help would be amazing. Thank you, Jeff

Hi, is it worth getting over the audioquest dragonfly black? Best prices I've found are all in (including adapter) £104 for the black and £194
for the cobalt. Is it worth the 90 pound premium?

Phew, I thought you were going to say "rooter". Yes, I'm an Aussie

This looks like a fantastic product but way too limited for me. The Dragonfly looks like it can only work with a laptop, but what I'm really looking for is to use a headphone amp with my Samsung smartphone

Does anyone know if there's anything similar to the Dragonfly but you can attach it to your smartphone instead of a laptop?

I just purchased the New Focal Bathys Headphones with a built-in Dac a24 Bit / 192 KHz. I own a Dragonfly Cobalt… which is better ?

Hello, thank you very much for your contributions to lovers of good sound...! I am from Chile, I am a teacher, thanks to your recommendation I bought the DragonFly Cobalt, the value was about $432, about $350,000 Chilean pesos. I have a good quality BOSE and Sennheiser headphones. What adapter do you recommend for an iPhone cell phone? The color of my Dac does not change despite using Spotify, TIDAl, Qobu or the computer, why is this happening? Please recommend good quality headphones and cables to get the most out of my Dac. Thank you very much in advance and greetings from Santiago de Chile

I need amplification so this wont work for me.

Can anybody suggest me how to use my dongle DAC with my car system which doesn't has the AUX INPUT and just has Android auto

This Cobalt is literally turning my luxury iPhone device into a decent midrange DAP costing twice the price.

I've tried the Dragonfly black years ago, it was ok but my THX Onyx USB-C dongle sounds better

The whole thing with having to go through UBB Audio Player Pro before it recognises anything and will play is an absolute faff. It does sound good when you have a Wi-Fi connection, but on a cellular connection which you're obviously using when ouside , its constantly telling me it doesn't have enough signal etc and a bunch of other things. I spend more time looking at settings than listening to music. More trouble than it's worth. Which is a shame.

Hello Darko, I watch all your uTube video also subscriber my question is I have LG V30 with the AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt would make big upgrade in sound . And how it compare with iPhone 13 Pro Max but need to purchased adapter. Also like to connected to my Vintage Luxman C120 Pre Amp and Power Amp what are your thoughts .

My question is simple: for a guy that only uses wired headphones at home, in a gaming laptop, is the DragonFly black enough? Thank you.

oye, we do live in the same city :)

Thanks for the video. Is the cobalt only good enough for head phones and on-the-road use, or is it good enough for a high end system at home?

I have a question about DACs. Considering that you have found at the EXACT same price (Audioquest Dragonfly Red & Audioengine D1), which DAC would you choose and why? I have a pair of Edifier's S3000 PRO Studio Monitors and i want to buy an external DAC in order to listen to music as detailed as possible from those two speakers. I really, really need your advice about this one. Thank you !

What would you or anyone reading recommend for trying to find a DAC to run in between a External HDD(usb-c) to a HeadUnit(car stereo)

i wholeheartedly concur...... been using it for years.

Hi I have apple products, iPhone, iPad etc. and I have Bose Qc35, and Sony WH-1000XM4. Do you think that I will hear the difference? I will be making changes in the speaker products going from Bose to better performing speakers. Would it be a good 1st acquisition to improve the sound quality for my earphones?

Hi Darko. I recently bought a Dragonfly Cobalt but unfortunately I can’t connected to iPad neither my iPhone. It shows a message that says This accessory is not supported by this iPad . Any suggestions to solve this issues? Thanks

So I got the Cobalt and the iPhone camera adapter/dragon tail on an iPhone 12. Using Etymotic headphones. First thing was : iPhone reports ‘device not compatible’ (which I ignored) second it disables the in-cable up/down/pause buttons on my headphones. Highly undesirable. What am I doing wrong? Also the sound difference didn’t seem so significantly better to pay this kind of money. I have returned it (to Amazon) for now but am open to suggestions.

bit of a silly question but can i use this device with wireless headphones?

Hi John! I've been watching your videos for years and never took the time to say thank you for the quality of the work you do for us, so... Thank you! I purchased so many gears based on your reviews (or non reviews, for example the Meze 99 classics or KEF LS50). I am stuck with an issue and hope you (or your friendly community) could help. I have purchased a dragon redfly Red DAC to improve my experience when listening to music (mainly Spotify as I have tried Quobuz but did not enjoy that Hi Res experience that much because I want a streaming service that presents me "new songs" and the algorythm of other services is just not like the one of Spotify, I want to discover new songs so I chosed for quantity/discovery VS quality). For unknown reasons, the dragonfly red isn't delivering any sound at all with my Samsung S10 (it works fine with the Iphone of my wife) and customer service of both companies cannot help me. What can I do to enjoy the Meze 99 classics according to you? I was planning to buy a DAP (Sony NW-A105 for example) so that I can skip using my Samsung S10, it would be still cheaper than buying a new phone but I don't know if the sound quality will be better than Samsung paired to my Meze 99 classics? Any idea on how to skip or buy pass this smartphone issue? I don't even know if I can connect the dragon fly red to a DAP like Sony or should I just throw it away and only use a DAP and Samsung? Keep up the good work and good listening moments to the community!

I have a basic question. The iPhone 13 doesn’t have a headphone output, it only has a lightning output. Am I correct in assuming that you can’t bypass the internal DAC so that you can get a digital signal from the lightning port? In other words, when I connect a dragonfly DAC, isn’t the signal going through both the internal iPhone DAC and the dragonfly? Is this a case of two DACs in series and is that an issue?

I have cobalt and it doesn’t sound better then my MBP 14”.

Even an FPGA! (Free Programmable Gate Array)

Can I use this with 150Ohm headphones? I'm new to Hi-Fi and audiophilism. I just want something that sounds marginally better than my regular consumer headphones (Sony WH-1000XM4 & Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro). More details and more clarity. I wanna hook it up to my laptop or smartphone and I'm thinking of getting the Sennheiser HD660 headphones. But they have a 150Ohm impedance...

Hi Team DA. I want the Cobalt. Could I order through yours ?

Great video. Polaris is according to their homepage sold out. Are you going to make a review for campfire earphones?

Hi! Came across your video on dragonfly and just subscribed to your channel. I just bought a Mac Air M1 and am having issues connecting it to my Dragonfly Black DAC. The DAC is being detected by my mac, but the glow light is not turning blue, and I am not getting any sound output via my headphones. I would be really grateful if you could provide a solution to this. Thanks in advance!

Why does the Red cost more if the Cobalt is better? 🤔

Hey great review man. I was kinda shocked that it can only play up to 98kHz because I'm pretty sure the DAC chip in it can do up to 32 bit 768kHz which is insane. I know there is a newer dongle DAC that has the same chip and its a lot less so I would love you do a review of it with your appreciations and maybe mention how does the price difference feels. It's the Hidizs S9 Pro dongle DAC.
Again thanks for your amazing reviews and I'll keep watching your channel

This video and the American Made video made me purchase the Dragonfly Cobalt! First off how much you talked about it so passionately and then secondly how much love and care with which it’s made. Btw, I purchased it off the link from your site John, so hope you got a little kickback from it. Love your work!

Yes I liked the vid, as always, VERY MUCH. Thanks ⬆️⬆️⬆️

Will it drive hi impedance cans?

I have the black. Thinking of getting either the red or the blue (cobalt). How much better is the Cobalt??

It may sound great, but you do lose the convenience of bluetooth?

Sorry I'm late to the audio party - watched 4 of your videos today (it's been a slow week) and also subscribed to your channel - it would be rude not to. Expertly informative, honest & serious, yet entertaining. PS - just ignore any naysayers here: they clearly haven't done any routing recently.

Would this work well patched into an audio receiver?

Hi John,
I absolutely concur with all the good things said about the Cobalt. It even improved the sound when I used it with my LG V30. However, when I attach the cobalt to an iphone 7 via apple lightning to USB, the sound still comes out of iphone speaker and not the cobalt. What might be the issue here?

Petrit,
Kosovo

Thank you. This video was very helpful. Have you had an opportunity to test the iFi GO Blu? I'm interested to know how its 'wired' performance compares with the Cobalt.

I didn't mean to be a dick here or anything. But the Dragonfly Cobalt objectively performs worse than the Apple dongle you get for free when you buy an iPhone (you can also buy it for 10$). The Apple dongle beats out the Dragonfly Cobalt in almost every respect when playing 16-bit PCM. And 16-bit PCM covers about 90% of lossless digital music. Why pay 20x more to have sound that is worse than which you get from the Apple or Samsung dongle (yes, even the Samsung dongle outperforms the Dragonfly C)?