Shouldn’t the sound of modern day smartphones be audibly transparant anyway, as per the ASR measurements?

If that’s the case, why release such a dongle?

Dongles are released because they have much better DACs plus power plus... You can't have hi-res lossless with Apple Music with an Apple dongle, for example. There is a reason everyone and their grandmother is making dongles today. There IS an audible difference and even casual listeners hear it.

@H T T But on audiosciencereview, the measurements indicate that pretty much any modern device capable of playing audio, is audibly transparent..

How come there is a difference, if the measurements say there aren’t any? I can understand the need for an external amp if more power is needed to drive said transducer, but on sensitive stuff..