Idky it’s being down voted. It’s clearly helpful for people getting into wired iems and usually start off with thr cheaper dongles from Apple and Samsung.

I don’t know if it produces more power (and I doubt you hit its power limits with with IEMs, if you can still hear anything), but it definitely does not produce more voltage - I tested this myself a few days ago. And why would it? It’s the same device, the DAC isn’t in the phone. More likely Apple changed the volume taper in the UI or something.

Did you by any chance replace an EU model with one from another region? The EU ones are known to be capped at half the output voltage as elsewhere due to nanny legislation.

I thought this is a known fact on this sub.

Don’t take my words, but I suspect it has to do with USB-C being able to draw more power than Lightning. I mean, that’s why people here quite often recommend the USB-C version of the Apple dongle DAC even for high impedance headphones if they don’t want too much hassle.

I always wanted to drive my 800S’s in public.

^^^/s

USB-C has been well known for being able to drive high power, therefore it can do laptop chargin really well. It’s not a surprise that the USB-C version can drive higher power.

Even with USB-C dongles, plugging it to an ipad instead of android will have considerably higher output, unless you enable exclusive/direct mode