your portable music player of choice

whats up with cowon these days

they still make stuff? (http://www.cowonglobal.com/product_wide/product_mp3_main.php)

 

I know nothing about them though, were they considered quality? 

or were you making a funny?

no funny, always thought cowon made really good stuff, just hadn't heard anyone say anything about them after the bump. seems like they still have really nice stuff

 

plenue j looks great

Edited February 20, 2018 by dr lopez

ima do some research, they've got lots of diff players

noice!

  On 2/20/2018 at 5:07 PM, mokz said:

I still use my Creative Zen that must be almost 10 years old by now. The main reasons are:

1. I listen to music when I'm traveling and outside the reach of internet connections so no streaming available.
2. I also travel outside the reach of the electricity grid and I want to save my phone battery for actually making phone calls and sending text messages. For emergencies or whatever.
3. When I go running it's much more light weight and less bulky than my phone and I can just leave my phone at home.

Also not having listening interrupted by some random bullshit internet notification sounds nice.

I've been using my phone(s) for the last 6 years or so. It's not like I'm doing some acute listening sessions while I'm walking on a noisy street or on a bus, heck even the wire to my headset makes noises when I'm moving. The loss of quality compared to other portable devices is negligible, and it's way more convenient.

Repair/upgrade on an ipod classic. New 7th Gen board due to loose 30-pin dock connector. I threw in a Samsung 850 Evo mSATA 500GB SSD with iFlash-SATA (mSata) adapter.

l33t

I wish my 180gb ipod still worked. Limiting myself to the 7 free gigs on my phone feels like a prison sentence, and my nano is a stupid 2gb.

 

Meanwhile my dad laughs at me with his old 128mb mp3 player from ancient history (aka less than 20 years ago)

“Play the latest Autechre album”

 

 

“Make me dance”

 

 

 

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Had an ipod 6th gen for years. In hindsight I'm pretty sure a coworker stole it.

 

I just load up offline songs in Spotify now on my phone.

Can anyone tell me if the fiio m3k dac sounds as good as the lg v30 dac?

both are "transparent", meaning they sound better than human hearing. so no auidble difference between them.

  On 3/14/2019 at 11:17 AM, eugene said:

both are "transparent", meaning they sound better than human hearing. so no auidble difference between them.

eugene may i ask u how come u know so much about audio fidelity? I remember the other thread where u discussed with what's his face about night and day so i wondered... I'm not taking the piss I'm on you're side i despise audiophiles....

 

Btw what do u mean they sound better than human hearing? Don't u mean they're good enough so that human hearing can't tell the difference? Cause u know human hearing doesn't 'sound', human hearing 'listens'... Hehe

Edited March 14, 2019 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON

I uploaded my entire music library (171GB) to google music and stream it off there when im out and about. I have about 10 albums on my micro sd i switch up every week or so

  On 3/14/2019 at 12:16 PM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

 

  On 3/14/2019 at 11:17 AM, eugene said:

both are "transparent", meaning they sound better than human hearing. so no auidble difference between them.

eugene may i ask u how come u know so much about audio fidelity? I remember the other thread where u discussed with what's his face about night and day so i wondered... I'm not taking the piss I'm on you're side i despise audiophiles....

 

Btw what do u mean they sound better than human hearing? Don't u mean they're good enough so that human hearing can't tell the difference? Cause u know human hearing doesn't 'sound', human hearing 'listens'... Hehe

yeah, that's what i meant. all devices produce distortion and noise and whatever during the process of coversion or amplification, but if they do it at a low enough level you shouldn't care as it will be inaudible.

so, the only things to take into account, regarding audio fidelity in a portable player, are the DAC and the output amplifier right? btw, these amplifiers are analog and come after the DAC in the chain right? is there any portable players using digital amplifiers?

Edited March 14, 2019 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON

  On 3/14/2019 at 12:28 PM, Lewps said:

I uploaded my entire music library (171GB) to google music and stream it off there when im out and about. I have about 10 albums on my micro sd i switch up every week or so

 

Out of curiosity: Did you upload your files lossless and, if so, does google now allow you to re-download also as lossless? 

 

I once uploaded the majority of my music library to google music only to find out later that it downcoverts losless to 320 kbps MP3 and didn't save my lossless files as  lossless (so when my computer crashed/I went to download my "cloud saved" music library my files were no longer lossless). 

@timj

 

you take into account the whole device and just measure its audio performance. compare the input to the converted and amplified output and see if any kind of audible garbage crawls in. you can basically do it at home with programs such as RMAA if you have a decent recording device.

 

dunno about class d amps in portables. they're usually used when you need a lot of power and efficiency, in active subwoofers for example. but with headphones, and especially with earbuds/iems, you need just a few milliwatts to get them loud.

Edited March 14, 2019 by eugene

  On 3/14/2019 at 3:19 PM, eugene said:

@timj

you take into account the whole device and just measure its audio performance. compare the input to the converted and amplified output and see if any kind of audible garbage crawls in. you can basically do it at home with programs such as RMAA if you have a decent recording device.

so, let me guess, i put some test signals on my mp3 player and then i play them and record them into my computer trough my soundcard, and then RMAA compares both signals, the original file itself and the recorded one, and shows me the diferences? i guess i need a pretty "transparent" soundcard or else the soundcard itself will affect the recorded signal...

 

we had one of these in my school:

 

and i can understand that we a beast like this these kind of tests make sense but with my alesis io2 recording the output of the mp3 player i do believe the recorded signal will be significantly affected... what do u mean by decent soundcard? which price range?

Edited March 14, 2019 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON

RMAA generates the needed signals into a wav file that you play on whatever device you want to test. then it shows you many things, like THD, IMD, SNR, frequency response and so on. the thing is that if you see good numbers in the final results it means that both your dac+headphone amp and adc are good. alesis io looks like it has good thd and snr specs for its inputs, so it's probably fine for such purposes. another thing to consider is that you might need to run such tests with some kind of headphones as a load in parallel, that'l give you a clear idea of how the device performs irl with headphones.

 

this is a good overview of audibility of certain artifacts:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/audibility-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/

Edited March 14, 2019 by eugene

  On 3/14/2019 at 4:43 PM, eugene said:

RMAA generates the needed signals into a wav file that you play on whatever device you want to test. then it shows you many things, like THD, IMD, SNR, frequency response and so on. the thing is that if you see good numbers in the final results it means that both your dac+headphone amp and adc are good. alesis io looks like it has good thd and snr specs for its inputs, so it's probably fine for such purposes. another thing to consider is that you might need to run such tests with some kind of headphones as a load in parallel, that'l give you a clear idea of how the device performs irl with headphones.

 

this is a good overview of audibility of certain artifacts:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/audibility-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/

hehe, he used an audioprecision, i've done some tests with the AP in the past just never felt the need for such preciosity with an mp3 player, i guess the headphones quality takes a much bigger role in the audio quality than the player itself...

Edited March 14, 2019 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON