Best FLAC playing DAP for SQ Meizu vs Trekstor - Page 2

best SQ- good headphones / line-out+amp

I have seen a detailed review in French that says the vibez has slightly better SQ than the X5 - detail and stereo separation.

However, the X5 has easy access to line-out through a small dongle. If you have a headphone amp with volume control... the Fiio E5 is coming out soon and may only cost $15... this would likely overcome any small advantage of the Vibez (unless there is a dock available with line-out for the vibez).

With a small amp (some are very small) you can drive really nice headphones.
The vibez has 7.5mw per channel, the X5 has 20mw / channel, the A3 has 30mw / channel. The extra power would let you drive better headphones.

The X5 has enough power to drive the AKG K271 without an amp, and they sound super if you don't need thumping bass... theres the Sennheiser HD 25 if you do. With an amp you could drive any high impedence headphones... a higher end Beyerdynamic or AKG (open or closed depending on your needs)... would be an unbeatable sound advantage for the Cowon products.

I have compared the Cowon X5 and A3, and I found the A3 to be significantly better than the X5. The A3 may be too big for you, but I suspect it has significantly better SQ than the vibez and comes in an 80GB version.

They both do flac and lower-compression ape, and support many other codecs. I particularly like the X5 with Rockbox, which allows a larger range of codec support and a plethora of DSP; plus the interface was much more intuitive for me.

If the X5 or A3 are too big for you, Cowon may have some new smaller product with a line out or more powerful amp than the vibez.

A lot of people object to the Cowon interface. The joystick works really well for me with Rockbox... true it's more complicated and takes longer to figure out, but for me it was worth it. The joystick can be pressed in any of four directions plus down, plus there are three buttons on the side, for a total of 8 different actions. But each one can be done quick or held for a beat, which gives different results, so there are 16 actions. Sometimes a double-click also has a different meaning/effect. Plus each one acts different depending on the context, so there are 40 or 50 different meanings for the actions. You have to read the manual and practice them or you will be guessing and bumbling around for along time (I know)... but once you learn it it is an efficient and ergonomic interface.

The Cowon products automatically act like mass storage devices on a PC so you can drag and drop files... there's a way to install the vibez so it behaves that way, or by default it uses special MTP transfer software, so you have a choice. The native Cowon software on the X5 doesn't support ID tags, but Rockbox does. You can install Rockbox on the X5 with a dual-boot patch. There is no Rockbox for the A3 but the A3 software is pretty good.

BTW, the line-out on the X5 is worse sounding than the HP out... Plus it's pretty big and heavy compared to the smaller flash players (which of course don't have anywhere near the capacity). Built like a tank, however.

I do like the joystick controls, however. I take my U3 along for training rides on my bike - and I can change tracks/vol without taking it out of my back pocket. But, I think the joystick is a thing of the past...

A couple of comments about the vibez:

Switching between MTP and MSC can be done directly from the vibez itself with the latest firmware. Either way, you can easily drag and drop when connected via MTP. What you can't do with MTP is leverage native command line shell tools or scripts like robocopy.

For anyone hoping to get line-out via the vibez dock, the dock's lineout is purely a pass-through to the head-phone out. Not a true line-out for the purists, but probably good enough for the rest of us.

BTW: Looks like we're getting closer to actually seeing the 8GB and 16GB flash versions. The 32GB is still vaporware at this point.

Unfortunately the Teclast T39 is almost impossible to get your hands on. I tried for months and every shop that I found no longer had them in stock.

the meizu might get rockbox soon too: that means gapless and that should be a huge huge boon for sq. if that does not figure into the equation for sq: i don't know what does.

also, vibes are known for good options but very poor driving power for earbuds, iems and canalphones. the meizu new version does not hiss nearly as bad as the old one does which was terrible.

to graphis: i had the same sharp md unit you have; dr7 is that?

an ipod with rockbox would probably sound better realistically for flac than either the meizu or the vibes

i own an M6sl and i think sq is great with this player. based on the wolfson chip it lots of settings like bass boost, treble boost and spatializer phase correction along with a ten band eq; who else has this? i can make a cheap set of phones sound great. the good ones i run flat. it has enough power to run my sennheiser 545s without clipping and flac plays very well.
down side of the M6 line is stuttering on mp3 variable bit rate files; not all but some and some lower frame rates on video; 20 instead of 30, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. i'm running fw 2004.4 the most recent is 2004.6. which may fix some of the minor problems. otherwise i'm very happy with my M6 in every way. only once in the year that i've had it did i need to do a hard reset (hold the power button down) theres a site that covers it here: miniPlayer M6 / SL - Meizu Me don't be alarmed by all the bricked players... i get the feeling that most are recovered. i'd suggest buying from a large seller like newegg or b&h in case you get a dud.