Leaving portable hifi - it's too silly - Page 16

Then I guess it would be stylish in your circles.

I think your rig is not as expensive as many and its very appropriate for your application.

As for the OP, The OP didn't have a chance to listen before buying, like many of us. A lot of these portables contain a lot of money involved, it makes sense to expect a very noticeable difference.

I don't know if it makes any sense to get as involved w/ expensive rigs if the source material you normally listen to has only the average amount of resolution inherent to the genres of music you listen to. In other words it is very hard to hear noticeable differences when the quality of the recorded sound has only so much resolution to begin with. I don't have the most expensive setup, but I can honestly say that none of the improvements I've made so far have yielded diminishing returns so far. There is a lot of music I have no desire to touch as the quality of the recordings may be questionable at best. The saying "Don't blame the messenger" is appropriate. I had to bring this up as those who keep talking about where the ceilling is on improvements have given me no point of reference as to how they've arrived at their conclusions.

Good point Podtweaker. If the music is overly compressed and we compound it by using a lower quality setting of mp3 then it would not be advantageous to use very expensive rigs.

Furthermore if we use the rig in a noisy environment it ads weight to not spending a lot due to the conditions under we listen. However in a quiet environment w/ high quality recording it would be an advantage. IMO of course.

Thanks. I was not only refering to the compression factor,but to the whole production value of the music we load on our players. All recording labels are not as equally concerned about the SQ they produce & it goes a bit further than even that. Depending (unfortunately)on the genre of music we listen to
"representative" recording techniques are out the window in favor of a "loud mix". The general pubic does'nt really care whether or not a "soundstage" exists or even what it is. If the sound isn't "driving" & they can't "hear" everything they will complain. Good recordings do exist in all genres, but in many cases by default(& you can bet a lot of these recordings are not highly regarded by most) not by design, unless we are talking about an independent label.

hmmmm

i agree with the post/luminette and manaox2.
i was just at a head fi meet and got a chance to listen to all the portable amps with many headphones, hi and low end all of which get very high praise here.
if portable amps really are that great why was nobody except me listening to them? i think it was that i am new to the headphone game and was logically thinking that an portable amp would improve my already great sounding 1st gen shuffle/3rd gen nano and pk2/3's.(everyone else must have know what i was about to find out?), you know what,,, they all made it worse. they all added distortion and bloated the bass and lost fine detail. even all the headphones i tried didn't sound better, go figure.
my logical thinking came because i have a home theatre system with a boston acoustics,onkyo setup and the sound is amazing. it's like the musicians are in my home. it's just than when i changed amps at home the sound IS improved, very noticible. not so with portable amps! i was very shocked that none of the BIG name headphones were really better, i would not have swapped any of em for my pk2 or 3!
something that suprised me even more is that there were home rigs there and i still wouldn't swap! and they would have cost 2-3 thousand. i never tried iem's.
as far as people thinking they can build a better sounding headphone system than a speaker system are kidding themselves! i have heard a much better home theatre system with 5 small speakers and sub plus amp intergrated with a cd/dvd player for $1800aud.

my yuins will do me just fine. the only thing is i never heard the pk1 and they need an amp, oops, what to do? if i did spend on the pk1 it would be for home and with a cheap amp. is it worth it????????? or get great iem??????

i also think that the phones that come with the ipod ain't all that bad, certainly listenable for portable use and enjoyable.

i also think it won't be long before apple bring out a really good clean sounding device that will bring us all closer to really awesome portable sound.
i just hope they focus their efforts on sound quality and not marketability.

i love music it's my hobby and have been in the speaker listening game for 25 years and been to many shows and always pop in to shops for auditions.

i don't mean to put anyone off just watch how you young fellas spend your money.

who would have though made in china would sound so good?

Portable-fi challenging close to home-fi.....this thread just getting more and more interesting. Looks like I've made fun of a lot of people here from selling SR-71a (Just good as upsampling with EQ boost from foobar lol. Where's good buffer?).

I have just been thinking here that, though amplification is very important when needed and a few people have strongly hinted at this already, portable headphones are typically low impedance and high sensitivity. The amplification needed is not usually much more then the headphone jack would provide. A lot of the quality problems can come from the internal digital to analog components and not the amplification. If thats true, your only amplifying these problems.

If all that is usually the case, what you are paying for is more akin to an advanced portable equalizer and the line-out is the main increase in quality.

Very nice move

A728 -> ER-6i

portable, sounds good, is cheap.

win.

100% agree to the OP.

But much of it can also be said about home rigs imho.
My portable rig is my sony 818 -> esw10 or dt770 600 ohm.

Even the 600 ohm variant sounds absolutely fine out of the sony compared to the dac1 outputs or the phonitor. The difference in bass control is small. Biggest differences are in clarity and soundstage size and instrument seperation ie you can easily hear microphone distance on the vocals. Not something i'll need to hear on the go
The volume is ofcourse limited but enough for me.
The ESW10 interestingly shows more improvement through my home rig but it is perfectly enjoyable through the sony and leaves nothing to be desired.

Sorry for your loss, you'll have to get some good new quality stuff with that money to help.

Suzuki,

I don't know what you expect from portable, transportable, "big but can still somehow carry" gear?????? I Know that what I'm hearing is great audio. It's hi fidelity. My amps/headphones/IEM's sound tremendous with the Pico and/or the SR-71A. I don't know what you listened to, I don't what you're headphones are, all I know is that even the simple/cheap pa2v2 made my listening experience better, let alone a great amp like the SR-71A. Maybe you're ears just aren't developed? Maybe you have bad gear? I don't know, don't really care. I just had a few moments to respond so I did. Enjoy whatever listening experience you have to the max!

Enjoy whatever listening experience you have to the max!

Without lugging around chunky gear which aren't worth the effort.