Mini-Review: digiZoid ZO "portable subwoofer" - Page 9

^Haha.  Yeah, not all the time, but sometimes.  Maybe I'm just getting old...

Btw, I like your new avatar dfkt.  Had to do a double take, lol.

Her name is Pinkie Pie. She's the most awesome pony.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dfkt 

Her name is Pinkie Pie. She's the most awesome pony.

She looks like she doesn't enjoy being taken for a ride.  Btw, I'm looking forward to your take on the ZO.  My super skeptical spidey sense is tingling.  Maybe that's something else altogether?  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anaxilus 


She looks like she doesn't enjoy being taken for a ride.  Btw, I'm looking forward to your take on the ZO.  My super skeptical spidey sense is tingling.  Maybe that's something else altogether?  

 

Haha.  I think that tingling sensation is just one of the direct geeky side effects of being audio nuts/hobbyists.  Or I would hope so, if not, then, um, maybe that is  something your doctor might need to have a look at ;).

Got it today. Wow, the bass is really amazing on that thing, even surpassing BBE M3B in punch, tightness, and lack of midrange-bleed. Just the thing phones with little bass (PFE, e-Q5/7, W4, q-Jays, etc) need. And it's admirably tiny.

Beautiful photograpy!  And I fully agree with your assessment of the ZO performance.  It works wonders with the music output from my Android phone. 

I wonder what the ZO would do to full sized headphones like, let's say, Ultrasone Pro 900. And the whole lack of midrange bleed does sound appealing.

I don't have the PRO-900, but I just tried it with the HFI-780. I expected the bass to become totally overbearing, since they're bass-heavy-ish phones to begin with. This isn't the case, however - which is rather weird (and good).The ZO gives the HFI some more bass quantity, but its main thing is that it changes the bass quality in some way. It appears to make it somewhat faster, attack-wise, and more textured. Of course the texture change might simply appear because the quantity of the bass signal gets stronger with the ZO. Another thing to mention is that there is never any bass distortion, not even with the ZO set to its highest level, and playing some nasty Dubstep tunes with 20Hz subbasses.

Either way, I sure like that combination with a bass-heavier phone as well. OTOH, real bass monsters like the Radius DDM2 don't really benefit from the ZO - with them it's just too much.

Very interesting. Because while the Pro 900 are considered to be somewhat bass heavy, I do feel they could benefit from a precision crafted bass sledgehammer beating the living ship out of them The whole thing of the ZO being able to give the oomph to the bass without killing the rest of the spectrum sounds very appealing. I just hope there are more reviews on how the ZO pairs with full sized headphones.

Digizoid seem do have designed the ZO as an all-purpose device, for speakers, for aux-ins or FX-loops on studio mixers, for movie setups, and so on. I still have to test the ZO with some of these setup varieties, but I can see how a little more bass couldn't hurt in most cases - certainly also with full-sized headphones. ;)

That PDF is a somewhat interesting rough application guide: http://www.digizoid.com/docs/digizoid_pro_audio.pdf

When I owned it, the ZO did very with my Grado RS2 and Meizu miniplayer with FLAC combo.  Of course it lacks the transparency of my desktop amp, but that's expected.  I've concluded that the device has no effect with transparency and space, but magnifies whatever capabilities being demonstrated from the source and headphone and stops at their respective limitations.

BTW, can it be used while it's charging through USB? Because I still can't get over the whole battery charge time thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

BTW, can it be used while it's charging through USB? Because I still can't get over the whole battery charge time thing.

Yeah, it can be used while charging. 1-2h charge time is actually rather fast for a LiPo or LiIon battery. Most devices are more like 2-3h.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alphaphoenix 

When I owned it, the ZO did very with my Grado RS2 and Meizu miniplayer with FLAC combo.  Of course it lacks the transparency of my desktop amp, but that's expected.  I've concluded that the device has no effect with transparency and space, but magnifies whatever capabilities being demonstrated from the source and headphone and stops at their respective limitations.

No idea what any of that "audiophile" lingo means - "transparency, space, magnifies capabilities" etc. ;) The ZO is a bass booster that amps the signal slightly. In bypass mode or on the lowest setting it's basically the same as the source, and when you turn it up, you get more bass, without the usual nasty side effects (as found on many other bass booster implementations).

Basically, in simple terms, the ZO makes the sound (the whole sound, not just the bass) appear to be much fuller at the same source level volume, and much thinner without the ZO.