Best MP3 player for sound quality...?

Cowon s9, or rockboxed clip/clip+

"Can I potentially buy a sandisk clip+ and replace the micro sd card with a 32gber? I heard the sound quality of these are pretty good for the price, but the highest they come in is 8gb I think. "

 

that was my plan too but have been kind of dissapointed with the clip+.

 

for me, the sony x series completely trounces the clip+ for sq. even my ipod classic sounds better than the sansa to my ears.. maybe my ears are broken lol, but the sansa sounds way too warm and bassy and lacks detail/sparkle with my ie8's (flat eq on rockbox) and I never had that problem with the ipod or sony; weird because I heard the sansa had a neutral soundsig; like I said maybe my ears are broken....

 

still awaiting a 32/64 gb sony a series europe/us release.....

 

What is the point of using rockbox if you are not using the world-class parametric EQ? You can make the Clip+ adapt to your earphone and hearing, to get the sound you desire. I can get my preferred sound both with Grado SR60i's and Sennheiser PX100's, and they have kind of opposite sound signatures. Definitely more tweaking required with the PX100, for my ears.

 

The Sony players, at last the lower end models that I've heard, sound very good to me, but I would not call them neutral.

so i was just playing around with the eq, turned the bass way down (into the minus infact) and upped the treble a tad (I had played around with eq, but only the presets) and it seems to be much more to my liking, so perhaps you are right and I was being hasty (just got rb today, clip a few days back) " class="bbcode_smiley" height="" src="http://files.head-fi.org/images/smilies//smily_headphones1.gif" title="" width="" /> still need to play around with it abit more methinks.

 

op disregard my hasty judgements.

There's definitely a learning curve with the EQ, but if the bass and treble settings don't work well enough for you, read up in the manual on how the whole EQ works, and do some experimenting....it'll be time well spent.

With Rockbox on the Clip+ you can pretty much get the sound you want, then save the setting.

 

Mine sounds as good as the X - and it didn't cost £200 plus.

ok thanks for the advice " class="bbcode_smiley" height="" src="http://files.head-fi.org/images/smilies//smily_headphones1.gif" title="" width="" /> i didn't really want to play around with some of the other eq settings too much before I knew what they did, so i shall have to get reading!

 

@achmedisdead

 

Exactly right....I have three settings saved on each of my rockboxed players, for my different headphones.

 

Enjoy it AndyT87!

My approach is to take a few of the albums that I know the best, and listen to them when I am figuring out my EQ settings....once I get the setting right for one set of headphones, I save that setting. It took me a few evenings to get everything just right, but in the end it was well worth it.

The strength of the Clip+ with rockbox is that it can sound anyway you want for a lot less money! With enough EQ, it can sound like a HiFiman. With a little EQ it can sound like the X. You can completely tailor the sound to your liking and not have any residual artifacts you get with cheap EQ's.

 

Straight out of the box with rockbox and flat EQ it sounds phenomenal IMHO. Add in the DBA-02 and well mastered FLAC files and you have a winning ultra-portable system.

 

Just my 2 cents but what do I know.

Umm, highly doubtful. Maybe you can match the sound signature, but not the other qualities. There is so much RB hype on this board that it is getting out of hand.
 

 

Clip+ can sound like Hifiman HM-801?

NO WAY AT ALL!

My clip+ is really cheap and has very clean sound, but nowhere near to my Hifiman HM-801 in terms of smoothness of sound!

Using my clip+ mainly for jogging. For the rest of the time, my 801 will be the only DAP used.

Weird when someone compare Clip with Hifiman, when the sound is so different. Will be keeping my clip for it's purpose of being light, but really nothing to match against Hifiman.

You can test both my Hifiman and Clip+ and easy to tell the difference.

Rockbox has the best EQ of any other portable device I know of, but the S9 goes a little further with the BBE+ DSP effects, which can give you a larger soundstage, reverb, upsampling, ect. I have used numerous DAPs, including a Rockbox iPod 5.5g, and my current Cowon S9, and I would pick my S9 over a Rockbox because of the custom flash interfaces that go beyond icons and fonts ect, and superior screen, and well integrated buttons.