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Review: HiFiMAN HM-602 vs. HM-801 Comparison (56K Warning) - Page 2

post #16 of 232
9/27/10 at 6:48am

warp08,

 

thanks for the review and great photos!

 

will you be doing a DAC only comparison as well? I think for the price, the ability to use the 602 as an external dac makes it more tempting for those who might be looking for portable DACs..

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Gear mentioned in this thread:

HiFiMAN HM-801
post #17 of 232
9/27/10 at 9:38am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by aangen View Post

Thanks for the review! A couple of questions:

With the 16 K on board, do you end up with a 48K file system, or a 16/32?

What random modes are supported?

(can you provide a link to some site that shows how the menu system/options looks?)

Thanks!

Not sure what you mean about the file system.  In the review I referred to bit and sampling rates supported by the HM-xxx players, which is in the range of 16-24-bit and 44.1-96kHz.  The HM-602 does have a 16GB flash storage onboard and can accommodate a Class 4 SDHC card of up to 32GB in size.

 

The playback modes available in this release are:  Order and Random within a single album.

 

I do not know of a site or video that shows the menu options but one can easily be made by anyone with an HM-801, because the firmware is essentially identical, as far as I can tell, with the exception of the device ID.
 

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post #18 of 232
9/27/10 at 9:41am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by LevA View Post

 

will you be doing a DAC only comparison as well? I think for the price, the ability to use the 602 as an external dac makes it more tempting for those who might be looking for portable DACs..


No, but feel free to do so.  The Phillips DAC, although dated, is still considered decent, but it is in a different class than the dual PCM-1704UK of the HM-801.  Still, it is commendable for a player of this size to have an external DAC capability.

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post #19 of 232
9/27/10 at 10:03am

my hifiman 801 definitely doesnt have a 'sub-second audible gap between songs', there is about 2 or 3 seconds between them!-I hope it can be improved at some point.

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post #20 of 232
9/27/10 at 10:16am

Nice review!

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post #21 of 232
9/27/10 at 10:22am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by musicbased View Post

my hifiman 801 definitely doesnt have a 'sub-second audible gap between songs', there is about 2 or 3 seconds between them!-I hope it can be improved at some point.


Make sure you're running the latest 0.19B firmware and that--assuming the tracks you refer to are played from an SDHC card--that you are using a genuine, supported model.  Transfer rates, in general, are much slower from unsupported cards and may vary depending on the memory block being used within the card as well as its controller chip to properly interface with the onboard SDHC controller of the HM-801.

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post #22 of 232
9/27/10 at 11:15am

^Now that I buy most stuff on-line, I don't feel bad about killing my wallet.

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post #23 of 232
9/27/10 at 11:24am
Help me understand why it matters if the song has a gap between them?
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post #24 of 232
9/27/10 at 11:33am

There are many albums that sound better if there is no gap. A lot of classical would not do well if it was not gapless. A good number of my trance would not do so well with a gap in between. One album I enjoy that I want gapless with is dark side of the moon by pink floyd. It's also preference as some people myself included so not like hearing gaps in between songs.

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post #25 of 232
9/27/10 at 11:59am
Thread Starter 

Exactly.  Trying to listen to Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds in anything else than gapless literally ruins the experience for me, because the transitions between tracks are so subtle and refined.

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post #26 of 232
9/27/10 at 2:11pm

The gaps between tracks on my HM-801 with FW .19B are about 1/3 of a sec with a Patriot Class 4 SD card. For the majority of my music they don't really matter, but on some albums it's kind of annoying. If it really bugs you, there is a way around the problem - just convert your flac files to a single flac and cue, or re-rip the CD as a range in whatever format you want. If the entire album is one track, there will be no gaps.

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post #27 of 232
9/27/10 at 2:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rawrster View Post

There are many albums that sound better if there is no gap. A lot of classical would not do well if it was not gapless. A good number of my trance would not do so well with a gap in between. One album I enjoy that I want gapless with is dark side of the moon by pink floyd. It's also preference as some people myself included so not like hearing gaps in between songs.


The Wall by Pink Floyd is another famous example of a gapless album. There are many albums that gapless is not needed for, to be sure. But there are also many albums that do need it....and I can't fathom why a player that costs close to $800 does not have this capability, no matter how good it sounds....a $49 iPod shuffle can do it, a  $40 Sansa Clip+ with rockbox can do it, so why not the HiFiMAN?

 

I am not saying that those two players sound anything like the HiFiMAN....I wouldn't know, never having heard the HM. But for them to have gapless and not the HM, with their relative prices, seems a bit of a fail.

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post #28 of 232
9/27/10 at 2:46pm

I realized that the review is up :) Nice review as always warp08

 

A lot of albums don't need it but some do and absolutely ruin the experience if there are gaps in between. A solution that I have done is to make the album into a one track flac or mp3 or whatever format you want so that there is no gap in between tracks since it is just one track. However I have no need as the dap that I use has gapless but it is an option if the player I use does not. it is rather annoying to do that but it's better than having gaps in between.

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post #29 of 232
9/27/10 at 3:38pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rawrster View Post

I realized that the review is up " class="bbcode_smiley" height="" src="http://files.head-fi.org/images/smilies//smily_headphones1.gif" title=":)" width="" /> Nice review as always warp08

 

A lot of albums don't need it but some do and absolutely ruin the experience if there are gaps in between. A solution that I have done is to make the album into a one track flac or mp3 or whatever format you want so that there is no gap in between tracks since it is just one track. However I have no need as the dap that I use has gapless but it is an option if the player I use does not. it is rather annoying to do that but it's better than having gaps in between.


Thanks, Rawrster, good point.  The disadvantage of that approach is that it makes skipping forward and backward via tracks impossible since you have only one giant "track."  Can still use fast forward but it's rather cumbersome.

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post #30 of 232
9/27/10 at 4:36pm

I understand some albums need gapless playback. I don't understand, why not rip them again. When some album had already been ripped with gap, I merged a few songs to make them gapless. It did not take much time and efforts.

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