^ Interesting comments Joe, thanks for those. In my case, I had an iPod Classic (7th gen) and an Arrow and was using my SM3s with them until fairly recently. But, although that combination sounded great, something kept nagging away at me about the sound quality. Out of the headphone output, the Classic sounded too fuzzy and warm with the SM3, but via the line out and the Arrow it just seemed too cold and clinical, albeit with more space in the soundstage. I was frustrated and looking for a halfway house, and the lack of custom eq options on the iPod meant I couldnt do much about it.
So I sold the Arrow and the Classic and got myself a J3. Now I use the SM3s ampless from the Cowon and I get that lovely compromise between detail and warmth that hits my ears' pleasure buttons. Plus, totally unlike the iPod, the J3 is an EQ fruit machine for sound junkies - you can just keep pulling the levers and hoping for the jackpot. It's addictive.
At lunchtime today, I got chance to borrow my colleagues Classic, knowing he had the same album on it as I did on the J3 - the utterly fantastic Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse album 'Dark Night Of The Soul'. In an experiment, I played the lead track off the album on both his and my players, listening through the SM3s. The difference was immediately striking. The Classic sounded comatosed, brown, wilted and bored out of its tree with the ace music it was being asked to reproduce. The Cowon, by contrast, was like a technicolour monkey butler pumped full of caffeine, dancing around, eager to show you what it could do with its Earsonics bag of tricks.
A remarkable difference, in fact, and it absolutely vindicated my decision to break those Apple shackles.
