[opsitiveguy]

HI Everyone,
This is my first thread in head-fi, I enjoy listening to music extensively. I have a HM5 and sony in ear monitors. I will go mid range headphone soon but haven't unleashed the full power of my HM5's yet. I will listen music from galaxy s2 320kbps files using poweramp or nrg player which are good. But still from many of audiophiles I heard s2 has crap yamaha chip which cannot be amped through FIIO's or some other amplifiers. Please suggest me good audio source + amp or DAC . I have researched over cowon J3 and apple ipod touch and sansa clip +
they talk about UI no one says about sound quality any comments?

 

[1audioz]

Whether something is crap or not is entirely up to you. e.g. the Audio-gd NFB-12 gets a lot of love here, but some people I know just don't like it. 
 
For me, I just use my Galaxy Nexus + Neutron MP. Works a wonder with my Earsonics SM3v2. 
 
I have the Sansa Fuze and it sounds alright (similar to Clip+ I would guess), nothing special though. Cowon J3 / Apple iPod touch are nice choices - I would go for the iPod against the J3 (I used to own a D2+) mainly because of the user experience. J3 has good rep here. 

 

[opsitiveguy]

Thanks for the great reply @1audioz .... Okay I will try neutron MP on my SGS2 ... yes I have done some research and J3 has good reviews too , even Ipod touch has good reviews here have to decide on those two.
 
have you used any headphone amp with your galaxy nexus? E6 or E5 or E7 can they be used?
that would be better?

 

[1audioz]

Personally, I would think amplification works best with headphones that require it - I haven't heard the HM5, but I don't use an additional amplifier for my earphones. The phone is powerful enough to drive my IEMs to a quality and level I can enjoy from day-to-day. The only thing I don't like about listening to music on phones is that lossless (FLAC) is fairly unstable and skips a lot for me. As a result, I've started transcoding down to MP3 V0. 
 
If you're able to try anyone's FiiO/other amp beforehand, that would be a bonus - to see if you need/want to use an extra amp or not. I stopped carrying portable "rigs" around purely because of the bulk. If I wanted to use an amp with my Nexus I could - though I wouldn't be getting line-out using the 3.5mm jack - the waveform would still be amplified already and wouldn't bypass the onboard amp. Neutron MP has a pre-amp feature I haven't tried it - but I think it could be possible to use "Phone --> Neutron pre-amp --> amp --> head/earphones." 

 

[opsitiveguy]

Thanks for the replies , I didn't get any mp3 player but got one digizoid zo2.3 yesterday have to test how it works with galaxy s2 and will post my comments soon. Am new to all this have to get there to understand some of the terms