You may not need an app. the equalisation on older ipods was truly dreadull; distortion even at just a few dB's of extra bass. But newer devices have decent equalisation. Some equalisers do introduce aliasing, however. The rockbox equaliser did this, for example with very high frequency sound...

Great work!!! Thanks, jiteepee

Love the review. Thanks for that.

A protable amp is one that one prots with. However, few outside of the League of Extraordinary Protters even know what protting is, let alone the dictionary. My advice to you, my friend, is to avoid the issue of protting entirely, as you may open a Protora's Box, or a can of prots (depending...

Some amps introduce their own colouration to the music which some people prefer. Sometimes the colouring amp can compensate for deficiencies in a low-quality source or idiosyncratic headphones. (Note that people tend to divide in to two camps: loud listeners and quiet listeners. Loud listeners...

Well....that depends. From my experience (subjective), the onboard audio can be impossible for me to distinguish from my ODAC/O2 combo. My suspicion, which I've mentioned elsewhere, is that the mature cheapo soundcards, that are not doing anything special, have been producing hifi for a few...

No because while there are >$500 amps that have either more power (which one or two bizzare headphones benefit by) or even lower noise/distortion performance, the latter is effectively irrelevant because the O2/ODAC performance in those terms is already at inaudible levels and will make no...

Well, yes, but I think that goes under the "all things being equal" clause.

That's nice, but later it'll be back to "fantastic for the price" or "very very good" etc etc influencing our weaker brethren or casual visitor to pay more for something they think will be better still (the implication of those words). I would like to be friends, but the problem is that it's...

Guffaw!! :D I don't think so. If the O2 claims are true then logically it proves that above $300 is a waste for everyone.

The O2 is claimed to do this perfectly...within the parameters of what is humanly audible. Distortions and noise etc are below audible levels. So it really doesn't do it 'really really well' if the O2 is working as claimed. Nor is it 'good for the price', a previous adydula tricksey statement...

That doesn't make much sense. I use my O2 as a desktop amp also. Clipping the 2.5x would have given me unity gain for my ultra-sensitives and left me the option of playing from my mp3 player or HD650s (serious desktop headphones). I've never seen a justification for clipping that 6.5x that...

Unity gain gets people past 9 o'clock on the volume control/pot, which is desirable since just before 9 o'clock the volume control has channel imbalance. Other than that there shouldn't be any audible improvement since even with 6.5x gain distortion etc is under audible levels. It's popular to...

As far as problem with the ODAC are concerned, it may not be the ODAC per se. For example, faulty devices may exist; it's not unlikely. Most electronics have a 5% approx failure rate. Also, the ODAC has some demands on how it is used... With the O2 it should be on low gain, (max 3.5x). High...

Ok, so it turns out the Acer had a RealTek EQ app switched on. This little driver app seems to mash the audio quite badly compared to the microsoft driver "bass protection setting". With that switched off the Realtek sounds fine. I'm not sure about whether it sounds 'indistinguishable' since...