I received an earphone and portable amp from friend for trying out, this is a new brand "Acoustune" designed in Japan. The earphone (Accoustune HS1001) itself is already very impressive, it turns the audio output from a cheap smartphone (USD$130 without contract) into a new listening experience. Simply put, I felt like I am sitting on the front row of a live concert even with music from this cheap smartphone. Of course, higher end smartphones do give better audio performance. The interesting part is that I never used that cheap smartphone for music listening, it was my cell phone when I travel to China. (I do not want Chinese spyware in my regular smartphone, so I bought a cheap one for communications there with local SIM card in it.) I tried hooking up the portable amp (Acoustune AS1001) to the HS1001 earphone to see the difference with and without the portable amp, I can tell the difference but not by much. I showed the pair to a friend but he insists the music is MUCH better with both setup, meaning the portable amp does elevate the audio output to a MUCH better level!
So here is my question,
- while the Acoutune HS1001 earphone emphasizes on expanding the frequency range (more than the expansion of frequency response) to achieve wider sound field -
would the adding of a portable acoustic amp be just double up the effort? or it actually does enrich the sound beyond raising the base dB level?
