[Barry]

I am considering buying a new DAP. I generally like the dynamics of the H10, but the features, etc., of the X5 are appealing. I have listened at length to the ipod photo, karma and H10. Can anybody offer a description of the sound differences of the X5 to any of these units?

Thank you

Barry

 

[Blitzula]

Can someone also just describe the basic sound signature of the X5? I keep hearing that the X5 has better sound than the Ipod and other players without any explanation as to WHY it's better.

 

[darkninja67]

The ipod lacks dimension IMO compared to other players I have. (Rio Carbon, Rio Karma, iAudio X5)

Plus once you get the EQ to where you like it the X5 is a pretty sweet and detailed player. There is a decent amount of bass from the player using my Etymotics as well.
The X5 also seems to have more of a dynamic punch compared to the ipod.

 

[Thisp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blitzula Can someone also just describe the basic sound signature of the X5? I keep hearing that the X5 has better sound than the Ipod and other players without any explanation as to WHY it's better.

It's neutral.

The iPod is also neutral, however - it has a 9 dB recession in the lower bass frequencies with low impedance headphones.

iRiver players measure similar to iAudios in that they do not have a bass rolloff with low impedance headphones.

There is no real "sound signature".. anything that has an actual signature outside of rolloffs caused by weak components wouldn't even make it past a beta.

 

[mkeroppi]

I've looking into an iaudio as well. It'll be good if someone can do an RMAA. I'll post one for the ipod mini when I have time. Also, a 9dB bass rolloff is pretty bad, it says bad design to me (I believe I read somewhere that they've used a capacitor instead of an appropriate active amplifer as the output of the ipod to increase battery life...bad idea)...Of course the target buyer would care more about battery life than sound quality.

On a second thought, RMAA would probably not work because you'd connect to a high impedence input of a soundcard. It's probably too hard to fix up a parallel resistor config to do a proper test.

=====
ok, so I did RMAA on my ipod mini (1st gen).
http://glue.umd.edu/~yiu/ipod2.htm
ipod out (max volume)->Echo Mia (-10dBu), Signal was about -4dB (or about 63%) of "consumer" line level (-10dBu). I'll be interested at what voltage the "line out" of the regular ipod runs at. Anyways, ignore the last 2 measurements which were obviously wrong, but don't really matter in fixing, because...

You search before you post:
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showt...highlight=rmaa
As it shows, distortion is really bad on the ipod for any usable phones (You can't really drive the HD650 at this output level).

 

[BillC]

I've got both an H10 and an X5. I find the sound to be very comparable. There might be a _slight_ bit more dynamic sound with the X5 but that could easily be explained by playing flac files instead of mp3s or by me being enamored with my new toy.

I haven't really done any serious a/b tests with them, if you've got any specific questions I'll try to compare for you but I think you'd be very happy with the SQ of either player.