[Bennyboy71]

I sold my 7th Gen Classic (late 2009, 160gb) recently and got a 32gb J3.  Sound quality is much better with the Cowan via the HO than I could get with LO and Arrow amp on the Classic, and the customisable EQ is a major bonus, as are flac support and big touch screen for video viewing.  Plus its light as a feather and very portable.
 
I love it. Pairs brilliantly with my SM3s and I won't miss the extra capacity of the Classic.

 

[meltdown100]

I just picked up a couple of used 5th gen ipods cheaply on ebay to compare to the 6th gen classic I was using with an LOD and Mini3 amp.  I wanted to see for myself if the revered Wolfson DAC in those older models really made a big difference in sound quality, and to possibly do a DIYmod on one.
 
I was pretty happy with the 6th gen ipod's sound, but even without having done the DIYmod yet, the 5th gen sound is noticeable better through the LOD into my mini3 and RE0's.  To my ears the Wolfson DAC definitely lived up to the hype.
 
If you want an ipod that delivers good sound and great capacity, I'd go for a 5th or 5.5 gen ipod, plenty of places sell them refurbished (ipodzens.com).  

 

[Inks]

Not to mention you can rockbox and make it a flash player, making it a dap with great ui and sq, with decent portability with a small amp like the t3.

 

[ianmedium]

Reading many threads here and this one now I think I must be the stupidest, terrible hearing quality person on Earth!
 
For years I avoided Apple because I read reviews on forums about the poor sound quality, being "chained" to decrepit Itunes and so on.
 
I used Sony mainly though had a brief flirtation with Cowon D3, I liked the Sony, did not like the way I had to use it to store tunes on my computer though! The cowon I was really looking forward to but found it to be poorly made and did not sound good until I used EQ.
 
I put up with it all though as I believed all the good folks on the forums, that Ipod was cack, souded terrible, that Steve Jobs was the second coming of Satan, That Itunes sucked as it was hard to use..
 
Then a friend  asked why I had such a disdaine for Ipods, I told them and they asked if I actually had listened to one! They got theirs out(and 80gig ipod), I plugged in my Etymotics and I was lost in the music. It sounded great, better than what I had been listening to. I asked what eq he was using and non was the reply, just lossless. I was sold!
 
I got my first Apple product, the Itouch second Gen, loaded Itunes, used the easy feature to convert my files to lossless and was away!
 
It remains the only Apple product I use, I just cannot get used to Mac computers, I now use the latest 160g ipod, no eq but amped and through a LOD with IE8's, my set up goes right against the grain of what a large amount of folks here think sound great. Me, I do not care really, my foot taps to the beat, I get lost in the music, no fiddling around with EQ, simple way to download, no mucking about tweaking (I am not in the least a techie guy and what a large amount of you do to get the ultimate sound is way beyond me!) and off I go!
 
I notice especially with the Cowon products most folks only find it sounds great if EQ is applied (from the reviews I have read!) to me this makes the player fundementaly flawed. Surely the player should sound it's best with no EQ, if not then to me it can't be a great player!
 
Just my thoughts, I am not trying to say my set up is the bees nees, just that to these 46 year old ears it always amazes me what can come out of a tiny set of phones and small box with a hard drive!

 

[Bennyboy71]

I used to be a strictly "no EQ" Apple guy too, but the Cowon J3 turned me to the dark side so forcefully, I've changed my name to Darth.
 
Quote:

Reading many threads here and this one now I think I must be the stupidest, terrible hearing quality person on Earth!
 
For years I avoided Apple because I read reviews on forums about the poor sound quality, being "chained" to decrepit Itunes and so on.
 
I used Sony mainly though had a brief flirtation with Cowon D3, I liked the Sony, did not like the way I had to use it to store tunes on my computer though! The cowon I was really looking forward to but found it to be poorly made and did not sound good until I used EQ.
 
I put up with it all though as I believed all the good folks on the forums, that Ipod was cack, souded terrible, that Steve Jobs was the second coming of Satan, That Itunes sucked as it was hard to use..
 
Then a friend  asked why I had such a disdaine for Ipods, I told them and they asked if I actually had listened to one! They got theirs out(and 80gig ipod), I plugged in my Etymotics and I was lost in the music. It sounded great, better than what I had been listening to. I asked what eq he was using and non was the reply, just lossless. I was sold!
 
I got my first Apple product, the Itouch second Gen, loaded Itunes, used the easy feature to convert my files to lossless and was away!
 
It remains the only Apple product I use, I just cannot get used to Mac computers, I now use the latest 160g ipod, no eq but amped and through a LOD with IE8's, my set up goes right against the grain of what a large amount of folks here think sound great. Me, I do not care really, my foot taps to the beat, I get lost in the music, no fiddling around with EQ, simple way to download, no mucking about tweaking (I am not in the least a techie guy and what a large amount of you do to get the ultimate sound is way beyond me!) and off I go!
 
I notice especially with the Cowon products most folks only find it sounds great if EQ is applied (from the reviews I have read!) to me this makes the player fundementaly flawed. Surely the player should sound it's best with no EQ, if not then to me it can't be a great player!
 
Just my thoughts, I am not trying to say my set up is the bees nees, just that to these 46 year old ears it always amazes me what can come out of a tiny set of phones and small box with a hard drive!

 

[ianmedium]

Quote:

I used to be a strictly "no EQ" Apple guy too, but the Cowon J3 turned me to the dark side so forcefully, I've changed my name to Darth.
 

 

I always love your Posts! And the Avatar..Darth! I think the thing is, whatever sounds good to us as individuals sounds good and reviews have to be taken with a large pinch of Salt.
 
I remember listening to a record deck years ago that had a flat tone arm, it got bashed at the time but I really liked the sound so got it!

 

[slaters70]

I own both the Touch 3g (8GB which is really a 2G model) and the J3, and while it's logical that the Cowon players should sound at least decent on no EQ, they just don't. But that doesn't take away from their SQ using the BBE/EQ system, which is pretty amazing to me.
 
With the Touch, I am pretty much no EQ, LOD/T3, but I don't use lossless, as I can't tell the difference from 256-320k to ALAC. I keep trying to do so, but can't, so I stick with the lossy rips.
 
Anyway, it is all so personal, which is the main factor in so much sturm and drang here on HF. There are some absolutes, of course, like iBuds are not gonna outperform most decent in-ear phones, but otherwise, it's all over the map.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

. Surely the player should sound it's best with no EQ, if not then to me it can't be a great player!  
 

No offense, but I don't agree with this at all.

With so many different headphones out there, with their unique sound signatures, and with everyone's ears being different, the ability to tweak the player's sound to accommodate these differences should be mandatory on every player, IMO.
 
Peoples' hearing changes with age, and in response to their environments(example, someone that works for years in a high volume workplace without adequate protection) and even through health issues. I think we should all have the tools to compensate for these differences built into our players.
 
That is one of the main reasons I have yet to own an iPod, actually......the lack of a customizable EQ. I got a brief audition with a new 8GB Touch recently, before the iOS4 was released, and while I did find a preset that was acceptable to me with my one pair of headphones that I use on-the-go, my main home listening pair sounded very thin and weak, no matter which preset I tried, or if I disabled the EQ altogether.
 
Granted, the files on it were not of the same quality as the ones I use...but in the interest of troubleshooting the issue, I got some of those same files and put them on one of my Sony players, which do have a custom EQ, and suddenly the "home" headphones were an option again. Was it as good as my own higher-bitrate files? No way....but I could at least find an acceptable sound with any headphone, which I could not do with the Touch.
 
I don't buy into the lossless argument either, on a portable player, as being the answer.....with my ears, I can't distinguish a properly encoded LAME V2 song from the FLAC it was encoded from, in an ABX test....so I'd much rather carry thousands of songs, rather than hundreds. The FLAC can stay on my computer, and I'll listen to it when I am home.

 

[ianmedium]

fair enough points and as I said it all comes down to personal experience,if it works for you that is great!

I must say though that surely a product for it to be truly good must be able tto perform with the least interference from tweaking but I do understand your thoughts. I guess my system has been EQ'd by amp lod and phones!

 

[Danneq]

To my ears most players sound pretty much the same with the EQ off. However, I prefer the sound signature that EQing brings. To be able to tailor the sound to your own liking should be the most basic option of any DAP.
 
About 1 year ago relatives bought a new 52" Samsung LCD HD TV. When I visited them and watched TV I could only see the overblown contrast and almost pixelated details. My relatives asked me if I did not think the picture was great and I mumbled some sort of reply while being horrified of the terrible picture. I am happy to stick to my old Philips widescreen CRT TV which to me gives a much more soft and natural picture than most newer flat screen TV:s (I cannot stand LCD, plasma is better).
Anyway, my point is that I am pretty sure that my relatives had not tweaked the picture settings on the TV and were using factory settings. It might work with HD material, but on SD material it most often produces terrible results. Then you HAVE TO tweak the settings. With people using different source material and headphones for their DAP:s EQing is a necessity. If everyone were using only lossless music along with $2.000 worth of portable amps and headphones EQing might not be necessary. Until that happens people who do not want to spend a lot of money on top of the line amps and headphones will stay clear of Apple and instead choose DAP:s that puts them in charge of the sound instead of Apple engineers.

 

[Anaxilus]

^  
 
I hate Apple but my Nano 2g on flat beats my non boxed Clip+ no matter what EQ it uses.  Focusing on EQ's alone is like posting frequency response curves to review headphones.  Much more to it than that.
 
LCD's require native resolution to look best.  CRT's don't have native resolutions.  My 30" LCD monitor w/ HQV upconversion to native 1600p annihilates any CRT. 

 

[Danneq]

 
Quote:

LCD's require native resolution to look best.  CRT's don't have native resolutions.  My 30" LCD monitor w/ HQV upconversion to native 1600p annihilates any CRT. 

Does it beat any CRT when showing SD material, for instance an old VCR tape? Or even analogue TV transmissions?
 
My point was that EQ is supposed to compensate for components that might be lacking - be it source material or headphones. Everyone does not feel the need to spend a fortune on the best stuff and for those people there ought to be an option to tweak the sound to their liking. Just as you should tweak the picture settings when you have a non HD source for a LCD television set.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

Does it beat any CRT when showing SD material, for instance an old VCR tape? Or even analogue TV transmissions?
 
My point was that EQ is supposed to compensate for components that might be lacking - be it source material or headphones. Everyone does not feel the need to spend a fortune on the best stuff and for those people there ought to be an option to tweak the sound to their liking. Just as you should tweak the picture settings when you have a non HD source for a LCD television set.

Your analogy has less to do w/ DAP's and headphones and more to do w/ cassettes versus CDs.  It is a content based point you make unrelated to gear.  You are saying if most of you media is 480i or below than use a CRT.  The problem w/ that is most content is 480p and above now which is why we have EDTV's and HDTV's.  Even if you like a CRT better for 480i than on LCD, the LCD can show 1080p whereas the CRT cannot (unless someone is making some weird niche CRT).  Asking me about VHS tape in this comparison is silly.  Do you listen to cassette tapes in your yellow Sony walkman w/ a pair of EQ'd Stax headphones too?  
 
I have no problem w/ your point about EQ but I'm making you aware that your characterization of LCD technology being inferior to CRT and Plasma is not accurate.  Crap in = crap out whether headphones or TV's.  I just don't think an EQ is a necessity.  It is nice to have a 20+ band parametric equalizer but I think it is possible for people to get and appreciate the sound they want or like by proper gear selection.  I just find it odd that someone who would be so critical as to feel the need to EQ to get just the right sound is gonna talk about using VHS tapes and Rabbit Ears.  IMO EQ is a nice option to have but I don't feel the need to EQ all my phones.  EQ will never replace proper mastering, good source quality and good headphones.  Its a crutch and not a fundamental.  As with crutches you only need it if something is broken.  I think its better to find the best bang per buck gear within your budget than to worry about having an EQ or not.
 
Maybe its time to toss out the VCR tapes and get some BluRays.  

   

 

[Bennyboy71]

I hook my laptop up and watch re-runs of Head-fi on my TV.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

I hook my laptop up and watch re-runs of Head-fi on my TV.

I thought you would be more the type to hook up your typewriter to your crystal ball.