Quote:
Originally Posted by Rossy836
Hi there,
I've finally decided to make an investment in portable audio, as more and more i am unimpressed by the quality of my portable cd player and headphones. I enjoy quite a large variety of music types and as such i need a system that can play my music, and impress me. My budget is quite a large one, so short of custom mold headphone, i'am happy to buy anything that may be highly recommended.
Currently the mp3 player that intrests me is the cowan iaudio x5L 30gb, as it should provide just enough room to fit most of my music on in ogg vorbis and apparently sounds fairly impressive. Since this will be a system i will mostly listen to at school i am unsure as to whether an amplifier is really worth it, though the headroom total airhead amp seems like it could be a good investment.
Lastly for headphones i think the westone um-2s may be a good choice, as they seem to be more subtle than other IEMs, which in some pictures appear to stick out a lil bit.
Please could you point me in the right direction and advise me whether or not this is a good portable system to listen to, or whether i should look at some different equipment.
Thanks in advance (hopefully), Ross
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Can't comment on the X5 specifically, but I have the UM2. Running off an iRiver 120, I don't find all that much benefit to using an amplifier. Oh, there's improvement alright, but while it tightens up some things, it adds others. I'd suggest skipping the amp for now and testing out some amps at a meet or something before spending on it. I do prefer running the iRiver through the microDAC, though it's not a huge improvement, and not an option for the X5. I also have a dvd player which I only like through the microDAC. But with these easy to drive headphones I see no reason whatsoever to use an amp while using the microDAC. Instead, I use an inline volume control after the microDAC. For comparison, this is all true for the Westone UM2, Shure E5, and Etymotic erp4. More to the point for you, all these headphones work fine running straight off the LINE OUTPUT of either the iRiver or the dvd player, with inline volume control, of course. They're that easy to drive. Not that I'd run that way except for a short test. By the way, I'm not pushing the microDAC. I have it and it's okay, but I'll be looking for something better in the future. My home DAC (original MSB Link DAC) blows it away.
While I'm here, I don't have a real preference for any of these canal phones. The etymotics have a different sound, but between Shure and Westone, I have no preference. They're different, but not by all that much. On the other hand, I don't like the Shure 4. Lastly, the Westones are the most comfortable of all three.
[edit]
I just read the previous post about the X5 line out needing the flaky subpack. Obviousy, you need to take that into account if you plan on an external amp. This, plus the option to use an external DAC, is what drove me to (just recently) buy the out of production iRiver 120. I prefer to have the extra options. Just keep in mind that I have no experience at all with the X5, and take what I say in that perspective.
Just to add to (or clear up) the confusion, the DVD player sounds tolerable using the line out, but the headphone out is badly distorted.
