[grox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by paradio I have used the foobar to play ape lossless formated music on my laptop. The sound is quite good than Mp3 and file size is roughly half of the original source (compared to wav). And this format can show the advantage of your good cans ( at least from frequency response point of view) than Mp3. But unfortunately, no portable player can support this!

What's wrong with flac? Iaudio x5 and the karma support it...

 

[senn600help]

im really happy with the way my ipod shuffle / etymotic er-4ps sound together. for the total cost (i paid about $400, but could be done for $300 if youre a more patient buyer than me) i dont think you can get better sound, home or on the road. if anyone thinks they have a better 3-$400 portable combo, id be interested in your opinion.

 

[Twombly]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot Any compressed format is not going to qualify as audiophile, so minidisc doesn't fit the bill. One way of getting audiophile sound would be to get an iPod loaded with Apple Lossless files with a line out and headphone amp. See ya Steve

Very few people can actually tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and lossless in a scientific test setup.

 

[Yukster]

Personally, I think the Minidisc is going to be the closest that you can get to the sound quality of a CD, if its RECORDED properly. That rules out NetMD, since it uses an older codec, and uses either LP2 or LP4, a high compression scheme. This also rules out any MD that was dubbed at high speed, since this also uses an older codec to encode the disc.

If you do a digital recording using SP, using the latest Type S codec, at real time, then you will have a near perfect disc. Then use a portable player such as the Sony E730 which uses the new Sony HD Digital Amp (or a Sharp player with an Auvi amp), and you will have a very hard time telling the difference between the original and the MD. My portable phone of choice is the Audio Technica CM7, but any easy to drive portable high quality phones (Sony E888, a Shure or Ety canal phone) will do the job.

If you upgrade to the HiMD, with its PCM recording capability (lossless), and use a player that used the HD Digital Amp, the results will be even better.

 

[DigDub]

i have to agree that MD sounds the best of the players i've tried so far (creative, iriver, sony and ipod). the rh910 i got 2 weeks ago still amazes me with its sound. i can hear instruments i've never noticed before on my er6i. everything is 'there'.

 

[hifiboom]

quite starnge....


Sony seems to put more effort in high quality output on MD Players than on their CD-Player lines...... am I wrong?

I hate formats like Mp3, they are a jump back to the past......


Thanks to the industry: we had cassette players - than we got high quality CD Players which sound extremly good. Then MD players appeared which have a quality thats nearly equaly to CD and now we end up with 128kbit MP3s which is the mainly used at on i-net.

Mp3 at 128kbit is not very audiophile, you can easily hear the missing frequencys with good monitors..... that sucks!!!


Why do the manufactors go back.... mp3 is just a i-net format: if you want to transfer sounds over i-net, it needs to be small. thats okay and its okay if they support it as format on the players, but SQ should be their main building_task
and most mp3 soundquality is bad.....


Why don`they just build up a PDDVD, where you can burn WAVs or ATRAC to a DVD and play it with the portable player.

Or even blueRAY/HDDVD which has 20-40 GB. We live in a time where compression is not needed....!!

And a DVD has a much more data density, that would physically save much battery!, because a DVD would have to rotate much slower than a CD does. Think of HD/BlueRAY

These engineers are just stupid....

GO WITH MP3 - and have quality that equals the 90s century cassette player, which I found were more audiophile, only had the back ground noise and cassette lose quality over the time.

 

[HD-5000]

Nah, if anything MP3 represents the future. We're moving away from CD in favor of compressed music.

Also, a properly encoded mp3 should sound very very good by most standards.

 

[hifiboom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HD-5000 Nah, if anything MP3 represents the future. We're moving away from CD in favor of compressed music. Also, a properly encoded mp3 should sound very very good by most standards.

don`t think so..... compressed audio will NEVER replace uncompressed audio.......

mp3 is a usful format and I personally use it very much too.

But its nowhere audiophile than umcompressed.

I use the LAME encoder, which is quite good. You`re right : some people don`t know how to do a well compresed mp3....

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Twombly Very few people can actually tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and lossless in a scientific test setup.

I agree with you, but "audiophile" means"the best possible sound". Theoretical improvements are just as important as perceptual ones.

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

Can someone explain to me how minidisc sounds better than lossless encoding?

Thanks
Steve

 

[ilovesocks]

The problem is, most people would much rather have 128kbps mp3's because they're smaller and more convenient. (I read about this in Wired magazine.

) Convenience has much more priority than quality.

 

[Sledge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by philodox Thats it, I'm building one!

How about a FLAC-playing Neuros II 80GB (support for FLAC coming soon) with the upcoming Headroom MicroDAC and MicroAMP?

 

[paradio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grox What's wrong with flac? Iaudio x5 and the karma support it...

As I know there are 4 lossless format: FLAC, PAC, APE and WV. FLAC compression is the worst among them but a lot of platform can support it well. I don't have experience about FLAC sound quality, but APE. It will be much appreciated that you can show me more about FLAC via private message (not to disturb this thread). Thank you in advance.

 

[philodox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sledge How about a FLAC-playing Neuros II 80GB (support for FLAC coming soon) with the upcoming Headroom MicroDAC and MicroAMP?

Neuros has a digital out?

 

[Sledge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by philodox Neuros has a digital out?

Yep. The Neuros has a USB port. From a review I've read, connecting the Neuros via USB to a Bithead works fine.