Best MP3 player for sound quality...?

[DJGeorgeT]

some of my best sounding equipment ended up using the cheapest, noisiest op amps. This baffles people. And other equipment that used very expensive parts did not sound good at the end.

 

[RaptorZX3]

oh well....i have an Ainol V9000HDA 8gb black here, and it sound good enough. I can watch HD movies on it, it have a nice 4.3" 800x480 LTPS screen on it, yes it's a resistive touch-screen, but it's ok.
 
Sometimes i just wish Chinese would stop using cheap gears on their own China-brands, instead of a US-brand forcing a Chinese factory to use higher-end components, rebranding their stuff and selling at 3x the price we should REALLY pay in fact (paying 300$ when you could pay 170$ in fact, for example).
 
To think that i had a Teclast T50 with a Wolfson WM8987 DAC inside...it sounded great, but i sold it because i had bought myself a SmartQ T5-II instead, with a 16gb SDHC card...that one was great, WM8987 also, but i liked it better. But then i sold it for i needed funds.

 

[shigzeo]

My 600Ω DT880 sound GREAT with all of my DAPs - bar none. Even the iPod shuffle sounds great with them, though it is a bit quiet. 
 
On the contrary, I believe that very low Ω (especially balanced armature iems) are much harder to technically drive within their severe tolerances. They can get loud and loud is half the battle to sounding 'good', but they aren't proficient in comparison to medium Ω earphones.
 
The argument that a headphone is hard to drive simply because it is 600Ω should be fired - from a canon, over a river, into a cemetery full of zombies. And eaten.
 
That said, I understand the reason NOT to go for 600Ω phones from portables. They are quiet sometimes at 100% volume and since a DAP is usually only good till about 80% when driving phones, can induce distortion. That said, 600Ω load is almost (to the output of an amplifier) like driving no load and the reason that 600Ω phones are so EASY (yes, I said that) to drive is that in many ways, they simulate no load. Of course getting proper volume with them is imperative for subjective bass and treble volume, so portable DAP's are far from ideal.
 
Quote:

and why would you pair a dap with those?

 

[Hero Kid]

The trap to avoid falling into is, it's not necessarily the amount of ohms that make a 'phone hard to drive - it's its sensitivity. 

 

[shigzeo]

^^ to a certain extent, but look at 600Ω phones with sensitivity around 96dB - they sound great from almost any powerful amp and even to a lesser extent, from DAPs. The reason is that their impedance swings are easily matched by just about anything. Again, getting the right amount of clean volume from them can be hard from an underpowered source can be hard, but not impossible.
 
The swings from very low Ω earphones, however, is very hard to manage, even for some dedicated amps. 

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

I would reccomend the sony x series but it greatly depends on what headphones you use with your player.  crappy headphones = crappy music.  My only suggestion for  both is check out this site at http://alexssupercenter.com/ 
      H 
Hope this helps.

I'm sure it is purely coincidence that your user name is alex5, right?

 

[DJGeorgeT]

I believe sensitivity of most phones these days are around 110 to 120 dB. Although it plays a role, we can assume the sensitivity is pretty constant and it is the impedance that gets the source.
 
Low Z requires the source to output certain current (that it may not be able to source) to achieve a certain listening volume without affecting the sound quality. While high Z requires the source to produce sufficient voltage (that it may not be able to source) to achieve certain listening volume without affecting the sound quality. Assuming constant power, these are extremes and a source may not be up to the task to accomodate a wide range of headphone impedance. With Z changing with frequency, sound quality can suffer nonlinearly from the source not being up to the task. This is what we observe with the Cowon D2. Low Z impacts the low frequency (BASS) waveforms the most, so we have bass rolloff because the source just can't output enough current. With very high impedances, the treble and details are affected the most although low end is often affected as well because of the ridiculously high impedance some of the full size cans have.

 
Quote:

The trap to avoid falling into is, it's not necessarily the amount of ohms that make a 'phone hard to drive - it's its sensitivity.