[russdog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zowie Don't forget that the Cowon plays lossless flac files (the staple of tapers) and iPods (and most others) do not. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. As a side note, I see the discussion has turned to all kinds of things besides sound quality, just as the OP had commented.

Evidently, this includes posts wherein biased people use the word "garbage" when referring to anything that isn't their preferred codec...

 

[mnhnhyouh]

List of codecs supported on a Rockboxed iPod (or any other DAP that Rockbox has been ported to....)


Quote:

Originally Posted by Rockbox wiki includes MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, FLAC, AAC, ALAC, AC3 and WavPack

Good to hear all these claims of poor quality, equal quality, etc, being backed up by blind testing....

h

 

[Pettnolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zowie Don't forget that the Cowon plays lossless flac files (the staple of tapers) and iPods (and most others) do not. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. As a side note, I see the discussion has turned to all kinds of things besides sound quality, just as the OP had commented.

Uh, ipods play flac just fine.


Unless of course you are one of the few that isn't running rockbox for some unfathomable reason.

 

[3X0]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pettnolf Unless of course you are one of the few that isn't running rockbox for some unfathomable reason.

I know more than a few people that don't use Rockbox because of its hit towards the iPod's battery life; though it is definitely great otherwise.

 

[P.J]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dura I find this amazing. Last week I plugged my shure e4s into a friends nano (coming from my NW-HD1, atrac 256kbs vs AAC something comparable) and I was shocked by the great difference in SQ. The nano missed bass, making the sound flat and too bright, crossing the line from pleasant too unpleasant and it made me wonder for the umpteen time why ipods are so incredibly populair. Beauty is skindeep indeed (though I prefer the NW-HD1 stylish one piece metal case above the scratchable plastic of the nano) IMO, generally speaking, Sony, Cowon and Zen players have a much better SQ then Ipods.

Are you sure ?
But nano has bass boost

I want to get it (1GB) ! Please help me !!!
I confused

See this nano's review from trustedreviews.com :

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=1888

 

[xelion]

so I was looking for a new mp3 player as well, I currently have a Creative Zen Xtra 30gb model(you know, those huge bricky things that weigh about 2 pounds) and was reading through this topic, it seems you all only care about the navigation of the players. As long as it works what does it matter? I want something that has some great sound quality to go along with my newly purchased(well about to be) ER4P IEM's.

So, based purly on SQ, what would be the best player? I'd really like something other than an Ipod, just becuase I have a thing against Apple. Something with a large harddrive would be nice, I'm the kind of person who likes to have everything he owns with him, so that I may listen to whatever catches my fancy at the moment. Not some tiny 2gb Ipod Nano that only holds maybe 10 cd's.

 

[HeadKase]

Thanks for the replies. It still seems that people like the Cowon sound, and I probably would too since it's usually described as a warm smooth sound. The only thing I wonder is how much I would enjoy using their directory tree kind of interface. For me the interface is the drawback to the Cowon players.

 

[blazer78]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aliquis Meizu flashplayers uses the same chipset series as iRiver IFPs did (the good sounding ones, not the T-series) and iAudio, so probably similair. It seems like Sweden is the country where they sell well and they are very high regarded here, but people in China seems able to get them for like 1/3 of the price we pay here. So get a Meizu from china for a lower than iaudio/iriver prices and get the similair sound quality (I assume you can install the swedish meizu firmware on it aswell and in that way get english instead of chinese if the china version got chinese text.)

Ahh i see, just curious about the thing said about sound signatures previously though. I find Cowon's sound signature to be quite neutral in most respects (that is, it doesn't sound very lively) whereas my old Sony MD sounded warmer and i dunno, there was something about the sound that i loved.

So in terms of the sound signature of Meizu and iriver, which one would sound closer to Sony? (I know its gonna be subjective, but a rough opinion is better than none).

 

[TheMarchingMule]

If you properly activate iPod 5G's Hardware EQ in Rockbox, then every song pretty much sounds live. The vocals are moved up a dozen rows, many more layers of mid and low come forth, etc.

It's like night and day you'll notice when you switch back to no Hardware EQ.

 

[wanderman]

any player that can't play music gaplessly and dosen't measure flat from headphone out can never be the best player for sq. The only player that did that out of the box was the karma. The kama measuered flat, played gaplessly, and had next to no hiss.

Rockbox changed alot of things so imo the best player for sq via headphone out would be the 5g or the x5 and the best with an amp would be the h300 or h100.

 

[rx7_fan]

I have the 5G ipod and use the UE custome UE5c, it sounds amazing and really stopped reading up on head-fi. I suggest you give it a try.

P.S.

New ipod nano on sept 12.

 

[JayJayz]

everyone is comparing the SQ of the headphone outs, which HDD based DAP has the best SQ for its line out then?

I never use the headphone out, i always use a portable amp, so line out SQ is most important to me.

Can someone comment for best HDD based DAP for its line-out SQ ?

cheers, jjz.

 

[3X0]

More than a few people suggest that the RedWine Audio-modded iPod 4G has the best line-out of any contemporary hard-drive based solution.

 

[zowie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3X0 More than a few people suggest that the RedWine Audio-modded iPod 4G has the best line-out of any contemporary hard-drive based solution.

I stirred my iPod for hours but the hard drive just wouldn't dissolve.

 

[russdog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3X0 More than a few people suggest that the RedWine Audio-modded iPod 4G has the best line-out of any contemporary hard-drive based solution.

More than a few people have invested money in that mod, and have not done a comparison to a 5G-with-ALO-dock, because they don't have one. It's not much use to hear opinions that are not based on an actual comparison. I think I've only seen one post where somebody had actually compared the two... just one post. That's not a lot to go by.