How does the IMP350 and IMP400 compare?

[brschmid]

Like it says. does the IMP400 have the hiss the IMP350 had?? I just brought back my IMP350 today because the hiss was really annoying.

What else would be a good choice for a CD/MP3 player??

 

[was ist los?]

They are supposedly the same units, but the iMP-400 has the hiss fixed.

 

[Sweet Spot]

Where is this hiss you're all talking about ? My iMP 350 is more quiet than a mute mouse ! I bought it about 2 months ago..perhaps 3. I haven't heard anything out of it....well, except the occasional music selection

How can I attempt to replicate this ?

By the way, I'm in the process of trying to determine one of 2 possible things:

That either

1) The Porta Pros and Sennheiser PX 200's are way too dark and muddy sounding OR

2)The iMP 350, in combination with the PX 200's just sounds like crap when the EQ on the iMP is set to flat.

When I got home today, I realized that before I got my PX 200's , I had left the user eq settings on, which is boosting mainly the trebble, and toning down the bass. So I decided to turn the eq off while playing an MP3 cd and WOW...it sounded like utter ***** ! I was fairly disgusted with this result, so I turned the eq setting back on.

Now I just have to figure out which of the 3 things is the problem...the CD, the source or the cans. This is going to be rough. Either way, I'm not thrilled.

Anyone have any ideas of what it could be ? My impressions of the music with the eq off, was that it was horribly muffled, had no trebble, and was ..to put it simply.......sloppy. I just put in a regular CD, just to test the "could it be the MP3 cd" theory and nope..it's not the mp3's. I'm listening to Radiohead's Kid A and there's practically no high end at all. Maybe I just like trebble alot, but without the eq, I feel that there's just no clarity. This disturbs me to say the least. I dont mind having to use the EQ, but it would be prefferable to have it flat and sound great from the get go...this way, any tweaking would be strictly out of anal retentiveness

Anyone else share these problems/sentiments with me ?

S.S.

P.S. I just turned the music off, and the source is still on. I hear nothing ...no hiss at all and i turned the volume up all the way.

 

[brschmid]

I didn't notice the HISS until i plugged in my recently completed CMOY amp. the amp itself has no noise as i have tested for it and connected to an older Sony PCDP, but when connected to the IMP350 the HISS was noticable immediately after pressing play, pause or stop. basically anytime music is not playing.

I am using some headphones similar to KTX Pros(they might be if that name has been around for around 7 years) and my new UR-30's. their respective impedenced are 60 ohms and 100 ohms.

was ist los?,
do you know if the hiss is gone for sure, if it is i will probably buy one.

Also i was able to get rid of the hiss by lowering the volume on my headphone(they each have a volume control on them) but that was annoying to deal with so i took it back today.

 

[was ist los?]

Well, the hiss is only present with an amp with high gain. I had mine at 6 w/ volume control and couldn't hear it. i now set my gain at 10 to use with crossfeed. It seems as if higher impedance headphones and low gain amps are unaffected by the hiss.
brschmid: I'm not sure if the hiss is totally gone on the iMP-400.

 

[brschmid]

my amp has the default 11 gain. could this be the cause, if so, that would really suck being as i returned it today. Also i have no volume control i just amplify the signal.

 

[Rizumu]

The iMP-400 is purtier. It has a cooler remote and...uhm...more EQ modes? I don't think it's really worth the almost $100 more you're going to have to pay for one.

 

[brschmid]

well thanks for the replies, i think i will just go get another imp350 tomorow

 

[Rizumu]

Quote:

Originally posted by brschmid well thanks for the replies, i think i will just go get another imp350 tomorow

I never heard any hiss when I owned an iMP-400 but I didn't have my amp yet then...

This was only with the line out that you hear the hiss with the iMP-350?

 

[brschmid]

no it was with the headphone out. I didn't upgrade the firmware like i did on the first one i had( the tuner quit working). Maybe if i upgrade the firmware that would help. think i tested the Line-out and there was hiss there also. Like i said though i didn't notice it until after i got the amp, without it, it was silent between songs. Maybe i am just being too picky.

 

[Sweet Spot]

One shouldn't use a headphone out when a line out is available anyway....even if it isn't truely dedicated like the iMP350. From what I understand, the signal is still way cleaner using the line out so........

S.S.

 

[Orpheus]

the imp400 definately has hiss/noise... much more than most my non-portable sources. but for a portable, it's decent, but not great. not anywhere even remotely close to what i would call "quiet." and yes, i am talking about the line out. the headphone out has plenty of noise too.

but that doesn't mean it's a bad portable cd player. it has some really cool features (and crap loads of useless ones too)... and looks really cool...... i still think it's the best on the market today, if you don't mind slightly noisy outputs. though, it's not really any worse than other portables i have heard.

 

[brschmid]

thanks for the replies, i bought a NOMAD Zen today, so it doesn't matter anymore, it is charging now so i will know how it sounds tomorrow.

 

[bangraman]

I can't agree with Orpheus on the cool looking front for the Toilet Seat Cover (aka IMP-400), but it's not a bad player. I'm loving the UDF file format compatibility which allows me just to drag and drop MP3 files onto the CD-RW in Windows. It hisses and is definitely not as good as a good Discman, even the current ones, for sound quality but I'm willing to make that tradeoff for the extra features. And it works... a bit too slowly for some functions (switching from radio to CD takes forever) but everything more or less works as advertised which is more than I've seen from any non-Japanese piece of portable audio equipment so far. It could also be one of the very few PCDP's currently on the market that drives a Sennheiser PXC250 adequately unamped, if my experience with the D-EJ2000 is anything to go by.
I just wish there was a way of replacing that embarrasingly geeky remote with a Sony unit.