Does it really matter at the end of the day how great the sound of the shuffle is....for that matter any of the flash players...for the most part, they are used during sport/exercise...if not, why would you not go with a HDD based DAP...
The shuffle is the lamest excuse yet that I have seen for a DAP. It is proof positive that marketing rules all...
There are a couple of posts that look like they could quite happily be deleted, being nothing of merit to this thread... its not something I want to do, but it is something which I may well end up doing if the trend continues...
Not just in this thread, but in any thread... if your post disappears for no reason... you know why
How deep does the bass go on the shuffle? Many of the DAPs I have come across don't seem to be able to reproduce very low frequencies very well, like below 40hz. This is especially evident with my ER6i, which seem to require an amp to reach these ultra-deep bass notes.
- I dug out an old CF based flash player, the Frontier Labs NexIIe and gave it a whirl -- the results were less than stellar, but that was expected
- I finally got my Headsave Go-Vibe portable headphone amp in the mail today and hooked it up for a test. It sounds pretty good, although admittedly, the differences are pretty subtle on my low impedance Shure e3cs. On my roommate's higher impedance Sony V6s, the difference is a bit more dramatic. With the analyzer, the difference is as dramatic.
Using the same 4G 20GB iPod, output via Sik DIN Line Out, connected to a Headsave Go-Vibe:
Without iPod earbuds load
With iPod earbuds load
They are virtually indistinguishable. I guess there is evidence that supports the fact that a well powered system will generate a square wave that is identical loaded and unloaded. Now what's left is to prove (using blind A/B testings I presume) that there is a correlation between the square wave performance and actual perceived sound quality... anyone?
Originally Posted by Tempus Speaking as someone who's planning the purchase of his first DAP in the near future, I don't suppose some clever person out there with access to one of the Cowon iAudio players, perhaps the 5 or the G3, would be able to post similar loaded/unloaded square wave graphs for it? I'm curious how it compares to the Shuffle's graphs. I'm not at all sure, but I believe that I heard somewhere that they both use the same Sigmatel chip. This may have nothing to do with the graph, as that may be all about the output stage, which may not be on that chip, but I'm still curious about how an iAudio graph would look, particularly under load.
I have an I5 right here, but nothing to compare it to, and no way to test it other than just with a line-in.
When doing so, it looks almost exactly like the Dell DJ under load. However, I have no way to compare it to another player or sound card input.
That may matter, as it gets a similar looking wave when putting the front speaker output into the line-in. I used a Philips Aurilium and Audacity.
Originally Posted by NeoteriX They are virtually indistinguishable. I guess there is evidence that supports the fact that a well powered system will generate a square wave that is identical loaded and unloaded.
No, this has nothing to do with "well powered".
Take an ideal 40 Hz square wave:
Now add a 1st order highpass at 10 Hz (i.e. a shallow rolloff below 10 Hz):
highpass at 20 Hz:
40 Hz:
What you have here is more or less simply a less intuitive way to look at the frequency response. The output of players using output capacitors will "drop like a stone" into a load in this test because there is a low frequency rolloff. The corner frequency of this rolloff is a function of the size of the capacitors and the load impedance. The smaller the load impedance, the higher the corner frequency. If there's no load, there won't be any rolloff at all. That's exactly what you're seeing here. No load means no rolloff, and therefore a perfect square wave. A low impedance load means there will be a rolloff, and therefore a squarewave response like shown above. And while those mangled squarewaves look very spectecular, I'd expect even the 40 Hz rolloff to be barely audible, if at all, over headphones.
Originally Posted by cerbie I have an I5 right here, but nothing to compare it to, and no way to test it other than just with a line-in.
Thank you for the effort, and it doesn't matter to me that you have nothing else to compare it to, because the comparison that interests me is how it compares with itself, i.e. load vs. no-load.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cerbie When doing so, it looks almost exactly like the Dell DJ under load. However, I have no way to compare it to another player or sound card input.
I don't exactly understand what you say here. When you say "it looks almost exactly like the Dell DJ under load", which do you mean:
A. The iAudio I5 WITHOUT load looks like the Dell DJ WITH load.
B. The iAudio I5 WITH load looks like the Dell DJ WITHOUT load.
C. The iAudio I5 WITH load looks like the Dell DJ WITH load.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cerbie That may matter, as it gets a similar looking wave when putting the front speaker output into the line-in. I used a Philips Aurilium and Audacity.
Do you mean the Aurilium was feeding into the Audacity, or the other way around?
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