[shigzeo]

i should think the difference should be small. no matter the hardware, th difference should but up to this: your headphones have certain requirements to move properly and most portable do not have a sufficient enough amp to move them. you connect even the headphone amp to an external amp and will hear a)deeper bass especially for voltage and current hungry phones b)better stage as the headphone is likely making havoc with the ipod's amp.

low ohm phones will suck out bass of the ipod (and most players sufficiently). there are many many results on internet for other players to show that headphone is as bad or worse than ipod. the ipod has even from headphone out a decent stage, good s/n performance and thd performance.

the lovely d2 performs worse than ipod for many headphone out power tests but with connected to an amp, drives the amp a bit better. any portable should have degrees of improvement with an amp, but it should not be miles and miles different unless your phones are really power/current hungry.

for instance: all of my low ohm 16 canals and even my um2 lost bass resolution from all of my portables: all (meizu, d2, iriver triangular thing, ipod nano3g, touch). all had some similarity in bass roll off but d2 suffered the most along with nano3g. both still sounded good but, one other thing was attacked in the case of the d2: stage went from with an amp: 65db (respectable) to about 42db.

it gave me a headache with trance. i sold it.

amps: they will add hiss too to the signal sort of. my hissy units: meizu m6, sony 600 and 800, ipod shuffle 2g lost all hiss if i turned their gain up high enough and the amp on low, but then the amp itself (any i have heard) hissed too, making it a bit annoying.

eventually, if i am heaps worried about hiss and bass, i make the headphone out less loaded by using an er4s to p adapter that adds 75ohm resistance. no hiss from the cable and though the bass does not come back as much as i need with low ohm phones (at least for resolution), it gains weight and texture to about 10hz versus rolling off completely at 30hz at minus 20db.

all protables should drive amps: perfectly. headout or not out. or near perfect. amps only help bring back some strengths if used with phones, but if you go straight from head to car or to hifi, it should be of no change at all or nearly at all.

 

[Ocean7]

For what it's worth I had the iPod Touch, then I ordered a D2 because about curious to see what the fuss was all about. The D2 sounded better to my ears than the Touch, even through a LOD. The sound was easier, with more detail. The Touch is now sold, I miss the fabulous interface though.

 

[Mr_Junesequa]

here you go montell

heres an image of a normal wolfston.

headphone circuits are constructed on the Wolfson DAC. The line dock (if made correctly) bypasses these. there are two paths a sound signal can pass through, two paths on the chip above.tapping into the headphone out l&R at full volume isn't the same as plugging into the line out lineout l and lineoutr. different paths on the chip which would produce different sound signals. the line out is a real lineout with a clean signal. for more information read about the wolfston chips.

 

[Nattydraddy]

That´s a Wolfson DAC, like the iPods up to 5.5G had. But the actual iPod uses a Cirrus Logic audio codec chip. DAC, control logic and amp are integrated into one chip. I doubt that the signal gets out to the to the Line Out in the middle [of the signal path] of the chip.

The iPod should have sounded thinnes out of HP Out than out of Line Out. But that´s not with the iPod Classic. The iPod Classic can drives all kind of headphones out of the HP Out. Ok. my AKG K-701 may be to hard for an DAP. But i uses my iPod Classic with Shure SE530 and ATH ESW9 and i don´t know why an signal from the Line Out with my cmoy amp should be better for the iPod Classic.

 

[BigTony]

The difference between the LO and HPO on my Sony MZ-NH1 isn't noticable, even at high volumes. But then the output is better than my Ipod Classic - if I could only ween myself of wanting to carry round hundreds of albums rather than 10's I'd just use my Sony MD all the time. I guess there are just sometimes when the 'old ipod shuffle' is the only way to listen.

BT

 

[Mr_Junesequa]

The lineout of a dap will always sound the same as the headphone out.

Headphone out is made for boosting the output to the chosen volume while loaded with headphones. This signal is hard to measure and is harder to get a line level output which can then be amplified by an external source. sometimes this output can create distortion.

A lineout just sends a signal at line level output to be amplified by an external source. the signal will be clean and not distorted. It does not go by the same path in the codec (any codec)/chip as the headphone out however the production of sound is created by the same source post dac...

but if a player sounds crap to ur ears through the headphone out... all ur doing for lineout is taking that crap sound...removing distortion (or possible distortion) taking the crappy sound and amplifying it.

hp out and lineout will sound the same. Its the same player.

however lineout will be cleaner.

 

[screwglue]

is there any cable that is a apple dock cable with a female 3.5mm headphone jack?

 

[4saken]

Yeah you can find one at head-direct.com (called the Pocket Dock)

 

[jonathanjong]

Erm, does screwglue know he needs a portable amp too, not just a LOD?

 

[screwglue]

yes.