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Originally Posted by limathy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
what i was saying was i'm happy now becuase i dont have anything better to compare it to, being happy with something is always until you hear something better
and if it would be a very large step up i would consider all the inconvenience of an amp, LOD etc.
and of course money is an issue, so if the improvements are minor, i probably should be saving/using money for something else.
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Triple.fi don't suck if you use them without an amp, while some other phones do (particularly my Altec Lansing IM716 which can be my worst earphones from headphone out and my best universal earphones from a good amp).
Like I said in my first response - "Get an amp if you are looking to correct some deficiency in what you hear like you need more bass, or smoother treble, or more power etc. Or if you want to take advantage of the further improvement in sound quality that you get from moving to the Line Out Dock and away from headphone out."
The line out will almost always sound better than headphone out, and then adding a decent amp to that will bring the sound even further along than you'd get with the internal headphone amp. On older iPods I find the improvement from moving to line out from HP out is bigger than on a better DAP like my iRiver. But the 3G nano and 6G classic also seem to have decent headphone out vs the older iPods - still not as good as line out but there is less to gain from line out, unless you need an amp to drive difficult headphones.
With what you have said about what you want in a portable rig, there is no way to set up a rule that says if the improvement is 20% or more get the amp and if the improvement is 15% or less then don't (and still and be confident you made the right choice). A 10% improvement to one person is a 40% improvement to another and visa versa.
It is better if you simply decide what YOU want in advance, and then either pick the most portable rig, or pick the better sounding but less convenient amped rig. For me, somedays I have the 3G nano with low profile LOD to Predator, and some days I leave off the amp, and some days I take the huge iMod/Vcap Dock/Amp in a camera bag route. It depends on the size of my pockets and what I am doing that day.