Huddler's the devil. Normally I would be able to SPACE OUT paragraphs on my phone. Not with Huddler.
LegendaryLv11 is probably having a bad day. He's usually pretty cool.
And I get where you're coming from. The UE18 would be a huge upgrade from iBuds, but the difference between, say, a Unique Melody Mage and the UE18 will be much less drastic. Diminishing returns kicks in pretty fast in the portable world. Once you get past the $150 mark, differences are mostly about taste. Sure, there's some extra resolution in megabuck customs, but most newbies won't be able to easily tell if given a $500 custom and a $1400 custom. I say read more about other customs like Unique Melody, ACS, Westone, etc and maybe get an amp if you want to. Most amps SHOULD sound pretty similar (with the obvious slight sound signature they all inherently have due to capacitors and such) since their primary goal is to just provide extra power. A premade Mini3 would get you pretty far. It would help a lot if you listed your music choices and budget too, which seems to be like $1500?
Now, my main beef with using phones as sources is the signal interference you get when anything incoming, well, comes to the phone. The beep gets annoying. Not too sure if this affects CDMA phones like the Play though. Regardless, even a Sansa Clip+, found at Best Buy, would be a sound upgrade. Rockbox it, and you have a very capable, if slightly overrated, player for $40 plus micro SD card cost. Alternatively, you could go for the Cowon J3 or wait for the new Sony A series DAPs that will most likely be spectacular.
Oh, and make sure you can tell the difference between lossless and LAME V0 encoded MP3's before you fill up your DAP with lossless. You may be able to save a ton of space if you can't. Honestly, I can tell the difference, but on a portable setup, it's negligible because the differences are drowned out by external noise anyways. Huddler's the devil. Normally I would be able to SPACE OUT paragraphs on my phone. Not with Huddler.
LegendaryLv11 is probably having a bad day. He's usually pretty cool.
And I get where you're coming from. The UE18 would be a huge upgrade from iBuds, but the difference between, say, a Unique Melody Mage and the UE18 will be much less drastic. Diminishing returns kicks in pretty fast in the portable world. Once you get past the $150 mark, differences are mostly about taste. Sure, there's some extra resolution in megabuck customs, but most newbies won't be able to easily tell if given a $500 custom and a $1400 custom. I say read more about other customs like Unique Melody, ACS, Westone, etc and maybe get an amp if you want to. Most amps SHOULD sound pretty similar (with the obvious slight sound signature they all inherently have due to capacitors and such) since their primary goal is to just provide extra power. A premade Mini3 would get you pretty far. It would help a lot if you listed your music choices and budget too, which seems to be like $1500?
Now, my main beef with using phones as sources is the signal interference you get when anything incoming, well, comes to the phone. The beep gets annoying. Not too sure if this affects CDMA phones like the Play though. Regardless, even a Sansa Clip+, found at Best Buy, would be a sound upgrade. Rockbox it, and you have a very capable, if slightly overrated, player for $40 plus micro SD card cost. Alternatively, you could go for the Cowon J3 or wait for the new Sony A series DAPs that will most likely be spectacular.
Oh, and make sure you can tell the difference between lossless and LAME V0 encoded MP3's before you fill up your DAP with lossless. You may be able to save a ton of space if you can't. Honestly, I can tell the difference, but on a portable setup, it's negligible because the differences are drowned out by external noise anyways.