I am really glad to see so many positive reactions to the Nuforce iDo here. On many other website forums I have seen people being very negative about it. I have bought a Nuforce iDo myself two months ago, and now that I really went through hours and hours of burn-in, I can only say: I love it.
Already on day 1, without any burn in time, the Nuforce iDo immediately sounded like a huge step up from listening directly to iPhone 4, iPhone 5 or iPad 2 or iPad Mini (tried them all). I have been listening at first to Nuforce's own NE-700M, a simple IEM that already sounds very nice. The difference in clarity, in precision and in soundstage is noticeable straight away; you don't need to be an audio expert to hear it. Already with the NE-700M it just gives much less fatigue, you just don't want to stop listening where after one hour listening straight from the iDevice without the iDo, my ears get tired and I want to stop.
But it wasn't for the NE-700M that I bought the iDo. Because at the same time as the iDo, I purchased a Sennheiser HD600.
I have been since my teenage years, now 20 years ago, a hifi freak. I've constructed my own loudspeakers and have a high-end audio installation and love listening to it. I've gone as far as also hearing the difference between the cables I use between my preamp and my amps, most of my friends think I am crazy- but I hear the difference between an OFC interlink or a 99.99 silver interlink. Late evenings turning off the light, well positioned on the couch exactly in the middle between my speakers and dreaming away, where you get to that point where you forget how big the room is you're sitting in, with sound as the only reference, and being taken into a huge area where the band or orchestra playing is all around in front of you and you feel the singer is standing in front of you. That effect, I never had with headphones, which is why I never spent time checking out the headphone market. To me, there was no alternative than to listen to stereo speakers.
Problem is, I have kids. When they are not there, I am at work, when I am home, they are either there and I cannot listen, or they are to bed and then I cannot listen either because it wakes them up. I noticed not having my regular dose of high-end music listening, I start to be naggy. So, it was time to check out the headphone arena.
After reading many posts on head-fi and knowing my taste of sound, I decided the Sennheiser HD600 was the best option in my budget. But I just wanted to listen in my bed at night. As all my music is stored on my Synology DS212+ NAS in FLAC format, I didn't want a portable music player, because I don't want to copy music back and forth onto it. And I also didn't want a laptop next to my bed. The user interface of the iPhone or iPad is much better when you listen in bed. But then, the iPhone or iPad could never drive the 300 ohm Sennheiser and the DAC in the iDevices is not good enough. I heard that already when hooking the iDevices I have to my hifi system, it sounds nice but nothing more than that.
So this is where the Nuforce iDo came in. A first step, I was expecting the HD600 would be too hard to drive. But the road to Rome wasn't built in one day, they say, so I figured- let me start with the iDo and see where I'll go some months later.
And so, I started listening to the Nuforce iDo with the HD600. And, I must say, the Nuforce has done surprisingly well! At first, the sound was sterile and dry. I read about the importance of burn-in, so during one week, every day before going to work, I put random music in the playlist and let it play all day until coming home. Doing that for five days without listening in the evening- just turning it off. Five days later, on Friday evening, listening again, wow. What a difference. Much deeper bass, much more refined sound. No one needs to convince me anymore that burn-in matters, because it does.
Anyhow, now the HD600/Nuforce iDo combination sounds so good, I just can't stop listening to it. I listen to a variety of music. From Dire Straits Telegraph Road, to Allan Taylor, James Blunt, or Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Pat Matheney, or electronical music like Yello, London Grammar, or something completely different like Ludivico Einaudi's Time Lapse, or classical music like Tchaikovsky, it all sounds simply fantastic! And even though I still believe nothing beats listening to stereo speakers as even though the soundstage of the HD600 is good (I know it's not the best though), because eventually with headphones the show is in your head, but still, I enjoy very much listening to it and that is what matters.
Of course, time went on. When reading the specs of the Nuforce iDo, I read that it has very low power when driving the 300 ohm HD600's. Reading the forums here, it made me think maybe the Nuforce iDo isn't good enough. So two weeks ago, I went to various headphone shops that have other headphone amps available to listen to. I tried many. Some very popular on head-fi. I listened to various tube amps, such as the Little Dot MKIII, and or a class A amp like the Matrix M-Stage, all on the HD600. Yes, they have more power- I can pump up the sound substantially louder than on the iDo. But do I want to listen so loud? I don't, to be honest. And when listening at the same sound level, I must say, the Nuforce iDo keeps up surprisingly well. Yes, the sound colouring is slightly different. Tubes sound really nice. But it is a matter of taste I think. Because I just as much enjoy listening to the Nuforce iDo to be honest. I also compared it to Nuforce's own HDP and again, apart from the louder sound, I just as much enjoy the Nuforce iDo.
In other words, I have not purchased any amps, as I don't feel it worth the money. At least not now, maybe I get more picky later on. For now, the Nuforce iDo is just the perfect match for my Sennheiser HD600 and the convenience to just hook it up to an iDevice is something I'd lose with the other alternatives. I listened to most from a laptop with a variety of DAC's.
One can say the downside of using an iDevice is the quality of the source data. Let me start by saying that I don't buy my music, or rarely, from iTunes. I only listen to lossless audio.
I used EAC for ripping all my CD's to FLAC format. I only have a 16Gb iPad and a 16Gb iPhone, and I don't want to convert my entire collection of CD's and SACD's again to ALE (Apple Lossless) because I have everything already on my NAS as FLAC. And I most of the FLAC players available in the AppStore, I dislike.
The perfect solution however is DS Audio from Synology. I can browse my entire CD collection (hundreds of CD's in FLAC format) and listen it streaming over WIFI or 3G or LTE on my iDevice. And the good news is: even if I turn off transcoding, even 24/96 SACD rips in FLAC format play perfectly. For example, I have Dire Strait's Love over Gold in both 16/44.1 FLAC format (ripped myself with EAC from the CD) and in the 24/96 SACD FLAC format. Both sound good, but sound stage is much better on the SACD version and the piano sounds much more natural. To me it seems that the Nuforce iDo really is decoding 24-bit 96 kHz but I have no way to check it, as it doesn't display the bit depth and frequency. But as I hear the difference, I am quite sure that there is no resampling or transcoding.
So the combination of the Nuforce iDo and the Synology DS212+ to drive my HD600's seems just perfect!
![size]](http://files.head-fi.org/images/smilies/wink.gif[size=13px][/size])
