Anaxilus
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2010
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Thanks Mike and Mike!
Audiophiles in china like to use d50 n m10 as a portal source. Many of them said that 3.2v li-ion AA batteries will improve their sound quality ,really interesting.
Second Opinion! Sony PCM-M10: My New Portable High-Res Music Player
Mike Rivers does a great job pointing out the virtues of the PCM-M10's recording capabilities. As with all recording pocket portables, I wanted to see how it handled my collection of high-res downloads, DVD/SACD copies and original high-res guitar tracks.
As a fan of high res PCM 24 bit music, an iPod does not cut it with its 16-bit 44/kHz maximum playback rate. I have found that the 24-bit capable digital media recorders make nice players for high-res music on the go. Do they sound like a high-end home playback system? Well, no, but 24-bit tracks sure sound better on one of these than a sample-rate converted or downloaded MP3 version of the same music.
To see how the PCM-M10 fared, I downloaded some ITrax (www.itrax.com) jazz cuts at 24/96 and compiled for transfer several other bits of music from my collection: acoustic guitar, and first-generation copies of DVD-As and SACDS in 24-bit/96. As long as they have .wav extension, the tracks dragged easily from my Apple desktop to the ‘M10,. But the transfer is really slow via the USB port. Lets just say a GB worth of high-res music took a long, long, long, long time.
After I transferred the tracks, I popped in a set of AKG K701 headphones via the 1/8th inch adapter,. The 701s are a fairly hard-to-drive set of ‘phones for small portables. Much to my satisfaction, the PCM-M10 actually drove the AKGs to a fairly loud level. And it did a nice job of reproducing high-res music. In particular, “Roundabout” by Yes, (analog copied from the Fragile DVD-A), sounded quite good: nice transient detail, good imaging and a nice job of reproducing the detail on Steve Howe’s classical guitar intro.
On the Lawrence Juber's rendition of "Strawberry Fields Forever" (from a 24/96 ITrax download) the fingerstyle guitar playing was impressive for a $300 buck player. This latest generation of converters — even running on lower voltages — sound really good.
I compared the M10 to its big expensive brother, the PCM-D1. The M10 has the same general playback tonal characteristics; the $2,000 D1 has more stereo image width and transient detail, but it is not really that much smoother. The M10’s music playback sounds more separated and detailed than a $399 M-Audio MicroTrack II, though the MicroTrack was analog-like smooth in its sonic presentation via headphones.
With the PCM-M10, I think I have found my new portable high-res player. It is iPod-sized, easy to use, sounds hi-fi, and, oh my, it plays forever on a set of double AAs. Mate the M10 with a pair of Shure's new $100 SRH-440 headphones, and you got a nice little hi-res playback system. Oh yeah, it records 24-bit, too.
– John Gatski
Interesting! I can't remember where I had read about Chinese audiophiles using the Sony recorders this way, but I've never heard about anyone using "3.2v li-ion AA batteries."
Are you sure about the voltage? The Sony PCM-M10 accepts two 1.5 Volt AA batteries (3 Volts total) and the power jack expects the PSU to deliver 3 Volts. If there is such a thing as a 3.2-Volt AA battery, the total voltage for two would be 6.4-Volts.
Mike
Originally Posted by zilch0md /img/forum/go_quote.gif
<snip> you can navigate to specific folders, playing entire folders with gapless playback <snip>
I'm sold
Keep in mind that it is gapless for WAV, not for mp3.