The Altmann Tera Player - Thread

[apmusson]

  Yes, the Tera is not about hugely excel in details but good enough to provide musical enjoyment.

I agree.  The Tera has more than enough detail.  It is the best DAP that I have ever owned.  Still loving it after a year and a half of ownership.  My comments about detail were really aimed at the the NDA HP50 headphones....

 

[fumanchu]

In regards to detail, my Samsung S4 and various iDevices do a far superior job drilling the details into the center of my head. In particular, those details such as rim shots are brightly tattooed onto the cranium so as to be much more noticable than the Tera's more natural approach. Without a doubt, I notice details more readily when they are presented deep inside my head cavity and bouncing off bone.

With tera I only feel as though I were in an environment of music, such as a room or hall, and I often forget there even is music playing as I become distracted with other tasks. Those clear and precise details which it produces seem to emanate peripherally from outside my head and sometimes rather distant. That sort of distance provides an illusion of "space" and it might require a bit of concentration to precisely pick put the flute or violin in that more distant space. My perception of percussions is that they sound very real, bold,and solid, and yet only the sound waves are bouncing off my body. To be fair, I admit that I prefer rimshots to be slapping elsewhere than my skull bone, but this is only a personal preference.

 

[musicday]

What are beat sounding closed headphones for Tera.Some say that ATH 11 Ltd ..
How the NAD compare to Philips L2?
I need to find a pair of headphones with exactly same sound signature as korta koss.

 

[Makiah S]

I won't complain that is only plays wav, after all software is a restriction that we place on hard ware, my only question is what's the storage size? How am I storing all of those files, and two is it JUST a dac... does it have an amp section or do I need to feed it into a dac. I mean if it has an amp dac built in... I wonder can it power picky cans like the HD 800 or the T1? But that's not as important any more, seeing that cans like the new HE 560 and LCD X are easier to drive
 
so back to my orignal question STORAGE? 

 

[suicidal_orange]

What are beat sounding closed headphones for Tera.Some say that ATH 11 Ltd ..

I wont claim they're the best as I've not heard lots of the closed headphones recommended round these parts but for a nice bassy combo I like my Ultrasone Pro 750 straight out of the Tera. 
 
On the other hand I really don't like my Denons or the ATH-M50 I tried at a meet with it.

  I won't complain that is only plays wav, after all software is a restriction that we place on hard ware, my only question is what's the storage size? How am I storing all of those files, and two is it JUST a dac... does it have an amp section or do I need to feed it into a dac. I mean if it has an amp dac built in... I wonder can it power picky cans like the HD 800 or the T1? But that's not as important any more, seeing that cans like the new HE 560 and LCD X are easier to drive
 
so back to my orignal question STORAGE? 

 
The Tera has volume control and is designed to drive headphones without a separate amp (a DAP without a DAC would just be a transport - people here want one, none exist) but it's not very powerful so best you stick to easy to drive ones.
 
Storage is by full size SD card (or micro + adapter), 128gb formatted to FAT32 has been tested and works fine though old Teras have issues with the newest, fastest cards.  You can have a maximum of 128 first level folders (supposed to be for artists) and in each of them 128 folders (supposed to be for albums) and 128 songs per "album" which is way more than you'll fit on 128gb especially as WAVs are big. 
 
One other thing to note is either you play all songs on random or you play a single "album" on repeat - there are no other options.

 

[Makiah S]

  I wont claim they're the best as I've not heard lots of the closed headphones recommended round these parts but for a nice bassy combo I like my Ultrasone Pro 750 straight out of the Tera. 
 
On the other hand I really don't like my Denons or the ATH-M50 I tried at a meet with it.
 
The Tera has volume control and is designed to drive headphones without a separate amp (a DAP without a DAC would just be a transport - people here want one, none exist) but it's not very powerful so best you stick to easy to drive ones.
 
Storage is by full size SD card (or micro + adapter), 128gb formatted to FAT32 has been tested and works fine though old Teras have issues with the newest, fastest cards.  You can have a maximum of 128 first level folders (supposed to be for artists) and in each of them 128 folders (supposed to be for albums) and 128 songs per "album" which is way more than you'll fit on 128gb especially as WAVs are big. 
 
One other thing to note is either you play all songs on random or you play a single "album" on repeat - there are no other options.

Honest;y I wouldn't mind that at all
 
the lack of FLAC support is irking but... I use 32gb cards, so I could just use a 64gb and get over that
 
still I play all of my music "by album" or randomly already so... I might try it one day 

 

[Lindskog]

Hi
 
I have a problem with my Tera when I want to change album/folder (One has to press the middle "Play/Pause-button" together with some of the skip track buttons) it first starts to play the first song of the current album and you have to repeat the maneuver fast twice to make it skip to next album/folder. Sometimes I have to repeat the maneuver many times before it actually change folder. This is very annoying when you want to change many folders cause it takes lots of time. Therefore I only use max 16GB cards, not to have to skip trough many folders.
 
Has anyone else experienced this problem?

 

[flymetothemoon]

  Hi
 
I have a problem with my Tera when I want to change album/folder (One has to press the middle "Play/Pause-button" together with some of the skip track buttons) it first starts to play the first song of the current album and you have to repeat the maneuver fast twice to make it skip to next album/folder. Sometimes I have to repeat the maneuver many times before it actually change folder. This is very annoying when you want to change many folders cause it takes lots of time. Therefore I only use max 16GB cards, not to have to skip trough many folders.
 
Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Hi,
 
Very easy to fix.
 
You create a 1st level folder then put all your different subfolders into this 1st level folder.  By doing do, Tera will switch to one album to the other in one movement (rather than twice as you are doing now).
 
Try it out and let me know if this helps.
 
Cheers

 

[Makiah S]

  Hi,
 
Very easy to fix.
 
You create a 1st level folder then put all your different subfolders into this 1st level folder.  By doing do, Tera will switch to one album to the other in one movement (rather than twice as you are doing now).
 
Try it out and let me know if this helps.
 
Cheers

so to do that,
 
assume that your PC recognizes your SD card as Disk k
 
in K you would do something like
K/Music/ALBUMS HERE
 
you would make the Music folder in the location designated "k"  or what ever letter your PC assigns to your SD card 

 

[Lindskog]

Thanks!
 
Yes it helped. Why did you not tell me that 2 years ago when I got it?
 
Why is it like this?

 

[Lindskog]

flymetothemoon, how do think the Tera compares with the AK 240 used with 1plus2?
 
And which mach the Tera best, 1plus2 or Ref1?
 
Thanks!

 

[tgdinamo]

  Thanks!
 
Yes it helped. Why did you not tell me that 2 years ago when I got it?
 
Why is it like this?

 
The idea is that on the top level of the SD card you put artists, and then on the level below albums (because you may have artist with more than one album). I personally love that - it's simple.
One "trick" I find useful when you have multiple albums below artists (for example on very large 128GB SD card I may have all my Zeppelin and Doors albums on the same card) I like to prepend the name of the album with the year when the album was published.
This way when I load music to my SD card on computer it looks the same way as it will when Tera sorts them (earliest year comes first for each artist, etc). 
If you happen to know your artists fairly well it's then easy to quickly navigate to whatever album you want.

 

[flymetothemoon]

  flymetothemoon, how do think the Tera compares with the AK 240 used with 1plus2?
 
And which mach the Tera best, 1plus2 or Ref1?
 
Thanks!

For 1Plus2, actually Tera is better.  With AK240, with some tracks, some sibilants and this might be the high analytical abilities of both DAP & phones.  
 
I do, however, found to extract the most is to amp the Tera (with my Vorzuge Duo, using Tralucent uber interconnector) where the bass is more solid with better layering while the high can be extended a bit better.

 

[flymetothemoon]

  flymetothemoon, how do think the Tera compares with the AK 240 used with 1plus2?
 
And which mach the Tera best, 1plus2 or Ref1?
 
Thanks!

As Ref.1 has stronger low (bass) performance and it helps to compensate roll offs in both bass & highs (due to Tera's high output impedance).  

 

[Makiah S]

  For 1Plus2, actually Tera is better.  With AK240, with some tracks, some sibilants and this might be the high analytical abilities of both DAP & phones.  
 
I do, however, found to extract the most is to amp the Tera (with my Vorzuge Duo, using Tralucent uber interconnector) where the bass is more solid with better layering while the high can be extended a bit better.

 
 

  As Ref.1 has stronger low (bass) performance and it helps to compensate roll offs in both bass & highs (due to Tera's high output impedance).  

 
 
soo... to get the best out of this little dap I need to double amp it :/