[singh]

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the UI does not look bad it feels bad to use  , its slow and unresponsive! ...look wise i have no complaints ...its just that when it comes in to my hand the problem starts !

Mine wasn't slow and unresponsive.  Granted I didn't use any of the internal memory (2GB) so that wasn't a bottleneck for the UI.

nice tip, thanks will try and update.. I was using them without memory card !
 
 
 
@pejayjayHay, if you go the EMS route ..it might arrive soon  ( will cost you $18  more )

 

[pejayjay]

Yes, true, but I'd much rather fly to HK this weekend.  No no, wait, that's not gunna happen.  Damn this self-inflicted poverty. 
 
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@pejayjayHay, if you go the EMS route ..it might arrive soon  ( will cost you $18  more )

 

[s2odin]

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Yes, true, but I'd much rather fly to HK this weekend.  No no, wait, that's not gunna happen.  Damn this self-inflicted poverty. 
 
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@pejayjayHay, if you go the EMS route ..it might arrive soon  ( will cost you $18  more )

 

There was one in FS/FT on here.  I picked one up for $155, 16gb with 8gb card.  I think the one that was (is) for sale was a 16gb w/ 16gb card for $170.
 
edit: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/526577/s-flo2-16gb-16gbcard  guess he took it down $5

 

[pejayjay]

Nice!  Thanks for the heads up.
 
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There was one in FS/FT on here.  I picked one up for $155, 16gb with 8gb card.  I think the one that was (is) for sale was a 16gb w/ 16gb card for $170.

edit: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/526577/s-flo2-16gb-16gbcard  guess he took it down $5

 

 

[jfindon]

Does the HM-601 sound that much better to justify the insane price for a measly 2GB of storage?  Does that change when someone uses the line out with an amp instead of headphone out?

 

[alyanm]

In my opinion, yes it does.  For $21 and change you can get a 16GB SDHC card to put in it and that bumps it to 18GB.  I wouldn't put an amp on the 601, it has plenty of power all by itself on the line out or the headphone out -- at least for my IEMs and my speakers it does.  Possibly a power hungry set of cans might want an amp, I don't know about that.
 
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Does the HM-601 sound that much better to justify the insane price for a measly 2GB of storage?  Does that change when someone uses the line out with an amp instead of headphone out?

 

[Andrew Jones]

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Possibly a power hungry set of cans might want an amp, I don't know about that.
 
 

It easily powers a pair of HD650s to unsafe levels, using flac files encoded with replaygain setting (the player won't recognise replaygain tags) set at the default 89 dB. A volume setting of 3 on high gain gives peaks in the low 70s dB (as measured using a Radioshack SPL meter with Arcade Fire's Funeral).

 

[alyanm]

That sounds about right, the amount of power coming out this thing is crazy!  When I plug the HM-601 into my Klipsch speakers I have to turn volume way down and its still quite a bit louder than my other DAPs with a similar configuration.  With my JH16s I don't think I've been above '4' on the volume dial and usually more like 3 or even 2 -- that's on low gain!  I guess its no accident that the little puppy makes such a nice pocket heater...
 
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It easily powers a pair of HD650s to unsafe levels, using flac files encoded with replaygain setting (the player won't recognise replaygain tags) set at the default 89 dB. A volume setting of 3 on high gain gives peaks in the low 70s dB (as measured using a Radioshack SPL meter with Arcade Fire's Funeral).

 

[Achmedisdead]

 
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Possibly a power hungry set of cans might want an amp, I don't know about that.
 
 

It easily powers a pair of HD650s to unsafe levels, using flac files encoded with replaygain setting (the player won't recognise replaygain tags) set at the default 89 dB. A volume setting of 3 on high gain gives peaks in the low 70s dB (as measured using a Radioshack SPL meter with Arcade Fire's Funeral).

No gapless, no replaygain,terrible battery life,  but it's loud.....

 

[rawrster]

Well it does sound better than any other dap I've had. My J3 is now only a backup and has barely gotten listening time since owning the 601.

 

[alyanm]

Well, there is that!  It's not all fun and games in the world of hifi!  Battery life is terrible?  I think it gets 8 to 10 hours which isn't so bad really...

 

[Anaxilus]

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It easily powers a pair of HD650s to unsafe levels, using flac files encoded with replaygain setting (the player won't recognise replaygain tags) set at the default 89 dB. A volume setting of 3 on high gain gives peaks in the low 70s dB (as measured using a Radioshack SPL meter with Arcade Fire's Funeral).

Low 70's is unsafe?!  Or did you mean 89?  
 
Btw, is loudness the only criteria most of you use to determine what is or isn't amped?  I mean really??  Not only do I maximize the potential of the driver but I can do so at lower listening levels.  Maybe I'm just confused.

 

[jfindon]

 
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In my opinion, yes it does.  For $21 and change you can get a 16GB SDHC card to put in it and that bumps it to 18GB.  I wouldn't put an amp on the 601, it has plenty of power all by itself on the line out or the headphone out -- at least for my IEMs and my speakers it does.  Possibly a power hungry set of cans might want an amp, I don't know about that.
 
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Does the HM-601 sound that much better to justify the insane price for a measly 2GB of storage?  Does that change when someone uses the line out with an amp instead of headphone out?

It's not really about buying a card for it in my case, I just can't see spending $260 on something with such a useless amount of space.  I don't know, maybe I need to read some more in depth comparisons.

 

[Andrew Jones]

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Low 70's is unsafe?!  Or did you mean 89?  
 
Btw, is loudness the only criteria most of you use to determine what is or isn't amped?  I mean really??  Not only do I maximize the potential of the driver but I can do so at lower listening levels.  Maybe I'm just confused.

low 70s at a fairly low setting (and no I don't think that's an unsafe level, it's what I use for long term listening, exactly because it should be safe with a good margin for error), the device is capable of making them a lot louder. I could have just written that the device is really loud, but that doesn't mean much, so I qualified it with details about the level to which the files had been normalised (89 dB), the measured peaks at a given player volume setting and the headphones used. This simply indicates that the built-in amp appears to be fairly powerful. Nothing else.
 
As to whether the potential of the 650 driver is maximised, very unlikely, but it sounds better to me than with other unamped DAPs (Cowon S9, Sansa Fuze with Rockbox) and not noticeably worse than with a netbook, Pico DAC and GS Novo combination.

 

[alyanm]

You mean that's not the way to judge sound quality?  I really missed the mark here somewhere along the line...  well, just call me an "audio enthusiast" and we'll call it even!

 
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Btw, is loudness the only criteria most of you use to determine what is or isn't amped?  I mean really??  Not only do I maximize the potential of the driver but I can do so at lower listening levels.  Maybe I'm just confused.

Yeah, its all about Sound Quality when you get into the "audiophile" DAPs like the Hifiman and S:Flo2 -- features not so much.  As far as I can determine, most of the audiophiles around here have all their music on SDHC's (or microSDHC's) and just plug into their favorite DAP.  Fortunately for me I can fit all my digital music collection onto a 16GB SDHC card, and Mediamonkey even organizes my playlists into folders for me.  I've actually decided that the card is a convenient way to organize my music, I can just pop it out of the player, pop it into my laptop, make whatever changes I wanted to make and pop it back into the player -- really seems more reliable than the USB connections (which I haven't been able to get working on the HM-601 anyway!) which periodically flake out.
 
If SQ is not your top priority then you should stick with the so-called "mainstream" DAPs that give decent sound quality and a lot more features.
 
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It's not really about buying a card for it in my case, I just can't see spending $260 on something with such a useless amount of space.  I don't know, maybe I need to read some more in depth comparisons.