[bangraman]

http://phonephile.blogspot.com/2005/...ot-secret.html

 

[Zweroboi]

I liked your story about iPod shuffle more

 

[abitdeef]

Damn,I thought this player looked ace. Can you give me a general idea of what you thought of the sound? I dont really like the ipod sound and I had 2 zen micros that broke, any thoughts would be appriciated. Oh , any experiance with e the cowon X5 ? I think it looks very nice , the only thing is the joystick- I don't know how sturdy it is. (it looks kind of small).


Thanks

Scott.

 

[breez]

WTH? Did they forget to look at the scale! It's not going to be audible.

 

[vranswer]

I don't know about any of that, but I do know that my Sony Flash player, with just '+2' on the bass booster makes the Shure E4s sound better than I've been able to make them sound on iPod. And that's including the combo of line-out -> ram din -> SM3 (bass boost 'on'). If that's Sony's little secret, no complaints here..it works!

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by breez WTH? Did they forget to look at the scale! It's not going to be audible.

I can definitely hear the change over an H320. It's surprisingly noticeble for such a small deviation and definitely makes the HD5 sound 'nicer' from even a technical disadvantage point, especially with tracks involving deep bass.


I wasn't even considering RMAA, but the noticeable changes and how it contributed to the feeling of the track over the iAudio and iRiver got my curiousity up, because I wanted to know how to reproduce it. My methodology regarding RMAA might still be flawed, so I stand ready to be corrected. I must say that I was expecting a bigger bump bearing in mind that I noticed it straight away... but that's all I got. I am a bit puzzled about that and will try it on another card when I get back home. The small change might highlight something in reverse, that the human ear is surprisingly more sensitive than we give it credit for.

 

[oilshocked]

"Under controlled conditions, in an acoustical laboratory, the trained healthy human ear is able to discern changes in sound levels of 1 dB, when exposed to steady, single frequency ("pure tone") signals in the mid-frequency range. It is widely accepted that the average healthy ear, however, can barely perceive noise level changes of 3 dB."

From my rough measurement, I see a 0.2-0.25 dB peak. I think you're hearing something else.

 

[Oink1]

Someone needs to remove the stick from 'An engineer's backside...

How serious was he?

 

[bangraman]

Musically, a ~1.5db change in bass seems to be very noticeable to many... otherwise we wouldn't get as many complaints about the bass of the iPod.


And this isn't an audible difference between just an iPod and the HD5. It's between the HD5 and many others.


From my ears, I'm pretty confident in the shape of the graph. But I must admit that when I saw the plots, I thought "Is that it?" but I thought it worth sharing, because no other player I have (and I have many that I have not yet or not bothered to list in my profile, and measured a sizeable proportion of them) exhibited this particular shaped behaviour.


I'll run the tests on another card and follow it up as well. Plus, if anyone's around in London (especially if they're iRiver or iAudio owners) they're welcome to take a comparative listen.

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oink1 Someone needs to remove the stick from 'An engineer's backside... How serious was he?

Engineers are pretty serious people, and he has good reason to be sceptical. And yes, a little knowledge is definitely dangerous

so I did take some common sense precautions against getting spurious results.


I don't know if there is a scaling issue with my graphs or whether a 0.25db difference actually correlates to the changes I hear over most other DAPs. It's the shaping of the increase which interests me hugely, because as I said I don't see it on any other player, and it does seem to make a very audible difference in the sound as far as how I feel about it is concerned.


Even if the graph scaling was out of whack, the results are relatively applicable. At flat EQ with the same test load, all the other players that I've measured either measure flat, or players which are affected by a bass falloff due to the same problem as the iPod eventually measure flat but not beyond.


I'll have new results in a week or so.

 

[oilshocked]

Players like the iPod use a single-supply headphone amp. I'd guess that players like the iRiver and the Sony use a headphone amp with a dual supply, so they don't end up having to place large dc blocking capacitors in the audio path. The iPod-type players will tend to roll off the way they do with normal portable headphone impedances. The dual-supply players are great down to 0. Comparing the two types of players is probably not all that fair.

If you could set up a double-blind type test (probably a bit of work) with the players that sport a dual-supply amp, that would be pretty conclusive. It would definitely eliminate the placebo effect. The only thing anybody could accuse you of is having golden ears. Keep us in the loop - this is intriguing stuff.

 

[bangraman]

Will do. Superimposing the iRiver H320's near-ruler-flat plot over the HD5's plot, the differences are visible but hardly huge. But they are reproducible.


I'm not sure whether you guys have got the same feeling with other sources, but when I heard the HD5 for the first time with material I knew, I just knew it sounded different. Just this definite feeling, you know? It took me a few seconds more to work out why I thought that was.


I'm also not saying that you need golden ears to be influenced by this. Judging sound quality is usually down to quite intangible stuff, and what I'm sort of getting at in a roundabout way is that given sound sources which don't totally suck in relation to each other, it is possible for tiny changes to influence the result. Since the HD5 doesn't seem to be any cleaner a source than the H320 or an iAudio, the differences might come down to flavouring. Sony may have thought this through. Especially as the other Sony sources I measured (even down to a measly 1.5mw source so hopefully eliminating any discrepancies about the test load being affected by lower power) measured as flat as the iRiver in the same circumstances.


With a 32 ohm Grado, the iPod will comparatively suck with the noticeable falloff involved, although in relative isolation you might find it a cleaner source, both in terms of the actual ability and also in terms of the lack of bass contributing to more perceived higher-end frequencies is concerned. (I wonder whether the results would have been different if they'd used a Koss KSC-35?

) I know the iPod has issues, and that's why when I caught a whiff of the difference of the HD5, I compared it straight away with the H320... and it did feel 'nicer'. This whole thing started from there. As a result of the things I've done, I felt that the CNET results stemmed more from gauging relative flavour (which, unlike on a deck for example, is fully adjustable) rather than a judge of quality as such.

 

[abitdeef]

So , what do you think of the sound of the NW-HD5 in general? On par with iriver, cowon? There were reported levels of hiss with shure e 5s with the nw hd3, does this player sound clean? Is the headphone amp able to drive a wide assortment of cans?

I also have the e-507 flash player, which like the other poster think it sounds fantastic, I would expect the HD-5 to sound even better...

Your very thorough in your sonic descriptions, please shoot me some imput......
bangraman.

 

[bangraman]

I have to say I like it in general for casual listening. It's pleasant. And they've sorted out some ergonomic issues incomparision to the HD3. However at no time have I really felt that it's better than the Creatives, iRivers and Cowons in terms of sound. The amp displays as much hiss with the E5 as it does with the HD3. Not a deal-killer for pop and compressed / high-level music, but definitely will make you think twice about lower-level recordings (classical).


The E507 didn't jump out at me as the HD5 did in terms of being sonically 'different', but I did have lots of new toy fever at the time of opening and using the E-series. I was dying to power them up... OLED!OLED!

But the speed of loading after the Creative and iRivers was like... "What? did I plug it into a USB1 port?". So my focus became functional more than sonic. And in the end the daily slowness just got to me as well as the squinting in a variety of light situations and I stopped using them. The LCD-based iRiver flash players and the Creative Muvo's may have less impressive displays but you can see them in any light. On the other hand, iRiver's OLED N10 is actually worse than the Sony.


I think the audio's good on the new Sony flash players in comparison to other flash players, and I think they've judged the treble boost/cut rates just right, unlike the 'UnusableMushBass' they used to do on some of their Discmen. I only compared the sound of the E400/500 against other flash players, not DAPs.


I'll unearth the E507 again later but at this point I'm not convinced that the HD5 would sound any better than it.

 

[vranswer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman ...I think the audio's good on the new Sony flash players in comparison to other flash players, and I think they've judged the treble boost/cut rates just right, unlike the 'UnusableMushBass' they used to do on some of their Discmen. I only compared the sound of the E400/500 against other flash players, not DAPs...

I continue to be very impressed with the output of my 507, and agree they've tweeked the 'boosts' just right. I mean I haven't used anything else since I got it. Slow transfer speed for me just means I never have to think about charging - it gets done when I'm updating the player. VERY musical and is a perfect match for both my E5s and E4s. No amp necessary.

I got a drawer-ful of DAPs (including 4G iPod) that I'm taking a long hard look at for future viability. iPod figures to make the cut because of size/lossless play capability. But everybody else, watch out....!