[Installation]

Hullo all, I was hoping you guys could help me out here.

My position atm is that I own a sony s639, with nu-force ne7m earphones. I am looking into getting a new DAP (needed, since I'm out of space anyway) with a portable amplifier (either the ibasso d4 or something like this Practical Devices Corporation) I haven't done much research on the last one though, it just looked interesting. I also hope to use this amp with my laptop by the way.

So my choices are a v1 fuze (friend has one) so I can rockbox it with the amp, a 5.5g ipod or one of the iriver hx1/hx3 series (rockboxed). Hopefully I'll be using flac where I can and 320 kbps/mp3 for the rest. (also hoping to get some nice desktop speakers but that's a different forum entirely).

Also, I'll be needing some earphones or headphones to go with this lot, however I haven't started my research into these yet - so any suggestions would be useful, around the £200 would be the max I can go for.

So, what should I do?

Thanks (p.s., still thinking about getting a sony x series for the hell of it)

 

[Installation]

Bumpity bump

 

[Young Spade]

Ok well if you want overall SQ I'd kick the iPod out and pick from the v1 Fuze or iRiver version.
Now picking between the two... how portable do you want this to be? IMO I'd say to get the iRiver if you have an amp with optical in so you can use the optical out.

If not and you want to get a small amp (like the ones you posted), I'd get the Fuze with a higher gig capacity. Then you can use the micro sd slot for even greater storage.

 

[Installation]

Alright thanks, why would you immediately get rid of the 5.5g ipod though?

 

[Young Spade]

Well basically because the other players are better. Don't get me wrong iPods have great sound quality and I've been using them soly for years now but there are better players out there... such as the Fuze/Clip.

It has good SQ and if Rockboxed has a good EQ but you can Rockbox a Fuze as well for the same benefits but with better overall SQ.

 

[Installation]

Fair enough. Well I'm not sure what size fuze my friend has. Any advice on which amp to go for? (also, what about the iriver h3 etcs)

 

[Young Spade]

How much are you willing to spend on an amp? And are you going to spend a few on a nice mini to mini or no?

 

[Installation]

Well the two amps I linked end up at £200 each approx. And let's cover all situations, so that's a yes/no