[psun786]

The price of the Z is one hell of a deal! It has reported better sound than the HM801 so forget about the 601...i can only compare to the iMOD but as I say it bats that with ease and its less than 1cm thick which is easily portable in my eyes...anyway go check the thread its a wonderful DAP that is unrivalled in my book! The only DAP that has better sound accordig to loads of people is the iBasso brick which is 3X more expensive and is HUGE and is buggy and well I think i have derailed this thread for long enough...just try and get a demo somehow haha 

My past experience with Sony players is that they tend to add color to the sound (mostly in a good way). But for high-def source or non-pop genres, I prefer EQ free or clean sound. Both hm801 and 603 have build in amp that is able to drive cans like hd600. So who ever said Z has better sound than hm801 or 601 is not telling the whole story. Whether a DAP sounds good or not depends on the matching headphone and your source file.

I think there is no need to spend that much $$ on a DAP if you are listening lossy file through IEMs. Dx100 is heck of deal in term of sound quality vs price. In fact, the value is so good that they are selling faster than ibasso can produce it. $800 for a complete solution is such a bargain when a premium desktop setup can go over $10k.

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

I obviously didnt as he was thinking of going for a HM601...

 but now i feel he´s better informed 

Actually, that's not quite correct.  He said that if he were remotely interested in buying yet another source (which would inevitably end up in his work drawer for comparison and spree listening as the progression of his upgrade addiction worsened), he'd consider the 601.  He has been a member of HF for ten moo-hanking years and gone through many phases and purchases.
 
Note that he also deleted that comment from his response roughly twenty minutes before you posted specifically because he had a feeling it might help derail the thread.
 
And while he hasn't been reading up on $600+ portable sources of late (since he's having to rebuild a home studio which actually pays returns on the investment instead of depreciating unto oblivion), he appreciates the updates (though being talked about in third person worries him almost as much as writing about himself that way (and what's with all the parentheticals, self 32A?)).
 
This is why he has to care about things like USB audio and the chintzy DACs in smartphones, which brings him and you back to the topic at hind.

 

[danny93]

God people are touchy...I wont try and help out anymore...sorry for the MASSIVE deviation from the thread guys 

 

[headfinoob]

Quote:

No offense but in this day and age there's no such thing as a completely open garden. Most iPhone people just go the jailbreak route anyways.

I agree in the sense that many Android handsets offer little support and development.  On the other hand, select Android handsets offer several orders of magnitude more flexibility than an Apple offering.  ROMs, kernels, radios, recovery, nandroid, scripts, adb and fastboot commands, mods, cpu governors, i/o schedulers, external batteries, cheap accessories, USB OTG and USB Host, Wifi direct, splash screens, themes, and of course, AOSP.  There really is no comparison.  Admittedly, most Android handsets generally are pretty lame.
Quote:

Compromise? Those are class 10 cards. Where's the compromise?

The compromise is that even some Class 4 cards easily outperform Class 10 cards in some aspects.  Check out the article I linked to take a look at the performance characteristics of different cards.  NAND doesn't improve in every aspect, it must be tweaked to gain the desired performance levels in certain areas.  In any case, some people may not care at all about random writes or random reads and may only care about sequential.  I personally have 16GB internal storage, and never store any apps on my SD Card.  I would select an SD Card on sequential performance for the sake of storing music.
 
 
 
Another thing to note that the "phone environment" can be hostile to the audio quality at times.  One "test" I performed was to pull a bunch of Wifi data to my phone while listening to music on the headphones.  I found that even 1mbps was enough to cause a very noticeable noise in the headphones coming from the Wifi stack.  As soon as the streaming stopped, the noise stopped.  I cannot tell any noise pulling music from the SD Card though.  This is enough to make me sway away from Cloud storage.
I did not test noise from streaming data over a 3G or 4G baseband though, it would be very interesting to see a study on the effect of different data rates from wireless basebands on the audio quality of a handset.

 

[kova4a]

Quote:

I agree in the sense that many Android handsets offer little support and development.  On the other hand, select Android handsets offer several orders of magnitude more flexibility than an Apple offering.  ROMs, kernels, radios, recovery, nandroid, scripts, adb and fastboot commands, mods, cpu governors, i/o schedulers, external batteries, cheap accessories, USB OTG and USB Host, Wifi direct, splash screens, themes, and of course, AOSP.  There really is no comparison.  Admittedly, most Android handsets generally are pretty lame.
The compromise is that even some Class 4 cards easily outperform Class 10 cards in some aspects.  Check out the article I linked to take a look at the performance characteristics of different cards.  NAND doesn't improve in every aspect, it must be tweaked to gain the desired performance levels in certain areas.  In any case, some people may not care at all about random writes or random reads and may only care about sequential.  I personally have 16GB internal storage, and never store any apps on my SD Card.  I would select an SD Card on sequential performance for the sake of storing music.
 
 
 
Another thing to note that the "phone environment" can be hostile to the audio quality at times.  One "test" I performed was to pull a bunch of Wifi data to my phone while listening to music on the headphones.  I found that even 1mbps was enough to cause a very noticeable noise in the headphones coming from the Wifi stack.  As soon as the streaming stopped, the noise stopped.  I cannot tell any noise pulling music from the SD Card though.  This is enough to make me sway away from Cloud storage.
I did not test noise from streaming data over a 3G or 4G baseband though, it would be very interesting to see a study on the effect of different data rates from wireless basebands on the audio quality of a handset.

I have a lot of microsd cards with different classes and frankly phones no matter android or other can't utilize the full speed of the card. Right now I use 32GB class 10 card and it's definitely not faster than my 16GB class 6 and class 4 cards. The only time you see the speed difference is when you connect the card to the pc with a usb reader. While it's in the phone I guess class 4 is enough although in some random occasions class 6 might be slightly faster. Still I wouldn't say a class 4 card outperforms a class 10 card in anything besides having a lower price.

 

[headfinoob]

Quote:

I have a lot of microsd cards with different classes and frankly phones no matter android or other can't utilize the full speed of the card. Right now I use 32GB class 10 card and it's definitely not faster than my 16GB class 6 and class 4 cards. The only time you see the speed difference is when you connect the card to the pc with a usb reader. While it's in the phone I guess class 4 is enough although in some random occasions class 6 might be slightly faster. Still I wouldn't say a class 4 card outperforms a class 10 card in anything besides having a lower price.

Please see this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microsdhc-memory-card-performance,3011.html

 

[Totally Dubbed]

Chiming in:
 
-S3 looks - It's a mix of the Nexus, S1 and S2 - I don't see anything wrong with it.
 
-SD cards: Class 10 is the best, Class "0" is the worst - usually a class 6-4 will do fine for your average person. Class 10 is like £45 and Class 4-6 is like £16 - I don't find that speed difference worth it, personally. Oh and FYI: I bough ta 32GB Lexar class 10, and it was slower than my Class 4 on my S1.
 
-DAC's: Well look, I didn't buy the S2 because it didn't have that same SQ as the S1 - of course I could buy it, but didn't really feel the need to buy the s2, as I didn't really feel like it was that special over the S1. Felt like a step back in some respects. Awesome phones though, don't get me wrong. I just rather wait, and now get the S3, which I have pre-ordered now.
 
-iPhone over androids - well it depends what you want, but honestly I much prefer android OS, and more so, jailbreaking your iOS is illegal, literally, you could be taken to court for it. Whereas with adroid...samsung release their source codes. Both can be "jailbrocken" but one is more liberal than the other. More so, if both can be, then you are choosing to be on a iOS system, which can be good, but also means you HAVE TO use itunes, and the other apple products. With android, I haven't even opened that failed program Kies, that Samsung has. Only to make STOCK flashing videos of the S1 with Kies, that's all. I open my S1 like a USB, drag and drop
 
-iPhone 4s vs S3? Should be a no brainer. But let me remind you of a few things (Both are at the same price btw) - one is quad the other dual core - one has a bigger screen and a 720p display, the other has an LCD - nuff said there. Biggest thing you should consider is battery life and longevity. It's quite simple, if you want to be running at 50% of what you are running in 1year time, then go ahead, buy yourself an iPod, but don't go complaining to Apple because of it. In my case, I'll just replace it with ANOTHER lithium battery, and save myself £500 on the next s4 (like i did with my s1 over s2)
 
End of the day, everyone has a choice and preference, just like audio - a little subjective.
But to me, choosing a 4S over an S3 is like buying beats pros over D2000's - just my opinion, but that's what I think each time I have a Apple fan boy barking up my tree.
I like Apple products, just not really the fan boys that come with it - and due to this, I've become an anti-apple person. Don't blame me, blame the fan boys.

 

[kova4a]

Quote:

Please see this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microsdhc-memory-card-performance,3011.html

I read the article but it seems that you're the one who misunderstood me. I said that the only time one can see the difference in speed is when the card is connected to a pc an not a phone, so why do I need benchmarks of sdcards, which were clearly made on a pc? As here we're talking about the new SGS3 and generally about ather android stuff, it's clear that we're talking about using the card in an android phone and that's when the manufacturer and the class start to matter less even though I still use only adata and sandisk. 
This is the highest sd card score I've had on an android phone and I got this only on ICS CM9. On stock ROMs the phone will usually get 4-8 or 5-10 scores and not 7-13. That's with 32GB class 10 adata card and is still a random benchmark as the performance fluctuates but can rarelyget this high scores. The sandisk I tried was 4GB class 4 and it was slightly slower than the adata but around what the 8GB class 6 I compared it to. So, when I said that a class 4 card (despite the manufacturer) can't outperform a class 10 card, I was talking inside the phone - there is just no way in my experience with a phone that the write speed of the card gets even close to 10 MB/s, which is the minimum write speed a class 10 card is supposed to have. That's why a class 4-6 card is enough but even if a given model by a given manufacturer is faster in real life when connected to a pc - in smartphones they are all pretty equal.
 
edit: I posted a screen from antutu as it shows closer to real life performance of the card in the phone. Of course, if I use apps like sd card speed test the scores are higher with class 10 but I just don't get really such a high performance 

 

[Totally Dubbed]

Quote:

I read the article but it seems that you're the one who misunderstood me. I said that the only time one can see the difference in speed is when the card is connected to a pc an not a phone, so why do I need benchmarks of sdcards, which were clearly made on a pc? As here we're talking about the new SGS3 and generally about ather android stuff, it's clear that we're talking about using the card in an android phone and that's when the manufacturer and the class start to matter less even though I still use only adata and sandisk. 
This is the highest sd card score I've had on an android phone and I got this only on ICS CM9. On stock ROMs the phone will usually get 4-8 or 5-10 scores and not 7-13. That's with 32GB class 10 adata card and is still a random benchmark as the performance fluctuates but can rarelyget this high scores. The sandisk I tried was 4GB class 4 and it was slightly slower than the adata but around what the 8GB class 6 I compared it to. So, when I said that a class 4 card (despite the manufacturer) can't outperform a class 10 card, I was talking inside the phone - there is just no way in my experience with a phone that the write speed of the card gets even close to 10 MB/s, which is the minimum write speed a class 10 card is supposed to have. That's why a class 4-6 card is enough but even if a given model by a given manufacturer is faster in real life when connected to a pc - in smartphones they are all pretty equal.

you can haz a point.
 
Out of interest what card you using right now? With those scores?
My Class 6 does better - i feel you got the lexar here - just as I did.
 
I just did mine, I got write: 2.2, read: 13.9
Class 6 sandisk on the S1 running a GB rom, JW1 Amestris.

 

[kova4a]

That's a 32GB class 10 Adata card. As I said I only use adata and sandisk. Well, if you run the SD Tools app several times it will give you a higher score but that's what it usualy is around, so that's why I posted this score. And as I said in reality it never goes this high and that's why I posted the screenshot from SD Tools just for reference.

 

[Totally Dubbed]

Quote:

That's a 32GB class 10 Adata card. As I said I only use adata and sandisk. Well, if you run the SD Tools app several times it will give you a higher score but that's what it usualy is around, so that's why I posted this score. And as I said in reality it never goes this high and that's why I posted the screenshot from SD Tools just for reference.

sounds like benchmarking the S1 all over again:
"more times you do it, the higher the scores go" lol
 
EDIT:
Haha - just found out mine is a CLASS 4 Kingston.
How did I have the impression i had a Class 6? No idea.
 
Any suggestions for any Class 6-10 cards? 16-32GB?
I'm thinking samsung's one looks the best + price wise
 
And wow prices have dropped a lot.
Used to be £20 for a Class 4 - 16GB now it's only £7!

 

[kova4a]

Well, I've always been a big fan of Adata and in my experience with sdcards theirs have always performed the best. And yeah, prices are really dropping fast - when I got my 32GB class 10 a year ago it was the first class 10 more than 16GB and cost me like 100 bucks and now it costs like 40 bucks. And still as I said in reality my class 6 16gb Adata performs exactly the same, so you decide for yourself if you really need class 10. I only bought it because I usually use it with a card reader and connect it straight to my pc when I get large lossles albums and such but if you keep it in the phone class 6 and even class 4 perform very closely (at least the one from adata and sandisk), so class 10 is an overkill.

 

[Totally Dubbed]

Quote:

Well, I've always been a big fan of Adata and in my experience with sdcards theirs have always performed the best. And yeah, prices are really dropping fast - when I got my 32GB class 10 a year ago it was the first class 10 more than 16GB and cost me like 100 bucks and now it costs like 40 bucks. And still as I said in reality my class 6 16gb Adata performs exactly the same, so you decide for yourself if you really need class 10. I only bought it because I usually use it with a card reader and connect it straight to my pc when I get large lossles albums and such but if you keep it in the phone class 6 and even class 4 perform very closely (at least the one from adata and sandisk), so class 10 is an overkill.

cheers for the advice
 
Ordered this via amazon.
I'll let y'all know when it comes in - sorry for being a little off-topic

 

[lisztian420]

Guys, anyone know if the international version Galaxy SIII with the Exynos 4412, Quad Processor will support external USB DAC?

 

[NZtechfreak]

Quote:

Guys, anyone know if the international version Galaxy SIII with the Exynos 4412, Quad Processor will support external USB DAC?

 
No one knows yet. Supercurio's Voodoo Report revealed that USB audio drivers are present, but no way to know whether they are working out of the box. I have an E17 and it will be the first thing I try when I get my S3 at release, obviously will let everyone here know ASAP.