ILikeMusic
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2004
- Posts
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I just had an experience that I think might explain the disparity of opinion we've been seeing regarding ZVM sound quality. I am one of those who is quite impressed with ZVM SQ and especially the effectiveness of the EQ... but there is another contingent that feels that ZVM audio (especially the bass) is lacking in definition and distorted. The two camps haven't been able to understand the difference in each other's impressions but I think I might have part of the answer.
Earlier this evening my sweet sounding Zen started to sound terrible... distorted bass and fuzzy-sounding EQ. Being used to its normal excellent audio the difference was immediately apparent to me and it had nothing to do with the tracks themselves... all were affected regardless of format or bitrate. I played around for a while, turned it on and off, even did a reset... no improvement. I was beginning to think that the final amp was dying and put it aside for a while. Now I just turned it in again and it sounds great! Crystal clear, strong bass, perfect EQ. This definitely had the feel of some sort of firmware bug and I've seen hints at it mentioned elsewhere but had never experienced it myself until now, even after two months of heavy use.
So far little appears to be known about this issue but if I was auditioning the player and it happened to be in this state then I would also have given it a poor review in terms of SQ, and if this is indeed what is going on with some of your players then I now understand your comments. Perhaps yours are somehow stuck in this mode?
Everything is working again now so I can't do any testing, but if it ever happens again I will try rolling back to the prior firmware revision and see if it makes any difference. My suspicion is that Creative knows about this and if so hopefully a permanent fix will be out soon. For those who have never heard this, it isn't subtle... if it happens you will know.
In the meantime I guess I will just hope it is another few months before it happens again...
Earlier this evening my sweet sounding Zen started to sound terrible... distorted bass and fuzzy-sounding EQ. Being used to its normal excellent audio the difference was immediately apparent to me and it had nothing to do with the tracks themselves... all were affected regardless of format or bitrate. I played around for a while, turned it on and off, even did a reset... no improvement. I was beginning to think that the final amp was dying and put it aside for a while. Now I just turned it in again and it sounds great! Crystal clear, strong bass, perfect EQ. This definitely had the feel of some sort of firmware bug and I've seen hints at it mentioned elsewhere but had never experienced it myself until now, even after two months of heavy use.
So far little appears to be known about this issue but if I was auditioning the player and it happened to be in this state then I would also have given it a poor review in terms of SQ, and if this is indeed what is going on with some of your players then I now understand your comments. Perhaps yours are somehow stuck in this mode?
Everything is working again now so I can't do any testing, but if it ever happens again I will try rolling back to the prior firmware revision and see if it makes any difference. My suspicion is that Creative knows about this and if so hopefully a permanent fix will be out soon. For those who have never heard this, it isn't subtle... if it happens you will know.
In the meantime I guess I will just hope it is another few months before it happens again...