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https://www.head-fi.org/threads/s...id.943661/
This unit can apparently be flashed with the sound signature of Sony's highest end music player, further improving the sound.
Naturally, at your own risk.
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Quote
from sks009
is there any difference listening music from smartphone over Digital Audio Player ?
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1. Your Ears.
If you've exposed your ears to excessively loud music too long (even 80+dB for hours a day), you probably have hearing loss that prevents you from hearing much of the difference between good and very good.
Without having both devices side by side with high quality headphones and music files, discerning between very good and excellent can be difficult for many, especially those without extensive music training and exposure to great, live music performances.
2. Your audio source
The majority of the young nowadays have stopped using records, tapes, and CDs, even radios. The quality of audio used to be poor in the early days of am/fm radio, records and tapes - noise and hiss in quiet passages. Later on, sound quality improved greatly with CDs that were urlhasbeenblockedrded and mastered.
But, the internet came and people moved away from the high quality wav rips of cds that were equally high quality, to smaller, poorer quality mp3 files that could be sent faster.
By stepping backwards to mp3/aac and music streaming services, the quality dropped from cd quality down to fm quality. That is the general quality you get nowadays with streaming Spotify, Pandora, youtube, etc.
Only recently was there a push toward high quality streaming music by various vendors, eg. sony hires branding, so nowadays you have tidal hd streaming, flac/dsd/mqa music files, etc. that match or exceed cd quality.
eg. https://www.whathifi.co
https://www.sony.com/electronics/hi-res-audio
3. Your listening environment and headphone quality
In the old days, there were no portable audio players of note, and everyone could listen to the quietest passages of music in their quiet homes in front of huge speakers that could reproduce the full range of frequencies and nuances. Here, you can say the noise floor is very low - or the dynamic sound range between the loudest and quietest is large. (eg. 80db of range).
Today, you have people trying to listen to their music in noisy city sidewalks and gyms, through earbuds that have tiny speakers and often poor quality frequency and sound reproduction. Here, the noise floor is high, or the dynamic range of sounds you can hear is basically between loud and very loud. (eg. 20dB range)
A noisy listening environment is like a bad set of headphones - you can't hear the subtle differences in music, and you can't really tell how bad the headphones are. Doesn't matter if you have the best headphones and dap and music files if it's that noisy.
Higher quality dap, music files, and headphones matter if you have a quieter listening environment.
4. Your phone or music player (dap - digital audio player).
In the old days, phone cameras and audio dac (digital audio converters) sucked.
iphone 1, flip phones, etc. These all could play mp3 files, but were generally fm quality or worse when you plugged in headphones.
Over the years, phone makers ran out of features to add to sell the consumer on next year's new phone, so they focused on improving the camera and audio quality. The first major that actually stepped up was LG. IPhones up to then were ok as the typical mp3/aac music player, but they certainly didn't exceed what had been accomplished in the past with cd players and high quality mastered cds.
LG upped the field by dropping in some serious DACs into their top-end phones like the LG V20, G7, and newer, as well as critical support for uncompressed, higher quality flac/wav files that went beyond cd quality recording quality by integrating high quality dac chips that were used by DAPs.
(note - NO IPHONE/IPOD SUPPORTS FLAC, not to mention even higher quality DSD recordings. ie. true path from flac/dsd to dac to headphones while maintaining the FULL range, resolution, and quality.)
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So, if you are using an old phone with mp3/aac, any good DAP will exceed the quality produced by those phones.
If you are using a newer phone, or iphone, that doesn't have a high-quality dap dac and flac/wav/dsd/mqa music support, then you might not hear the difference depending on #1-3 above.
If you are using a newer phone that has a top-quality daq (certain lg phones, sony xperia phones with the hires label, etc), and have top-quality music sources, and nice headphones, then you will easily match the quality of many cheaper high-quality DAPs.
For example, if you have a LG G7 with a JBL E55bt wired with FLAC music files, this Sony DAP isn't going to change your world much. On the other hand, if you have an older Samsung S8 with the same headphones and files, you will hear the difference. (Lack of a high-quality dac and higher noise floor in the S8 result in poorer music reproduction that you can hear the difference.)
eg. https://www.audioscienc
THIS is where the majority of today's users are - either a phone with a top quality dac, or an everyday phone that doesn't. THEY WILL ONLY be able to hear a big difference if #1-3 above is in favor of a quiet environment, good headphones, and high quality music sources; OTHERWISE, it won't matter - you simply can't hear the difference in noisy environments with crap streaming music and crap headphones.
(This includes all the users who think most beats, earpods, and anything $10-250~ is amazing. Nope, not going to hear the difference. Start with a Sony HiRes or mid-range Sennheiser over-the-ear headphones.... or
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/s...15.433318/
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/b...ed.634201/ )
If you go all out, an Astell&Kern ($3000+ dap https://www.astellnkern
with a top end planar or hires headphones (eg. $1000+ Audeze lcd-x https://www.audeze.com/products/lcd-x
Sennheiser HD800s https://en-us.sennheiser.c
with top quality flac/dsd/mqa files, then oh, holy YES you can HEAR the "Light"!!!!
(That is when you sign up for head-fi.org and join the other hq music nuts salivating over subtle things like which $100+ tube to drop into a $5000+ tube amp results in the best quality on your $1000+ pair of headphones.)
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269 Comments
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Hell, you can buy an unlocked phone that will do all this and more for less money. Maybe the battery life is better, but if you get a phone with a power saving setting and airplane mode probably not a huge difference. Amazon has a bunch under $150. These are unfortunately relics from yesteryear.
I'm not understanding how this is worth $168 with 16gb. It does the same thing my phone does but is an extra device i have to carry. You might as well get a 10+ year old iPod Classic with 120gb.
Better battery life than your phone? Get a similar size external battery for 1/5 of the cost of this device.
Free up space on your phone? Could have added $50-100 when you bought the phone to double the storage for a fraction of the price of this device.
Better battery life than your phone? Get a similar size external battery for 1/5 of the cost of this device.
Free up space on your phone? Could have added $50-100 when you bought the phone to double the storage for a fraction of the price of this device.
Why is it so difficult for people to accept that there will always be a segment of the population who will care about pristine sound quality? For the rest, this product is not for them and they should just move on.
Ps: all those saying their iphone or iPod touch can play xyz format and therefore is equivalent, you really need to listen to the same high quality audio on such a device side by side with their phone to know the difference. Again, the difference may not matter to you but their IS a big difference.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Why is it so difficult for people to accept that there will always be a segment of the population who will care about pristine sound quality? For the rest, this product is not for them and they should just move on.
Ps: all those saying their iphone or iPod touch can play xyz format and therefore is equivalent, you really need to listen to the same high quality audio on such a device side by side with their phone to know the difference. Again, the difference may not matter to you but their IS a big difference.
Many smartphones do not have expandable storage (microsd slot) these days, so those of us with a large library of music cannot load it into most smartphones today. But using one of these players that can accept large microsd cards, we can load our entire library onto a large microsd and use it on the player and be able to take our library with us. Of course, those with small libraries or who just listen to streaming always, this would not be much of a benefit to them.
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