GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: (Hopefully short) headphone journey

Post Subject: State of portable audio players Q4 2013Posted by scooter on: 4/28/2014

Linked is a brief article that categorizes the the portable audio player options available Q4 2013 as clearly and succulently as any I have seen. It also includes some portable dac/amp combos for your mobile phone.

Of course, DSD is a hot buzzword regardless of sound quality, file size, music availability, player battery drain, or whatever. I also think it is fair to say that most players have varying degrees of clunky, buggy firmware. Apple's interfaces are decent, maybe the best, but far from perfect. I have heard several of these players and universally thought there was room for improvement in sound quality.

The author sells some of this gear but his opinions should not detract from the usefulness of the article purely as a descriptive inventory list. There are more portable options available, of course, particularly when one starts to consider separate amps or modifications to these things.

And the article misses the recently released Sony Zx1, Sony F886, Fiio X5.... I'm sure there are others. The new Astell & Kern AK240 player is the most expensive at $2,500 (!); looks stupid in pictures but in person the industrial design is actually quite nice and it is easy to hold. Maybe the RedWine guy's mods will take the edge off some of the irritating higher frequencies of the AK240:

http://www.headfonia.com/the-future-of-portable-music-players/

http://redwineaudio.com/mods

P.S. I know Romy is not interested in equipment catalogues but I think this is a good supplement to my headphone journey thread. Unlike most people, I have easy access to virtually all headphone related gear so think it is worthwhile to share some sources of data.

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