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So which music player has the best sound quality?.And i mean not when listening to mp3s.When listenning to lossless files all the components in the player matter, from the DAC to the headphone amplifier.Is the ipod still the best in this sense?
Registered Member #477
Joined: Tue Jun 20 2006, 11:51PM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 546
If you really care, you'll probably search for reviews, tests, research elsewhere. At best, that's what somebody here will do for you (not me). At worst, somebody will give you a biased opinion based on whatever they happen to own.
Another take on your question might be: If you care so much about getting the absolute finest in audio quality, why are you even looking at things like iPods and Zunes? They're for the increasingly introverted audio-junkie masses who can't live without a 24x7 music fix, not the true audiophiles.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
I liked the old iRiver IHP-120, running Rockbox. That is my personal biased opinion
On regular pop/rock/dance music, I don't notice any great difference between 256k MP3 and lossless, even on my home studio system.
I'm an old fart like Aaron, who believes that good music is worth sitting down and listening to properly, preferably on something with tubes sticking out of it :D
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
Steve McConner wrote ...
On regular pop/rock/dance music, I don't notice any great difference between 256k MP3 and lossless, even on my home studio system.
Most people don't realise that with a portable player, most quality drop apparently happens in the earphones. Using a quality MP3 encoder, with VBR @~135kbs you'll get maybe 1% drop in quality but 90% drop in filesize, not mentioning that battery life will be improved and that background noise will mask the encoding noise anyway.
So IMO, lossless is totally overkill for a portable player, unless you're going to blast it through a top quality stereo system or monster headphones (even for this purpose, high-bitrate VBR MP3 is sufficient).
With 99% of the players on the market, you're not going to hear any audible difference in the outputs without any EQ or effect, using the same phones. Maybe there is measurable difference but not audible. So I would rather focus on things like battery life, features (formats, want/don't want a big colorful display etc.), look, output power, and of course price.
On regular pop/rock/dance music, I don't notice any great difference between 256k MP3 and lossless, even on my home studio system.
Most people don't realise that with a portable player, most quality drop apparently happens in the earphones. Using a quality MP3 encoder, with VBR @~135kbs you'll get maybe 1% drop in quality but 90% drop in filesize, not mentioning that battery life will be improved and that background noise will mask the encoding noise anyway.
So IMO, lossless is totally overkill for a portable player, unless you're going to blast it through a top quality stereo system or monster headphones (even for this purpose, high-bitrate VBR MP3 is sufficient).
With 99% of the players on the market, you're not going to hear any audible difference in the outputs without any EQ or effect, using the same phones. Maybe there is measurable difference but not audible. So I would rather focus on things like battery life, features (formats, want/don't want a big colorful display etc.), look, output power, and of course price.
Just my extremely biased advice
well i agree there with Dr. kilovolt. Headphones do make a BIG difference.becuase i have the basic ipod earphones and a pair of etymotic er4Ps. And they ARE different.But most of you disagreeing to the fact that an ipod cannot get audiophile quality is a bit sad.
an ipod loaded with lossless content connected to this which then can then be connected to a dedicated DAC box would be good as any CD player out there. anyone disagreeing with me?
and thats a nice combo dr.spark. though my love affair with motorolla phones died long time ago when my phone started crashing.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Awesome. Wadia finally break the $10k barrier and make electronics for mortals Too bad it doesn't fit the definition of "portable", or if it does, my old laptop with a M-Audio Transit does too.
All lossless codecs sound identical by definition, but does anyone know how the sound quality of different lossy codecs compares? I know the latest Lame MP3 encoder sounds loads better than a 5 year old version at the same bitrate, and the encoder built into my iRiver for recording to MP3 is chronically bad.
But what about the decoder? Does a floating point version running on your PC sound better than a fixed-point one on your MP3 player's ARM or ColdFire, which lacks a FPU? I'd swear that MP3s have more decoding noise when I listen on my MP3 player, and I remember one of the arguments in favour of Ogg Vorbis was that the decoder was all fixed-point arithmetic.
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
Steve McConner wrote ...
But what about the decoder? Does a floating point version running on your PC sound better than a fixed-point one on your MP3 player's ARM or ColdFire, which lacks a FPU? I'd swear that MP3s have more decoding noise when I listen on my MP3 player, and I remember one of the arguments in favour of Ogg Vorbis was that the decoder was all fixed-point arithmetic.
I may be wrong but I think that even a simple non-dithering 16bit decoder will have more than 90dB dynamic range (the maximum dynamic range for 16bit seems to be ~96dB), which is totally overkill for any mp3 player. In fact it is enough for listening in a relatively quiet envirnonment on high quality equipment.
What I wanted to say is that the decoders will NOT sound different unless there is a flaw/bug in them, without any DSP turned on. However, few players (such as my x years old Creative Muvo) have problems with noise at low volume settings, in my case it is the interference from the CPU. You'll hear this only when in absulutely quiet place, in normal use it is inaudible.
I say buy the player which you like the features of, buy good phones and don't worry about decoder quality, as there will be no audible differences between vast majority of the players.
Edit: I forgot to mention that the output power of course matters too, if you get a player with low output power, you might get distortions at high volume levels or with open headphones.
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
But what about the decoder? Does a floating point version running on your PC sound better than a fixed-point one on your MP3 player's ARM or ColdFire, which lacks a FPU?
A more efficient decoder allows the CPU to spend more time idle to save power. The battery lifetime is listed in the specifications, the round off errors of the decoding algorithm is not. So you can assume that some people will trade accuracy for longer battery life to increase sales or in some cases to use a cheaper CPU without enough computing power to decode without errors.
I'd swear that MP3s have more decoding noise when I listen on my MP3 player,
Swearing without a proper double blind test is not advisable, you have a strong tendency to hear what you want to hear. A proper test would also be difficult since you need access to the digital data since the analog output is not a valid as a comparison for decoding noise.
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What is the best portable music player around?
