Sound Quality: IPOD or SONY

[jan0ng]

If you were to choose, IPOD or SONY? considering the quality of sound
not the capacity of the player....

[BeerhandBop]

none. Compressed music is compressed music. there's no two ways of sugar coating that fact.

[pc03]

e ano b ang best format?at bitrate?

aac?apple loseless?mp3?or wma?hay gulo!!!

[bedista003]

samsung. :D

[wazdog]

The average human ear would not be able to distinguish between 256 bit mp3s and lossless even with a pair of shure se530's. Just be sure to upgrade your earphones before you start worrying about file formats.

[Aranda_Bay]

If you were to choose, IPOD or SONY? considering the quality of sound
not the capacity of the player....

I haven't tried to audition (listen to live) and compare a Sony MP3 player from an iPod, but given the same bitrate MP3 file, one will still be able to notice a not so subtle difference in quality especially power between the two. They may be playing the same high bit rate MP3 file but iPods have very poor internal amplifiers so music quality is affected to a a certain extent.

Check out this interesting discussion in the automotive threads:

Maybe your player is already good as is. The iPods have never really produced exceptional sound because its internal headphone amplifier sucks.

Sorry for being vague, but when I said "processed" and "raw", I wasn't referring to MP3 compression; I was referring to the signal. When using the headphone port, the audio signal goes through the iPod's internal headphone amplifier, which is horrible and can distort audio signals. On the other hand, Line Out completely bypasses the player's internal amplifier, which results to cleaner sounding music. Since music coming out of the iPod through Line Out is "unamplified", you can use external amplifiers instead. I'm not using a separate external amplifier, but the improvement in sound quality was still noticeable for me.

Parang ganito kasi, kung galing sa headphone port, you can change volume using both the HU or and the player diba? (Hence, the redundancy in the amplification(?) of the sound). Sosobra na yung distortion. The more amplifiers added into a setup, the more distortion that will be added.

Another suggestion: if you're really keen on listening to the best music possible, don't use MP3s. If possible, try listening to lossless files (e.g. .WV, .FLAC). I installed Rockbox firmware onto my iPod only for this reason: lossless files support. The files are larger though, and an album can take up to 300MB of space.

:D

http://www.pinoyexchange.com/forums/showpost.php?p=30507810&postcount=27


It appears that due to the poor quality of audio coming through the internally amplified headphone jack of iPods, using some high end quality earphones/headphones will make it a useless expense. Music coming out through the Line-Out Dock (located below the iPod) doesn't pass through the iPod's internal amplifier therefore it puts out a more pure, clean unadulterated audio.

Here's another source:

http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=213696

[einhander]

e ano b ang best format?at bitrate?

aac?apple loseless?mp3?or wma?hay gulo!!!

the best thing to do is try it out, get your favorite CD preferably the one with very low bass and a lot of cymbals, also some bossa music. then encode them to diff types of compression and diff types of bitrate.

as for me. im satisfied with MP3 encoded in 192kbps and up, preferably VBR with joint-stereo

[pc03]

the best thing to do is try it out, get your favorite CD preferably the one with very low bass and a lot of cymbals, also some bossa music. then encode them to diff types of compression and diff types of bitrate.

as for me. im satisfied with MP3 encoded in 192kbps and up, preferably VBR with joint-stereo

ako naman ok na ako sa aac 128kbps (i think its way better than mp3 128)...pero *** pa nanatry ang apple loseless,laki kc ng size pag kinonvert to that file..30mb na per song ano ba yun?hehehe

[einhander]

ako naman ok na ako sa aac 128kbps (i think its way better than mp3 128)...pero *** pa nanatry ang apple loseless,laki kc ng size pag kinonvert to that file..30mb na per song ano ba yun?hehehe

as wazdog says, most human ears cant hear the difference with 256kbps vs lossless or apple lossless, unless maybe if you have a super speaker systems, yung tipong 100k ang presyo pataas :D which can reproduce other sound properties that normal speakers and headphones cant. maybe lang naman

[jan0ng]

thanks guys sa information at opinion. I used an ipod before, di ako satisfied sa output (gamit ko se210 and e2g) mas buo pa din **** ang sony. Parehas na 256kbps yung mga file. Ang weakness lang ng Sony, di ganun kalaki capacity like ipod.

[rave]

iPod or Sony? Neither. I recommend Cowon. I'm serious. Their players may be the most spartan of them all (i.e., you probably won't impress the ladies by whipping out your Cowon player), but there is nothing I can say to bash the sound quality. Most of their players have SRS WOW, TruBass and Ogg Vorbis playback in one device in addition to the usual equalizers and playlist features, so do look them up.

Also, instead of looking to replace your player, have you considered getting good quality headphones? Even the pricier ones are cheaper than replacing your player altogether. I'm not talking about those consumer level stuff from Sony and Pioneer -- go have a listen at those made by the likes of Bose, Sennheiser or AKG. Try it and see if it makes a difference for you.

With regards to bitrate and encoding, just as an example, I rip my CDs in FLAC (lossless) format, then use variable bitrate Ogg Vorbis encoding when I transfer them to my player, with bitrates of around 256kbps. This is probably a bit on the extreme side but I need to do it since my ears tend to be a bit picky due to my occasional dabbling in audio engineering and music production. Individual preferences do vary, so don't be afraid to experiment and conduct your own listening tests for yourself.

[pc03]

very well said^^

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