Spec me an mp3 player

EDIT: I regret purchasing an IPOD Classic. The sound quality it produces in terms of bass, is rubbish. :( Even with upgraded headphones.
 
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8gb would probably do it. iPod nano type of thing (even if not a nano).
 
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For that price, the Sony NWZA818 8G is supposed to have the best sound quality available for under £100 mate.
 
they (edit: the sony nwz-a818's) are pretty much the best sounding players available unless you are will to stump up the cash and import a kenwood. for <£100 i would have to agree with the sony. the nwz-a828 is just round the corner though, but with an expected price of ~£150. it has one or two tricks up it's sleeve like a new high res display and built in bluetooth which is intriguing.

£150 puts you in the relm of the 8gb iaudio D2 (non dab) which is a whole box of tricks with a memory card slot to expand the memory further, and isnt all that far behind the sony in sound quality. it also has that 50hour battery life trump card.

ManCuBuS said:
Something with Cowon in the title.

/thread end.;)
Click to expand...

wrong answer! ;)
 
sony nwz-a818 Is the best Ive owned - Id pump with one of these as the new 828's are made of plasic not metel. Its basicly the same player bar biger screen (same res) and bluetooth (do you really need that? bluetooth headphones eww).
 
nothing wrong with blutooth headphones. great for working out at the gym. no matter how well your earphones stay in, there's always a cable there somewhere.....not with bluetooth. And if its built well, the casing shouldnt make any difference lol. it still has regular amplification too.
 
Off Topic: The Cowon D2 behind the Sony in sound quality? Pull the other one :p

Seriously though another Cowon fan here, good fan base aswell. Check out the iaudiophile.net forums they'll lead you in the right direction :D
 
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Cowon D2 if you can afford it (owned that and the Sony and find it to be more fun to play with), if not then the Sony is an awesome player as well.
 
Not sure about the new generation ipods, but my iPod (5.5 gen) and Shuffle (first gen) have top notch sound quality, slightly better than my Cowon iAudio X5 (sounds more natural to my ears).

Of course, the iPods sound crap when you put on the EQ, but theres no need for it when paired with something like a PX100 or Super.fi 5 Pro.

For something around 8gb, I'd definitely go with the Cowon or Sony flash players.
 
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yeah the first gen shuffles were some of the best ipods. ive got an iphone and appently its no different in SQ to an ipod touch or a classic. i dont rate my iphone next to the sony very highly
 
Thanks for the help all. From a shortlist of the Sony 818, iRiver Clix and Cowon D2 I'm leaning towards the Cowon.

The Sony is a great price right now. Being short of money that may become a big factor so I've not rules it out yet. And at 8gb it has more than enough space for me. £82 delivered can't be sniffed at!

The Clix looks very good indeed and having an old iRiver I'm quite a fan of them.

But the Cowon looks the most interesting of them with the radio, alarm and touchscreen, SD card slot, etc.
 
For what it's worth, I've had both and I sold the Cowon and got an iRiver Clix2. I prefer the iRiver, but that's just me. You can't go wrong with either.
 
Hades said:
Thanks for the help all. From a shortlist of the Sony 818, iRiver Clix and Cowon D2 I'm leaning towards the Cowon.

The Sony is a great price right now. Being short of money that may become a big factor so I've not rules it out yet. And at 8gb it has more than enough space for me. £82 delivered can't be sniffed at!

The Clix looks very good indeed and having an old iRiver I'm quite a fan of them.

But the Cowon looks the most interesting of them with the radio, alarm and touchscreen, SD card slot, etc.
Click to expand...

yeah. the D2's are good and you can obviously do a lot more with them. sound quality-wise like i said they arent far off the sonys, but to make the most of them you'll need a decent pair of high-impedance ear phones, because like other players based on the particular wolfson codec it uses, they underperform with low impedance earphones. thats not to say they are bad sound players, far from it, but there is quite a hefty rolloff in the bass response starting at 100hz and is >5db down by 30hz - obviously pretty poor. at 20hz its nearly 10db down. when i first got the player i knew straight away that bottom end was nowhere near as prominent woth my ex90's as my old iriver h10 was, but i put that down to my perhaps unhealthy obsession with sub bass (<30hz) and just assumed that the D2 was giving me a more accurate presentation. it because apparent after a month or so i guess, that something wasnt right. it wasnt untill somebody on audiophile forums had the idea of testing the response with some earphones plugged in that we began to see the problem the d2 just isnt designed to cope well with low impedance 'phones. for whatever reason it just excessively rolls the bass off, and no software tweaking could never get it up to where i liked it the h10 with rockbox firmware and its parametric eq was fantastic for low bass and much better in that department, but the d2 smashed it for midrange and top end clarity and seperation.

d2_responce_ex90's%20inline.jpg


thats testing my old cowan d2 player but iaudiophile forums have plenty of other tests showing the same. that is a measurement of the frequency response of the player with some sony ex-90's in-line which are 16ohm earphones. note: the sony player doesnt have this problem

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of course, the other thing to consider is that the sony already comes with decent set of earphones (ex85's) which are very nearly as good as the ex90's - your basically getting a £30 pair of earphones for free. you'd have to pay extra for them if you bought the cowan (which comes with crap earphones). for the money, you wont get a sound as good with any other players. sony have the massive advantage of being able to pack in their own earphones which are rather good it has to be said. you have to spend ~£170 on a cowan and some earphones just to approach the same sound quality.

oh just to confuse you alittle though, be aware that the sonys arent the most powerful of mp3 players. they are quite fine with the earphones provided but may struggle with 'phones that need a lot of power
 
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