Any audiophiles here? - Only marginally more socially acceptable than pedophillia!

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Return Of Pestilence said:
What would be some good no nonsense portable music players? Just need something that plays music and nothing else. No Bluetooth or Wifi bullshit. You can recommend players of any pricepoint under $300. Not too concerned about price, would also like durability and 2 TB SD card support.
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Hiby R3 II ($180ish) or Hiby Digital M300 ($200) - runs android, but seems to be a good all-around digital audio player.
Alternatively, just buy an old NiB or used LG V20-V40 or so, and just use it for music; they can be found for around $100 or less currently (the LG V20 has a removable battery and supports up to 2tb microSD, as the others above).

Problem is, on the cheap MP3 players, they won't support a microSD card beyond 128gb or 256gb, but if that's good for you then just get something like this.
 
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Audio Science Review (ASR) forum, they have reviewed a lot of products objectively (amps, dacs, headphones, electrostatic headphones, IEMs, etc.) and don't commit the classic audiophile fallacy of equating price to performance, for instance, they sang praises for the 7Hz x Crinacle Zero 2 despite being worth a mere $25 and gave harsh criticisms of the $4550 Stax SR-009S for needing EQ and being just obnoxiously expensive.
 
tehpope said:
I really tempted to put some bounties out for rockbox to be ported to it.
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I'll be keeping an eye on this project. The ESP32 has been coming up on Rockbox forums for a few years in the homebrew DAP thread. I don't think it will get a port, but if any project does, it would be this one. Someone made a thread about the Tangara recently.
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From the looks of things, it would take a particularly motivated developer.
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My brand is JVC Marshmallow. They're good for their price bracket, which is low. I've ABXed (blind tested) my ability to discern 320kbps MP3, >200kbps Vorbis, and a few other high end audio encodings. So I use FLAC. All using these, so they're clearly good enough (or introducing some non-linearity that enables me, but I've reproduced this elsewhere, artifacts sound the same). They're a little "cloudy" compared to more expensive kit.

But yeah, the big surprise to me these days is just how good modern audio hardware is. I bought this chinesium bluetooth-FM transmitter for my car, and the noise floor is nearly as good as any decent 3.5mm cable. Haven't heard a PC audio output I've disliked unless there's been obvious mains hum.
 
prince said:
Im new to the audiophile hobby and am wondering are the Sony MDR 7506 as good as people say it is i got crins IEMs and disliked them as im not a fan of earbuds
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They're fine. It really depends on what type of sound you want. If you want a more neutral sound, the HD600 or HD60X are the golden standard. Though they cost like double the MDR 7506.

 
I buy audiophile headphones because I hate usb headsets and I don't know what to do with the giant plugs that they come with screwed over the regular sized one
 
More of a muso/producer than audiophile but I do like audio and audio accessories, have a lot of old vinyl from childhood and mums collection but aren't retarded enough to buy a direct drive turntable. I gave the last analog 80's amplifier I had laying around to an old ex stripper I met off tinder years ago cause she was poor and she wanted to play The Ramones for her kid. I still download flacs, sperg over foobar2000 EQ settings and have a tidal account for MQA.

Unless you are listening to flacs, MQA, CD or vinyl there is no reason to overspend on headphones or IEMS. Youtube, spotify and if its streamed over BT it's compressed to shit. Stick with your dirty buds.

Main set of cans are AKG 701 open backs, home studio setup with with a 32bit/192khz interface, 7' Presonus Eris E7 monitors and a power - 4 channel distribution amp. My most prized possession is an Orange 2x12 120w OB cabiniet.

Logitech Pro X 7.1 wireless for vidya gaming and general listening when I'm not being audiotistic, extremely kamfy and great sound for consoomer level.
 
prince said:
for listening to youtube and 90s country music and 2000s rock is it good?
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yes. It has a V shape profile. So more bass and treble. They've been making those cans since the early 90s. So they've gotta be doing something right for 30+ years of production.
 
I've been seeing this budget DAP on Amazon for about 5 years now, called the HiFi Walker H2 (AKA Surfan F20, AGPtek H3) and it's currently on sale for $113. That's about twice as much as the AGPtek Rocker which I posted about earlier in the thread, but the build quality is nicer.
hifi_walker_h2.jpg
Reviews regarding the build quality were positive. It has a metal & glass shell, and physical controls. The wired sound quality is supposed to be good, it has a decent DAC (TI Burr-Brown PCM5102 or Sabre ES9018, depending on HW revision).

A negative aspect was the Bluetooth, it's supposed to have a poor signal range. However I have found that using BT with first gen APT-X generally has a much lower range than lower quality protocols. The next common negative point was that the UI was not great, which brings me to my post today.

When I saw this on sale I decided to check Rockbox again, and they now have a port available for this device. There are some compatibility issues between hardware and firmware revisions so it would be prudent to read the wiki and forum thread:
Hifiwalker H2 units which ship with v1.3 firmware are not compatible with v1.0-v1.2 firmware (and vice versa). In general, it appears that original firmware is no longer compatible between brands or between original firmware versions. There is a hardware change which started with Surfans F20 firmware 2.7 (and later) and HifiWalker H2 firmware 1.4 (and later), so these certainly are not compatible with original firmware versions prior to the hardware change.
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Personally, i'm not obsessed with having the best headphones. If the sound quality is good and the headphones don't peel the skin off of my ears, i'm happy enough. Really i care more about the actual music rather then the objects used for listening. There's technically no best audio format for now, but i'm still curious to know what's the best audio format subjectively for music and even sound effects. Currently i use OGG vorbis and FLAC.
 
I have a pair of noname headphones from radioshack that sound the same as the 100-500 dollar range crap at Walmart and BestBuy now. Still works, logo's been rubbed off from time.
 
I imported them from China. They're ight. Not on Amazon cause Zeos and others did reviews that caused them to run out of stock. But fiio has them on Aliexpress.
 
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