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Need help for choosing a (probably Rockbox-supported) player

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sargeborsch:
Hello. I'm considering buying a new player, which should either be supported by Rockbox, or have all the features of Rockbox "out of the box", and also good audio quality and power. (not worse/less than my current player — Cowon V5, which has 30mW per channel, if I understand it right)
It must support real gapless playback and 24-bit WavPack hybrid playback (without crude conversion to 16-bit or something like this.)

And good things to have (but I don't believe it's possible) are ReplayGain (non-destructively make all tracks/albums sound with the same perceived loudness, without clipping, adjustable target gain) and Crossfeed DSP (compensate for excess channel separation that headphones have, something like http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components/Crossfeed_%28foo_dsp_crossfeed%29) — they will probably make me free from having to pre-process all music before putting it into player.

Please, give me some hints about what to look at.

Thank you for your attention. And I'm sorry for my English, it's not my native language yet…

gomezz:
I have just replaced my aging Creative Zen V Plus but decided to go for the equally venerable Sansa Clip+ (*) with which I am very happy apart from two aspects:  a) It is all too easy to accidentally turn it on by touching the ON/OFF button so I put it in a padded pouch when not in use in my bag;  b) I need to be able to find and use the Play/Pause button by touch while wearing rubberised cotton work gloves so I glued a bit of plastic to the button to create a noticable bump (using the tip of the clip off an old biro pen).  Otherwise it is just about perfect for my needs when Rockboxed and with the addition of a 32GB SD card to add to the 8GB internal memory is more than enough to hold my whole CD collection in mp3 format twice over.

(*) I did look at the newer Sansa Clip Zip model but that appears to be not as well sorted a device.

saratoga:

--- Quote from: sargeborsch on October 16, 2014, 09:11:07 AM --- Cowon V5, which has 30mW per channel, if I understand it right)

--- End quote ---

FWIW that really doesn't mean anything.


--- Quote from: sargeborsch on October 16, 2014, 09:11:07 AM ---It must support real gapless playback and 24-bit WavPack hybrid playback (without crude conversion to 16-bit or something like this.)

--- End quote ---

Probably no such device exists.  But it doesn't matter.  There is no real advantage to 16 vs. 24 bit for portable devices.


--- Quote from: sargeborsch on October 16, 2014, 09:11:07 AM ---And good things to have (but I don't believe it's possible) are ReplayGain (non-destructively make all tracks/albums sound with the same perceived loudness, without clipping, adjustable target gain) and Crossfeed DSP (compensate for excess channel separation that headphones have, something like http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components/Crossfeed_%28foo_dsp_crossfeed%29) — they will probably make me free from having to pre-process all music before putting it into player.

--- End quote ---

Clip with rockbox?  Cheap and easy to try out. 

sargeborsch:
>There is no real advantage to 16 vs. 24 bit for portable devices

When in noisy environment — it's definitely true. But when it's quiet "outside", that's a nice thing to have… and I tend to use player in both very noisy conditions (while riding bike in the city) and in quiet conditions.

>FWIW that really doesn't mean anything.

Then how do I measure the maximum loudness? I am pretty sure it's different for different devices, as previously I had one or two problematic players which were unable to give enough loudness, and became totally useless in noisy conditions.

>Clip with rockbox?  Cheap and easy to try out. 

You mean "Sansa Clip+"?

saratoga:
You'll basically never be able to get the noise floor low enough that quantization error matters, and if you did, we have noise shipping anyway.

The power figure is basically meaningless for a lot of reasons. First because you need to know an impedance to interpret those numbers. Second because the actual max power is determined by the supply voltages programmed into the firmware making the nominal values irrelevant. They just put those numbers out because they expect people to not know what they mean.

Are you actually running your player at max volume?  If so getting louder headphones might be a better idea that looking for single db differences between players.

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