Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion
Ordered list of Rockbox-supported devices' sound quality?
Fernando Negro:
--- Quote from: Mihail Zenkov on September 09, 2016, 04:51:51 AM ---Again with same condition (no load) Clip Zip have ~3 times lower distortion than Nexus S.
--- End quote ---
Hello, Mihail Zenkov.
Je... Incredible. I would never suspect that to be the case.
Indeed, in one of hearing tests that I made, using the same headphones, I could not differentiate between the sound that came from my Sansa Clip Zip and the one that came from my sound card with a Wolfson DAC. (And, I could definitely notice differences when testing other devices with those same headphones.)
So, I was already somewhat aware of how good the Clip Zip was - but never thought it would be capable of even outperforming devices with Wolfson DACs.
Mihail Zenkov:
--- Quote from: Fernando Negro on September 09, 2016, 12:47:59 PM ---So, I was already somewhat aware of how good the Clip Zip was - but never thought it would be capable of even outperforming devices with Wolfson DACs.
--- End quote ---
Yes, Clip Zip really good for his price and weight. For better sound quality you should use latest rockbox (dev builds) since we have added some improvements in sound quality for Clip Zip (and other AMSv2) after 3.13 was released.
[Saint]:
--- Quote from: Fernando Negro on September 09, 2016, 12:47:59 PM ---So, I was already somewhat aware of how good the Clip Zip was - but never thought it would be capable of even outperforming devices with Wolfson DACs.
--- End quote ---
I guess one of the problems with this, as other posters in this thread have alluded to, is the very wide sweeping assumption that just "Wolfson DAC" is some useful metric for establishing quality. Wolfson made a lot of DACs over a long period of time, many of which would be regarded as substandard or outright poor when compared to relatively unknown chip vendors in this market today.
A secondary problem is that, in my opinion, almost any metric is useless for establishing perceived quality.
A given theoretical device could have a perfectly flat output and absolutely 100% bit-faithful reproduction, and you might still think it sounds like ass if you aren't matching it to monitors it can drive, or if you are not used to or expecting a perfectly flat and faithful output - even if you are impedance matching. People tend to get sentimental about sound, and they will remember the way they felt when they first heard a particular track or segment of audio and that does a lot to cement how the user will think that it should sound forever more.
I guess what I am basically saying is that even in an ideal hardware environment, there isn't any way to guarantee any metric of objective quality other than "if it sounds good to you, it sounds good to you".
[Saint]
Edit: typos
Mihail Zenkov:
--- Quote from: [Saint] on September 11, 2016, 08:22:41 PM ---A given theoretical device could have a perfectly flat output and obsolutely 100% bit-faithful reproduction, and you might still think it sounds like ass if you aren't matching it to monitors it can drive, or if you are not used to or expecting a perfectly flat and faithful output - even if you are impedance matching.
--- End quote ---
I agree with you - flat output (at frequency range) very subjective at perception. But no one likes harsh peak at FR, noise, distortions (THD/IMD). So do some objective measurement always good start point.
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