Portable music players

Hungryhalibut posted:

Timmo1341 posted:

AK Jr paired with Shure 846 (home and holiday) and AKG Y50BT (gym). 4 x Sandisk 128 GB micro SD cards. Sufficient to hold well over 1,000 albums ripped to FLAC. If funds permit I'll probably upgrade to the latest AK KANN, which sounds exquisite but is a bit pricey at £900.

i can't recommend the Jr enough, having owned various iPods (Classic, Nano etc), Fiio X3 and X5. I have listened to both the Sony ZX-2 and Pono, neither of which did it for me. For the money I think the Jr is unbeatable, but, as ever, demo as many as you can before buying.

Tim

I didn't demo my stereo, and I'm not going to demo this. I'm sure all the recommendations will be better than my Sansa Clip, which I'm keeping for the gym. I'm not sure doing squats with an AKJ or Fiio is going to work. Mabe it's worth stretching for the A&K 70. It looks a lot nicer and has a proper volume control. 

A&K Jr volume control is superb - very tactile and accurate, plus you get option of touch screen control if you want it! 

Thanks to everyone for their advice. After due deliberation I've ordered an AK70 in black, and a 200 Gb memory card. It should appear on Wednesday and I'll see how it sounds. I only have the Momentums at the moment, so may look into better phones in future. 

Please keep us posted -- I am curious to learn how you like the AK70 with your Momentum. Ahead of a long flight to the "homeland" of Astell&Kern), I treated myself to a pair of Momentum 2.0 Wireless... 

Bert Schurink posted:

I have the Sony ZX2 and I am extremely happy with that. However it's out of your price range. So I would recommend the lower end Sony with an excellent 35 hours battery life, or the AK with less battery life.

The Sony's seem to have trouble working with external DACs, should you want to add one in the future.

sunbeamgls posted:

Bert Schurink posted:

I have the Sony ZX2 and I am extremely happy with that. However it's out of your price range. So I would recommend the lower end Sony with an excellent 35 hours battery life, or the AK with less battery life.

The Sony's seem to have trouble working with external DACs, should you want to add one in the future.

Sounds a bit odd given that Sony make one that pairs with the ZX2. Maybe they are just trying to make you buy their own hardware.

Was going to put in a +1 for the Fiio X3ii as I have one & also use Momentum 2ae's - very happy

Good luck with your purchase!

sunbeamgls posted:

Bert Schurink posted:

I have the Sony ZX2 and I am extremely happy with that. However it's out of your price range. So I would recommend the lower end Sony with an excellent 35 hours battery life, or the AK with less battery life.

The Sony's seem to have trouble working with external DACs, should you want to add one in the future.

Interesting - in what way do they have trouble with external DACs ?

I have been using a AK 120MKII as my portable player for the last 3 years. The AK players are superb in terms of their sound quality and connectivity options. Highly recommend them.

Fiio X5 gen3 is very good but AK70 is very good also...

the X7 gen2 will be available in 3 days but it will be a little more expensive..

AK70 owner for 4months using B&W P7 over ear phones /Sennheiser momentum IEi in ear phones and been very happy with the sound for a big range of music and spoken word. The screen is excellent and the controls work well. I use an external charger as it took an age to charge via the computer. I'm a relative newby to hi res audio (thanks to all of you who without knowing it helped me). The area I still struggle with is metadata. My CDs were ripped using the unitiserve ssd to a Synology NAS and not all the data drags to the AK70 - I'm sure that's my inexperience and the lack of a "dummies guide to metadata"

The AK70 arrived earlier and I've loaded some music. I must say it's a lovely thing, easy to use and sounds great, even through my £30 Sennheiser in ears that I use at the gym. I need to get some better ones - maybe the Momentums, though I read that they might be a bit bassy. Any ideas up to £100 or so. I want some that just stick in your ear rather than having wires that need to go over your ears. I've seen that there are some A&K / Beyerdynamic headphones for £500. Yikes! 

Hungryhalibut posted:

The AK70 arrived earlier and I've loaded some music. I must say it's a lovely thing, easy to use and sounds great, even through my £30 Sennheiser in ears that I use at the gym. I need to get some better ones - maybe the Momentums, though I read that they might be a bit bassy. Any ideas up to £100 or so. I want some that just stick in your ear rather than having wires that need to go over your ears. I've seen that there are some A&K / Beyerdynamic headphones for £500. Yikes! 

Try the Shure in Ears if you want to afford them SE425, otherwise the ones in your price range will also give you a good value for money.

I have a pair of Shure which sound fab however, their in ear sets rely on the cables running over your ears (at least mine do!).

I also have a pair of the Sennheiser Momentum in ear and find them very easy to drive with a decent sound quality.  I suspect you would need to up the budget considerably to gain any significant improvement.

Peter

Bose make surprisingly good in-ear headphones. They sound good, neutral to my ears at least....

Hungryhalibut posted:

The AK70 arrived earlier and I've loaded some music. I must say it's a lovely thing, easy to use and sounds great, even through my £30 Sennheiser in ears that I use at the gym. I need to get some better ones - maybe the Momentums, though I read that they might be a bit bassy. Any ideas up to £100 or so. I want some that just stick in your ear rather than having wires that need to go over your ears. I've seen that there are some A&K / Beyerdynamic headphones for £500. Yikes! 

Highly recommend Focal Sphear, stay in your ears really well, great PRAT sound, within £100 budget and punch well above their weight. 

Bert Schurink posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

The AK70 arrived earlier and I've loaded some music. I must say it's a lovely thing, easy to use and sounds great, even through my £30 Sennheiser in ears that I use at the gym. I need to get some better ones - maybe the Momentums, though I read that they might be a bit bassy. Any ideas up to £100 or so. I want some that just stick in your ear rather than having wires that need to go over your ears. I've seen that there are some A&K / Beyerdynamic headphones for £500. Yikes! 

Try the Shure in Ears if you want to afford them SE425, otherwise the ones in your price range will also give you a good value for money.

The Shures are great, but the wires do go over your ears. I was a bit dubious about this, but once I tried them I didn't find it a problem. (You can just stick them straught in your ears instead if you prefer, although they are much more secure if you put them on as intended and run the wire behind your head.)

I use the Sennheiser Momentum in-ears and am very happy with them. I use the Momentum-specific Comply ear tips. (Used with Fiio X3ii and a Ray Samuels headphone amp.)

Drdavid posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

The AK70 arrived earlier and I've loaded some music. I must say it's a lovely thing, easy to use and sounds great, even through my £30 Sennheiser in ears that I use at the gym. I need to get some better ones - maybe the Momentums, though I read that they might be a bit bassy. Any ideas up to £100 or so. I want some that just stick in your ear rather than having wires that need to go over your ears. I've seen that there are some A&K / Beyerdynamic headphones for £500. Yikes! 

Highly recommend Focal Sphear, stay in your ears really well, great PRAT sound, within £100 budget and punch well above their weight. 

HH i agree with your  momentum reviewer in that i find them bassy.  Iprefer shure se535, which to my aging ears have abetter balance. Critic like the little focal sphear`s, might be worth seeking out.

Adam Zielinski posted:

Now I wish iPhone could handle high-res audio...

The reason is rather simple for me - iPhone integrates very well with my car via a snap-in adapter. Music is then accessible via a the central screen and iDrive (the car is a BMW).

Depending on how high you need your res to be, it can. My iPhone 6 can handle up to 24 bit /48 kHz Apple Lossless files natively, synced via iTunes. Using an external DAC and side-loading the files into something like the Onkyo HF Player app gets you up to 24/192, but the faff increases considerably, of course.

Timo posted:

With no intention to get the thread off topic but rather wondering about the best SQ on-the-go within the budget: how does the AK Jn. (discounted at £250) or similar compare to the Chord Mojo (in the second-hand market for a similar price)? [Chord Mojo used with a box-standard smartphone, which might not be the best transport, I fear.)

Has anybody done the comparison?

Cheers,

Timo 

I've wondereed the same, and the obvious would appear to be Mojo paired with CHord's Poly, with storage capacity limited by size of (interchangeable) SD card(s). 

In fact if they made Poly compatible with other DACs then I'd be seriously interested in it as a possible home music store/renderer, when the cost of a TB SD card might be justified, and mobile with my entire collection would then just be a matter of adding a Mojo (and decent headphones!). However they tell me it can only be used with Mojo - I haven't got around to checking further, but maybe it's a matter of power supply if it is powered from Mojo.

Innocent Bystander posted:

 

In fact if they made Poly compatible with other DACs then I'd be seriously interested in it as a possible home music store/renderer, when the cost of a TB SD card might be justified, and mobile with my entire collection would then just be a matter of adding a Mojo (and decent headphones!). However they tell me it can only be used with Mojo - I haven't got around to checking further, but maybe it's a matter of power supply if it is powered from Mojo.

I'm sure the Poly could be made to work with other DAC's (with some messing around with cables and power supplies) but for the £499 price the Poly is pitched at, i'd be looking at something like the Auralic Aries mini which would just work out of the box for the home side. Remember the Poly would still need a smart phone to control it when mobile. 

are you planning to use Tidal offline? one thing AKs can't not do it is to use Tidal offline

this one feature that i use a lot, i just download all new albums to my sony zx2 and canvas them when i travel...

check massdrop for good deal on IEMs 

james n posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

 

In fact if they made Poly compatible with other DACs then I'd be seriously interested in it as a possible home music store/renderer, when the cost of a TB SD card might be justified, and mobile with my entire collection would then just be a matter of adding a Mojo (and decent headphones!). However they tell me it can only be used with Mojo - I haven't got around to checking further, but maybe it's a matter of power supply if it is powered from Mojo.

I'm sure the Poly could be made to work with other DAC's (with some messing around with cables and power supplies) but for the £499 price the Poly is pitched at, i'd be looking at something like the Auralic Aries mini which would just work out of the box for the home side. Remember the Poly would still need a smart phone to control it when mobile. 

 

My thought is IF the Poly is good enough for home use- i.e sounds at least as good as my Mac Mini/Audirvana or the  Melco N1A - then it becomes very interesting as once a 1TB SD card becomes readily available (i.e not silly price) it would be possible to pick up and take my entire music collection on travels without copying anything across and with identical library capability - justifying a Mojo and decent headphones.  

Is there no thread that cannot remain uninfected by bloody Chord? 

The brainwashing is obviously not working............