Fiio players

[Puggie]

Apple ipod with quad sdxc card conversion here for mobile use. My samsung s20 sounds better via Bluetooth in the car than the ipod on aux though. But ipod is much better with in ears, go figure.

I have a similarly butchered 80gb ipod, the fact you can now pack 4 x 256gb cards in there (in theory), is quite amazing. I use a pioneer head unit that pulls audio off the ipod digitally, so it's essentially an easily navigatable storage device that I can control from the head unit screen. I'm limited to lossless cd quality, but that will dobehile I'm driving. The head unit will also do flac off usb, 24bit 96k max, but the navigation I find less intuitive. I'll probably replace this with something RPi based next.

Bought the daughter a Fiio m3k for Xmas last year and I though it sounded good for the money. Better than my 6gen 80gb ipod.

 

[flutteringwow]

I would be really interested to know your findings. My second option was to get one of the latest iPod Touch and use that from car to car, now that Apple has WAV record ability.

@G T Audio

Did a little testing with the Pioneer against my cars SD playback on a BO system for you. I reset the Pioneer to standard EQ and tried with and without Pioneer upsampling.

The SD based BO system was better. The Pioneer sounded great, but seemed a little more laid back and 'valve' like. The definition was still there, but it was as impactful and lost the edge on resoltuion. It was hard to volume match because the Pioneer had to be whacked up to the max, and it still wasn't as loud as the native system on the sound volume level.

The Pioneer sounded better than an Iphone though, the Iphone sounded somewhat 'cheap' in comparison - like a cheap dac/low rent compression type of sound.

I tried the Pioneer on another car, with just basic manufacturers sound system, and it sounded much better, but I did need to use the Pioneers EQ to get it to be more 'active' and 'energetic'.

This was all through the mini jack plug, as my car wouldn't recognise it through USB.

So I think overall, if your car has a good independent manufacturers system, then it may not sound better, but if you don't then it probably will do.

 

[Copperjacket]

Apple ipod with quad sdxc card conversion here for mobile use. My samsung s20 sounds better via Bluetooth in the car than the ipod on aux though. But ipod is much better with in ears, go figure.

Did you do the diymod at the same time?

 

[GT]

@G T Audio

Did a little testing with the Pioneer against my cars SD playback on a BO system for you. I reset the Pioneer to standard EQ and tried with and without Pioneer upsampling.

The SD based BO system was better. The Pioneer sounded great, but seemed a little more laid back and 'valve' like. The definition was still there, but it was as impactful and lost the edge on resoltuion. It was hard to volume match because the Pioneer had to be whacked up to the max, and it still wasn't as loud as the native system on the sound volume level.

The Pioneer sounded better than an Iphone though, the Iphone sounded somewhat 'cheap' in comparison - like a cheap dac/low rent compression type of sound.

I tried the Pioneer on another car, with just basic manufacturers sound system, and it sounded much better, but I did need to use the Pioneers EQ to get it to be more 'active' and 'energetic'.

This was all through the mini jack plug, as my car wouldn't recognise it through USB.

So I think overall, if your car has a good independent manufacturers system, then it may not sound better, but if you don't then it probably will do.

Interesting and many thanks for the update.

I think the key, as you have mentioned, is whether my cars would recognise the music players output into the cars USB socket. I have spoken to a couple of manufacturers (AK for one) but I didn't get a warm feeling they knew if it would work. I guess 99.99% are just going to be used with headphones. I am surprised that more audiophiles don't use these hi=res music storage devices to play hi-res music in their cars, unless of course they are not designed to work into car audio systems. Seems a missed opportunity if that is the case.

 

[flutteringwow]

Interesting and many thanks for the update.

I think the key, as you have mentioned, is whether my cars would recognise the music players output into the cars USB socket. I have spoken to a couple of manufacturers (AK for one) but I didn't get a warm feeling they knew if it would work. I guess 99.99% are just going to be used with headphones. I am surprised that more audiophiles don't use these hi=res music storage devices to play hi-res music in their cars, unless of course they are not designed to work into car audio systems. Seems a missed opportunity if that is the case.

My car sees it as a mass storage device but wouldn't play from it. Unless your car is very recent, the last couple of years with some manufacturers or the last year for the likes of Audi (who have always been behind the times with in-car tech) its very much may or may not work using the usb output.

However using the Pioneers USB i figure would mean you are bypassing its DAC and using the cars one, so I dont imagine it will show much difference in quality over using any form
of storage device.

Most cars these days do have Aux line level inputs , so you can use it and gain some quality but its hardly hands free this way…and we all know speakers sent the quality of a sound so youll never gain too much if you have a basic paper speaker sound system in the car.

 

[Brian]

I’ve tried a few DAPs including the FiiO X5.

I use a Cowon Plenue D2, it sounds great (Beyer DT770), better than the FiiO, lasts hours per charge longer than anything else I tried and never freezes up.