The most important thing about X5

[Darkroom]

At least to me . . .

I had a Creative Muvo V200 before. The muddled screechy sound of that thing was horrible, and it was impossible to listen to for long periods of time.

When I decided I must replace it, I started by looking at the reviews on Muvo, just so I could make comparisons and make sure my next player is better.

How surprised was I when I found review after review going on and on about how great the V200 is - pages and pages about the shiny white finish, the rubber holder and what not? It took long days of googeling before I found any reviews that even mentioned the sound. They all wrote it was very good or excellent! Did they ever listen to it?

The only conclusion I could make was that if this sound is ‘excellent’ then all DAPs suck.

I was a little worried about spending all that money on X5. Will I buy it based on good reviews only to find out again that what is good enough for the reviewers, is not good enough for me?

I got my X5 a few days ago, and this little thing has been giving me multiple eargasms since! It blows your mind and anything else you want blown! I am even able to use my Senn PX200s with it - they were unbearable with Muvo cuz they played every little detail of the midtones jumping from muffled and dull to screeching harsh.

Given my experience with mp3 players, I NEVER expected X5 would sound so good.

I promise, once you start listening to this baby, you will instantly forget your worries about screen size and resolution, video codecs and whatever insignificant things we’ve all been bitching about here. The truth is, X5 does the one thing it is designed to do with excellence, and that alone is worth the money you spend on it. Everything else is a bonus, and insignificant in comparison.

(Disclaimer: I don’t need to say that you shouldn’t expect X5 to sound like your $1000 CD player - If you have one, then you know better than to expect a DAP to do that)

[jazztime]

I'm about to buy my first mp3 player - the X5. But I have not made up my mind if it should be the 30GB (small size) or the 60GB (large capacity).

So, darkroom, you seem to care about the sound quality (as I do). Will the X5 really make use of the FLAC format? Or will ogg quality 6-8 be just as good due to the limitations of a DAP?

If ogg will be just as good in pratice I could go for the 30GB (I will not be able to have my intire cd collection in the 60Gb anyway).

Just for the information: I use Shure E2c with my laptop and while I like them a lot I'm not overly excited - they are good, but not as transperent as I would expect the e5c or the Etymotic ER4 to be.

[En_croute]

Jazztime - I use EC2s with the M3 - the sound is truly amazing, and the reproduction is much better than my NAD Amplifier and Mordant Short Speakers - admitedly both are very old.

Oh wow - just worked out they are 21 years old - still going strong!

[bradavon]

Well said Darkroom.

At the end of the day for me as long as it plays my WMA files well, with a decent battery life then I'll be happy (I'm getting the X5L). The rest is a bonus.

[Darkroom]

Jazz, I cannot hear difference between 356kibs MP3 and flac, and I really doubt that anyone can. The DAPs of today have a long way to go before we can start comparing them to Hifi equipment. I’d say X5 is comparable to a decent portable CD player. It will take some months of listening before I can say what kind of encoding will push X5 to its limits, but I have a feeling it might be Lame mp3 around 256kibs.

When I get home tonight, I’ll put X5 through the ultimate test by connecting it to my home sound system. Not expecting great sound, but at some level hoping I’m wrong.

[jazztime]

Thanks a lot, Darkroom - what you say confirms my suspection that lossless codecs in these small machines is overkill = waste of MB. I'm looking forward to hear about your findings with X5 and your stereo.

But I have also noticed that lots of people seems to be very excited that X5 (and M3) supports FLAC. I really would like also to hear other peoples findings with FLAC!! Sound quality is strongly subjective!!!

[Darkroom]

Line out to my Marantz amp was a disappointment. I’ve seen some posters planning to use X5 to replace their Cd players - I don’t recommend that.. In fact, the sound was so bad that I was a little worried that once the contrast with Muvo has faded and I’ve gotten myself a set of Grados I have on my list, I may not find it as wonderful as I initially thought.

It may be just my imagination, but the one flac I had uploaded - Cassandra Wilson’s Traveling Miles sounded much better than the MP3s I tried. I don’t have time to test this - and I will travel away for some time, so someone else will have to take over here and test things out. I would like to compare Mp3 and Flac on Aux, and a good CD player on CD, but I won’t be able to do so for at least a month.

Some other peculiarities I found while I was playing with line out:
- Playing MP3s through Line-out the volume control of X5 still works, and I later discovered that so do equalizer and sound effect.
- Playing Flac the output is flat and unaffected by X5s volume level.

This maybe gives us a peek at X5's internal workings... After a little bit of meditation over this seeming weirdness of the line-out, I figured that MP3 decoding INCLUSIVE volume control and equalizer happens digitally in the same chip where the MP3 is decoded, and this digitally ‘amped’ signal is then fed through X5's internal amp to headphones.
Flac would be decoded by in a separate process, and the signal going to X5's internal amp is unaffected by volume control or sound settings.

I am only guessing here, so please don’t quote me outside of this thread.


Also, to make sure everybody understands the perspective here, the sound from x5 is supposedly among the very best in DAP and I have no reason to doubt it. It sounds great with my Senns and Koss, and compared to my Muvo it sounds Heavenly. Also the ‘Bad’ sound I get through X5's line out is still much better than I get with my crappy sound card.

I’m off to my weekend, and Canada after that. See ya!

[fx3000se]

I somewhere read that it would be "better" to switch of all equalizer settings when "lining out" to a stereo...but don't ask me where and who said so.

[bradavon]

- Playing MP3s through Line-out the volume control of X5 still works, and I later discovered that so do equalizer and sound effect.
I'm glad you mentioned that. As it's something I'll have to keep an eye on.

It sounds like a bug as that's the whole point of line out!

[Darkroom]

It could be a bug, but I suspect that's the way it has been implemented. If you do decoding and digital processing in one chip, there will be the side-effect that this processing will be present in line-out even though the line-out is by-passing the internal amp. I don't think this can be firmware-fixed.

Regardless, we should flat the eq and turn off all sound effects when lining out.

Aaahh... just came to think of something: When I said the MP3 line-out sounds really bad, maybe it is because the volume on X5 was not set to optimal level for line out. That's how I noticed the thing to start with: I cued from mp3 to flac, and my speaker's volume increased x 3.

[Tombo]

I’ve seen some posters planning to use X5 to replace their Cd players - I don’t recommend that..
how about people who can't really tell the difference between a 192 CBR mp3 and CD sound?

[bradavon]

I can't tell the difference between 96Kbps WMA or CD let along 192Kbps. 96Kbps MP3 sounds rubbish though.

I wouldn't want to replace my CD player for a DAP but if I was living a way for a few months I probably would.

[natjv]

I'm a newbie to the formats...most of my stuff is 192 mp3 I think...all I know is mine sounds great...to my amateur ear...with some crappy Sony headphones. I need to name my X5 now...hmmm...what to call it?

[BIGtrouble77]

I can't believe you guys can't hear the artifacting in MP3's. I can hear artifacting in lame encoded mp3's at 320!! The cymbols always sound a little artifacted.

Oggs at 192 sound nearly perfect to me. I encode all my music at 200kbps ogg. I have pretty decent ear phones, Bang and Olufsen A8s, so maybe that's it. mp3 at 320 is definately not as good as ogg at 192. Even the vbr mp3s sound bad.

[Darkroom]

Quick test this morning while getting ready to go to work: When I craanked up X5 volume to 30, I think line-out sounded better. Hard to say when I don't have the time to sit down and listen.

[Darkroom]

Here we go...
Maybe it is a bug after all... I just listened to a mp3 through line-out, and when I turned up the volume in X5 to 30, the sound in speakers went up.

Then I checked that eq is flat, which it wasn't. I had a bit of trouble to setting it on normal, which took a couple of times trying (pressing rec reset the eq back to previous settings, pressing rocker and then rec did the same. Pressing Play finally accepted the setting - The way to operate the remote and the main unit is not always consistent)

Anyway, after playing with X5 like that for a minute - Now I can turn the volume down all the way to 2 and it sounds the same regardelss!
I'm not even going to try to figure this out.


Btw, to throw my 2 cents in. The first thing I notice about bad encoding is missing or lame harmonies.

[Tombo]

I can't believe you guys can't hear the artifacting in MP3's.
What kind of music do you listen to?

[BIGtrouble77]

I can't believe you guys can't hear the artifacting in MP3's.
What kind of music do you listen to?


Mostly rock. The older 80's and 90's stuff recorded on analog equipment doesn't seem to encode nearly as well with mp3 for some reason. The newer crap modern rock recorded on digital equipment seems to make out better. Stuff like velvet revolver seems to encode well with mp3.

When I listen so some of the old remastered van halen albums you can hear really cool deatals like instruments bleeding through eachothers mics, but when I encode it to mp3 alot of those details are lost. Ogg at 200 seems to pick it up really clearly and I never hear artifacting.

[Tombo]

When I listen so some of the old remastered van halen albums you can hear really cool deatals like instruments bleeding through eachothers mics, but when I encode it to mp3 alot of those details are lost.
Could you give some examples of songs, in which you can hear that kind of difference between mp3 and the original recording? Got a big cd collection, so I may have one or two of them...maybe not van halen stuff? I'd really like to hear it myself.

[vranswer]

Some other peculiarities I found while I was playing with line out:
- Playing MP3s through Line-out the volume control of X5 still works, and I later discovered that so do equalizer and sound effect.
- Playing Flac the output is flat and unaffected by X5s volume level.
Whoah! Hold the Phone! IMO, we need to get to the bottom of this. I'm about to snatch up one of these players, and line-out is very important to me. If X5 uses some kind of "fake" line-out, I may have a problem with that. Are there any Cowon techs that hang out here?? <<puts purchase on hold>>

[Darkroom]

I haven't had the time to play with the settings, but I did upload a bunch of flac to listen through audio out while I was packing my suitcases.

Verdict: Audio-out from X5 sounds like it is coming from a portable device, even when it is flac. It is much closer to my Pacard Bell integrated Soundcard than my Marantz CD pleyr. It sounds much worse than playing CDs in my Pioneer DVD player connected to a Technics am in my office.

X5 Line-out does not sound good.

Conclusion. It is still a very good portable player. compared to my muvo, the sound is Excellent!!! It is a very bad choice if you are shopping for a component to your Hifi system - even if you are only going to listen to it occasionally.

I am a little worried if I will want to live with the sound once I get an opportunity to hook up my headphones of choice (Anyone with Grados 225s and X5, please?)

I am not going to return this player, as overall I am happy with it (Thankfully, I never intended it for line-out). But if I knew back when I put in hte order what I knkow today, I think I *may* have considered Rio Karma (Although I don't *know* if Karma would be any better)

For now, I hold on to X5 for next couple of years, and happily listen to it with headphones until technology catches up with what we *Really* want.