Cowon D3 RMAA Tests

[dfkt]

The D3 measures basically the same as any other modern Cowon player, unsurprisingly. It has a slight bass roll-off with very low impedance phones, which should generally be inaudible. It has low output impedance (only a bit higher than the Clip+), so it works well with multi-armature IEMs (unlike the Sony A845 or Archos 32). Distortion levels and stereo crosstalk are all very fine on the D3. Dynamic range and noise levels are a bit weaker than on other Cowons, but that shouldn't matter much.

RMAA results:

Cowon D3 - Impedances
Cowon D3, C2, J3, V5 - 16 Ohm
Cowon D3, Sansa Clip+, Sony A845, Archos 32 - 16 Ohm
Cowon D3, Sansa Clip+, Sony A845, Archos 32 - 32 Ohm

[jakeroux]

It may be posted elsewhere on this site, but how does the currently most popular PMP (iTouch 4) compare in identical objective testing?

Actually, would be curious how all the various popular PMPs compare in such objective tests.

Thanks.

________

Edit - just noticed that dfkt does list a Sansa, Sony and Archos in his comparisons.

[Artmuzz]

IMO I think the Cowon D3 is the richest warmest sounding Cowon player I have heard. The bass is more deeper resulting in a 3D soundstage.

[el maco]

Originally Posted by jakeroux

how does the currently most popular PMP (iTouch 4) compare in identical objective testing?

Current Apple products have really impressive technical sound quality, comparable to Cowon or maybe even better in some areas (see this, for example). Too bad they don't have a proper user-adjustable equalizer -- let alone the full BBE effect arsenal.

Originally Posted by Artmuzz

IMO I think the Cowon D3 is the richest warmest sounding Cowon player I have heard. The bass is more deeper resulting in a 3D soundstage.

And yet it sounds exactly the same as Cowon J3, for example...

[Artmuzz]

Originally Posted by el maco

And yet it sounds exactly the same as Cowon J3, for example...

I disagree. I own a Cowon J3 too and I compared both DAPs with the same BBE JetEffect setting and same IEMs and the SQ of the D3 is more bass rich with a bigger soundstage. However, I agree with you that the Apple DAPs have good SQ because RockBox on my iPod Nano 2G and iPod 5G Video sounds much better than RockBox on my Sansa Clip+ again using the same EQ/Sound settings.

[dfkt]

One of your players must be broken then, since the D3 and J3 sound exactly the same. There is no audible difference.

[Artmuzz]

Originally Posted by dfkt

One of your players must be broken then, since the D3 and J3 sound exactly the same. There is no audible difference.

How do I go about fixing my J3 then to sound like the D3? Could it be the firmware I'm using?

Please advise

[sonic]

Originally Posted by jakeroux

It may be posted elsewhere on this site, but how does the currently most popular PMP (iTouch 4) compare in identical objective testing?

Actually, would be curious how all the various popular PMPs compare in such objective tests.

Thanks.

________

Edit - just noticed that dfkt does list a Sansa, Sony and Archos in his comparisons.

http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39151

I found the above thread a good read. Found using the search engine initially a few weeks ago

[Artmuzz]

Originally Posted by dfkt

One of your players must be broken then, since the D3 and J3 sound exactly the same. There is no audible difference.

Hello, I presume you mean my Cowon J3 is broken considering my D3 sounds better. So if both DAPs are supposed to sound the same then how do I fix my J3 to sound as good as my D3. Do you thinks its something to do with the J3 firmware?

Please advise.

[el maco]

Originally Posted by Artmuzz

if both DAPs are supposed to sound the same then how do I fix my J3 to sound as good as my D3. Do you thinks its something to do with the J3 firmware?

I highly doubt it has anything to do with the firmware. When you are comparing the two players, how do you make sure both of them play identically loud? Volume matching is crucial before you can do any comparison. Also, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I suspect there might be some cognitive biasing involved in favor for the newer, more expensive device. This phenomenon is very difficult to get rid of (I speak from personal experience here ) unless you can somehow listen without knowing which player you are actually hearing.

[ualinker]

I can not open either link from the initial post. This error message appears:

Incorrect format for file ./languages/ru.txt on line 1.
Format is "variable name[tab]value"

Can you please re-upload the results somewhere else?

[dfkt]

Remove the "index.php?dir=" and "&file=" parts from the links, then it should work. Like this: http://rmaa.elektrokrishna.com/Compa...Impedances.htm

No idea what's wrong with the Russian language translation of the script I use. Or try a different browser, or different language encoding setting.

[ualinker]

Thanks, that helped!