Sana'a
Quoted from bangerjay:Got mine last week, I swear it sounds way better than the iPod
About 50x better than the iPod.
It's like a blanket got lifted from the sound.
(Topic ID: 180751)
Future Islands new disc is mega excellent in phones, but if there ever was a band that needs to be viewed live...
Trust me, it's worth checking out:
http://www.metatube.com/es/videos/337476/Jimmy-Fallon-Future-Islands-Ran/
1 week later
Minneapolis, MN
Is there a good app out there that will automatically sync your PC's music library (Win 10) across multiple SD cards on this Pioneer DAP?
My search has turned up nothing. I can use something like Mediamonkey to synch to each card for separate libraries, though that appears to be a headache and a half and just as useful as dragging and dropping.
I love my Fiio X5 2nd gen - "Born for Music and Happy!". I'm using a pair of 128GB uSD cards with it. I put the compilations (Various Artists) on one card, and my "steady diet" albums on the other one.
Looks like I'm already behind the tech curve, as the 3g version is out now...
I picked one of these up awhile back, diggin it!
I started using https://onlinestreamconverter.com/ to grab songs from Youtube. I know the audiophiles will say how crap it can be. However, they have a stream converter where you can pick what to download so I was grabbing the higher res audio files. Seems to be ok for now. Needs id3 tagging though somehow and it'd be sweet
Quoted from jrivelli:I picked one of these up awhile back, diggin it!
I started using https://onlinestreamconverter.com/ to grab songs from Youtube. I know the audiophiles will say how crap it can be.
That's true, and I'd also suggest trying to support the artist if you can afford to. But if it's good enough for you, why not?
I used to buy a lot of CDs and rip to FLAC. This little DAP got me back into buying music, but I'm not too keen on having a stack of CDs laying around. I've been buying a lot from Bandcamp.com - Between 85%-90% of the sale goes to the artist (if self-published) or the label, and you can download in FLAC. Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise with a 24-bit/96KHZ download on those FLAC files.
If you're curious on youtube's audio quality, here's a quick write-up: https://www.h3xed.com/web-and-internet/youtube-audio-quality-bitrate-240p-360p-480p-720p-1080p
Short version - there isn't high-resolution or high-bitrate music on youtube.
Quoted from roffels:That's true, and I'd also suggest trying to support the artist if you can afford to. But if it's good enough for you, why not?
I used to buy a lot of CDs and rip to FLAC. This little DAP got me back into buying music, but I'm not too keen on having a stack of CDs laying around. I've been buying a lot from Bandcamp.com - Between 85%-90% of the sale goes to the artist (if self-published) or the label, and you can download in FLAC. Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise with a 24-bit/96KHZ download on those FLAC files.
I get a lot of random one off songs that don't have albums or songs to download. I have plenty of ripped cds as well that are on this thing. YouTube is great for for such random stuff
Sometimes Youtube is the ONLY remaining source of a song.
Like the **good** version of The Swingers "One Good Reason".
It's not on iTunes, it's not on "the best of", and although it's in the movie Starstruck, a different version is on the soundtrack.
Quoted from vid1900:If you want a sampling of what 24/192 tracks are available:
http://www.nzbindex.nl/search/?q=hdtracks
Thanks. My usenet tracker isn't so good with music and I only had limited results.
Quoted from vid1900:Sometimes Youtube is the ONLY remaining source of a song.
Like the **good** version of The Swingers "One Good Reason".
It's not on iTunes, it's not on "the best of", and although it's in the movie Starstruck, a different version is on the soundtrack.
» YouTube video
That's pretty frustrating. I've been pretty tied into ways of finding music, thankfully my taste or desire for obscurity hasn't veered onto the unobtainable. Hell, I recently found AIFF uncompressed files of an album with only one known copy known to exist - had to dig through some sites before finding it, but there it was. The internet is a miracle.
1 month later
Anyone who ever wanted a pair of ultimate reference headphones, the Sennheiser HD650 are on Massdrop for $199 free ship !!!!!
These are EVERY audiophile reviewer, and every recording studio's reference set of cans.
These are the best $500 headphones in the world, let alone the best $199 phones.
There are cans with more bass, there are cans with more wood, but if you want THE standard, its the HD650
Still made in Ireland
Slow shipping, but you save some serious cash...and this batch is black(midnight blue?) instead of grey.
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-sennheiser-hd6xx?mode=guest_open
Today Tidal has the FLAC download of Jay-Z's new album 4:44 for free:
http://tidal.com/store/my/purchases?token=6c526eae-4219-45a8-8a1b-229f6969aa20
Password is: SPRINT
No Tidal account needed, just put in an email address, they don't confirm it.
No crazy club-banger songs like 99problems, just soulful/negrolovejams loops on this disc
3 weeks later
Quoted from pinster68:I am a patient man ... but 6 months kills it, regardless of the excuse.
Cancel and get them at Adorama for $320 - that's a historic low price, and you can have them Tuesday.
3 weeks later
Best Buy has 256 EVO+ cards on sale for $89.99 (~$180 on Amazon)
That's a ripping deal for a card with a super fast write speed.
So if you were waiting for a price drop on memory to max out your player, this might be a good time.
Hopefully a giant price drop like this means that the 512gb and 1TB are ramping up for mass production (I really want that 2tb MicroSD card that Nintendo showed at the Switch unveiling)
1 month later
3 weeks later
400gb MicroSD cards ship tomorrow.
I was hoping for the next jump to be to 512gb, but they are just stringing us along....
3 months later
Integral is finally shipping their 512gb microsd cards.
They actually beat Sandisk to the market.
Hopefully this will force Samsung and Sandisk to get off their asses and release larger cards that they have been showing for over a year....every phone records 4k video these days.
I saw that yesterday and looks like it hits next month.
It will be a while before cards of that size drop to a more reasonable price and in the meantime I'm hoping it helps push smaller card prices down so I can upgrade the memory on several devices at once.
Neil Young has his entire catalog of full master quality recordings all up for free today:
https://www.neilyoungarchives.com/
They want people to stress test the site - make sure you have a fast internet connection, the bandwidth is huge......
2 weeks later
Dug my old original Zune 30 out of a storage box this weekend. Still works and has all my music from 2007 on it. It's a time capsule! Had photos and video from that time too.
I must say, I still love the menu system of the Zune. Was so much better than the iPod, and is much better than my FiiO. Just a shame they completely killed it. Tried to sync it to my computer. Downloaded the latest Zune sync software. It sees the Zune, but won't let me see or sync any music on it. So I guess it will be stuck in the year 2007.
I've been avoiding this thread as I like to buy pawn shop iPods, but my hatred for Apple is boiling over. Looks like everybody loves this thing, but I have a couple questions...
So I will have to re-rip 60gb of music?
What about the albums bought off of iTunes? I'm loving the idea of the FLAC 1-1 zero compression and if I can rid myself of iShit that'd be the bee's knees, but what if that's the only place to buy an album?
This seems like a lot of work. Is the sound quality that much better?
Thanks in advance.
Quoted from woody24:Dug my old original Zune 30 out of a storage box this weekend. Still works and has all my music from 2007 on it. It's a time capsule! Had photos and video from that time too.
I must say, I still love the menu system of the Zune. Was so much better than the iPod, and is much better than my FiiO. Just a shame they completely killed it. Tried to sync it to my computer. Downloaded the latest Zune sync software. It sees the Zune, but won't let me see or sync any music on it. So I guess it will be stuck in the year 2007.
Something wrong there. I still have and use 2 old Zune's - 1 a 30gb and the other I upgraded to a much larger hard drive (don't remember the size). I use them and the Zune software on all of my P.C.'s without a problem.
Quoted from FrankJ:Something wrong there. I still have and use 2 old Zune's - 1 a 30gb and the other I upgraded to a much larger hard drive (don't remember the size). I use them and the Zune software on all of my P.C.'s without a problem.
Yeah, not sure what's going on. It says it's a guest device and to be able to sync, I had to do something to the sync something. I click on what it says, and then it brings up an error.
Thought that maybe the device needs to be reformatted, but can't even figure out how to do that.
Quoted from Gryszzz:So I will have to re-rip 60gb of music?
Nope. Just use iExplorer or Houdini and copy all your songs off your iPods to your HD.
If you already own the physical CDs, you download the FLACs or MP3s already ripped here guilt free:
Quoted from Gryszzz:What about the albums bought off of iTunes?
Download them in the highest grade format (Apple Lossless?), then rip them to your HD.
Quoted from Gryszzz:I'm loving the idea of the FLAC 1-1 zero compression and if I can rid myself of iShit that'd be the bee's knees, but what if that's the only place to buy an album?
You can buy albums from Amazon, Google Play, Tidal, Murfie.....
Quoted from Gryszzz:This seems like a lot of work. Is the sound quality that much better?
It seems like work, but once you enjoy the simplicity of simply dropping music folders on a microSD card, you will NEVER even think of going back to Apple - waiting for iTunes up update, waiting for it to sync to the ipod, waiting for it to install another version of Quicktime.......
Or having ALL your albums with you at all times.
If you get two 512gig cards (the largest out right now), do you think you can fill them?
Even if you had all FLAC and no Mp3s, you probably have room for 4000 albums.
...and yes, the sound quality is that good.
Super Woody....I'm gonna have to re-rip 500 cds with this thing aren't I? To get rid of iTunes it might just be worth it. But would I really be getting rid of it since it's the current go-to for album purchases?
Kinda really wanting this thing.
Quoted from Gryszzz:I'm gonna have to re-rip 500 cds with this thing aren't I?
You can find probably 80% of your CDs already ripped to FLACs @ nzbindex.com
Even if you had to physically rip 500 CDs, here's how I did 2500 of them - fast (before nzbindex was around):
https://www.stereophile.com/content/audiophile-music-server-project
Yeah I saw this pic (I actually read the whole thread) but didn't understand how this would work. This Stereophile thread explains it all perfectly. THANKS MAN!
Quoted from Gryszzz:I've been avoiding this thread as I like to buy pawn shop iPods, but my hatred for Apple is boiling over. Looks like everybody loves this thing, but I have a couple questions...
So I will have to re-rip 60gb of music?
What about the albums bought off of iTunes? I'm loving the idea of the FLAC 1-1 zero compression and if I can rid myself of iShit that'd be the bee's knees, but what if that's the only place to buy an album?
This seems like a lot of work. Is the sound quality that much better?
Thanks in advance.
I have been putting off buying this darn thing because I have many other needs and an iPod that is about to get played.
I know I want this. I've been avoiding the thread because I still haven't bought it. I intend to.
Yeah me too Mike.
So I can transfer my iTunes library to the XDP, but if they're not FLAC files then the audio will be downgraded, right? So to get the best possible audio quality, I would need to re-rip them all to flac? I think most of my library is wav or mp3. Just need to buy a motherboard for quick rips? One other thing I didn't understand is when you were talking about Windows stepping on the sound. Since my library is on my pc, how can this be avoided at all? Sorry for all the questions man, I just wanna do this right. Sounds like the best "iPod" option/alternative to Apple and their bullshit.
Quoted from Gryszzz:So I can transfer my iTunes library to the XDP, but if they're not FLAC files then the audio will be downgraded, right?
It wont be downgraded any worse than it is now , but FLAC would be even better (although Apple Lossless will be the same as FLAC).
Quoted from Gryszzz:I think most of my library is wav or mp3.
WAVs are great, so those you can leave alone (or shrink them 1/2 size with FLAC).
MP3 will sound a little better, because the player is better, but I'd download or re-rip replace the MP3s 'cuz they are crap.
Quoted from Gryszzz:One other thing I didn't understand is when you were talking about Windows stepping on the sound. Since my library is on my pc, how can this be avoided at all?
Windows re-encodes on the fly and messes up all audio files when you play them on the desktop.
Playing files through the XDP avoids Windows, so you will be 100% safe.
Quoted from FrankJ:Something wrong there. I still have and use 2 old Zune's - 1 a 30gb and the other I upgraded to a much larger hard drive (don't remember the size). I use them and the Zune software on all of my P.C.'s without a problem.
Figured it out. I think my firmware was too out of date on the device. I couldn't update the firmware because the Microsoft servers are down. Found a video on Youtube that got me updated. I can see and add my music now!
Quoted from woody24:Figured it out. I think my firmware was too out of date on the device. I couldn't update the firmware because the Microsoft servers are down. Found a video on Youtube that got me updated. I can see and add my music now!
Same thing I had to do when I installed the larger hard drive. Welcome back!
2 weeks later
Lately I've been super into music. Hunting down CD's at used music stores and even going to the library to see what they've got.
Was looking on Amazon to see what other kind of hi-res players are out there, and now I want to really hear how this one sounds. https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1z
I'm going to guess that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference from my $100 fiiO to this $3200 one.
I'm glad I found this thread so I could share what I think is a great purchase for the price. I purchased this receiver Yamaha RX-V681 from Amazon for $350 and it is really nice. It is last years model and the new version is $600. It works so well I was actually thinking about buying another one, but came to my senses that I have absolutely nowhere to put it. If someone is looking for a new receiver I highly recommend this one.
https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-RX-V681BL-7-2-Channel-MusicCast-Bluetooth/dp/B01BY7YUKI
Here's my review I wrote on Amazon:
I bought this unit to replace a cheaper Pioneer receiver that I had for about 8 years or so. The main reason to upgrade was for the bluetooth and wifi capabilities. Once I hooked it up (to the same Klipsch HD500 as I was using), this unit blew my mind with how much better the sound is and how user friendly it is. Pandora is right on the receiver so I don't have to run it through my phone, but you can if you want too. The receiver controller app on the phone works great and is extremely convenient. Possibly one of my favorite features is I can run all of my electronics (Playstation, Cable, Firestick) through the receiver whether the receiver is on or not. This way I can easily change my input just by pressing the button on the remote, again whether the receiver is on or off. This makes it extremely easy to switch from surround sound with the receiver to normal sound from the television. If I knew how much of an improvement this would make I would have purchased it a long time ago. Price was excellent and well worth it.
2 months later
The only listed changes were:
What's New
- Added Replay Gain function
- Added Real time volume normalizer function
- "Album artist" tab added to sort function
- Added USB / OTG output buffer setting
It would be nice to have a more detailed release note (I looked around a bit on the Onkyo/Pioneer site and didn't see one) that lists the inevitable bug fixes that are included but it is nice they are at least putting some effort into maintaining it
Quoted from Svengo:It would be nice to have a more detailed release note (I looked around a bit on the Onkyo/Pioneer site and didn't see one) that lists the inevitable bug fixes that are included but it is nice they are at least putting some effort into maintaining it
I guess we are lucky to be getting anything with Pioneer's owner, Gibson, in bankruptcy.....
I use the XDP every day and still totally love it.
Quoted from vid1900:I guess we are lucky to be getting anything with Pioneer's owner, Gibson, in bankruptcy.....
I use the XDP every day and still totally love it.
I think Gibson Brands has about 16% of Pioneer consumer electronics with Onkyo at around 26% which is the largest chunk. Since I think Gibson's aim is to drop all of the consumer electronics stuff and focus on the musical instrument related portion (which may be their best bet to come out in a decent position on the other side of a bankruptcy) my guess is that 16% gets sold off to Onkyo or split between them and a few others. That would be my preference since some of the stuff that Onkyo has put out lately that it didn't traditionally focus on like headphones were just rebrands of things put out under the Gibson label which frankly kinda sucked quality-wise.
Adorama has 400gb cards on sale today for $159 (that's like $100 off)
So if you are ready to take your player up to 832gb of storage for cheap, there you go.
(I remember when 100gb harddrives were $250, it's crazy to think that we have 400gb of ram smaller than a postage stamp...)
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