Now I don't know if I would consider myself an audiophile, I'm just a student and I have to budget even my food money. But when I buy new headphones, I put months of research on them and pay hundreds of dollars. I also make sure my albums are ripped bit for bit from the best available pressing/recording. Despite the amount of abuse I put my poor ears through (around eight hours of headphone use per day), my hearing still tests above average.
I am aware that it's possible that it's just a placebo effect, and if I am to believe conventional internet wisdom then it really is, but I swear that there is a profound difference between lossy files and lossless files. It's really like night and day. I do know that "CD quality" is probably arbitrary and the research that went into choosing it may well now be proven wrong (or not, I don't know anything about it), but it's just a huge amount of difference.
Now before I continue I should point out that I haven't been using an amp, I just use the headphone jack on my iDevices and Macs. I definitely feel the lack of power, but I've never owned an amp because I listen to music just as much on the go, and I don't trust portable ones because they are so expensive and I can't be bothered researching yet another thing. I also know that the DAC isn't great on the devices I have been using. I've been forever trying to solve the problem of a sort of "hissing" sound which I eventually put down to the devices themselves, (after having no problem with friends amps using an iPod dock).
So you may have to forgive me when I tell you that I also found a noticeable improvement from CD quality to 24bit 96khz music files (most of them anyway, a lot of 24 vinyl rips very accurately capture every nuance of the needle on the vinyl, which is actually pretty cool I think, or just recordings which were mastered or remastered poorly). But generally these higher quality files just sound more vibrant, it's like a slap in the face. I can turn my device up to max ear bleeding volume with these files and it still sounds perfectly clear and amazing, whereas most CDs would sound "too loud" or distorted. It may very well be that only the best engineered music gets released in 24 bit, so it's not the 24 bit that's impressing me, it's the masterful audio engineering in that first place that someone thought warranted a higher quality release. But I doubt it, I have many of the same albums and they do sound different (like the 24 bit 2009 remastered stereo Beatles albums). And yes, I am aware that iDevices won't actually playback 24bit at sample rate of 96khz, I've been converting them to 48Khz for on the go.
And it could just be that it is different, but not necessarily better. Of course it should be different, the file size for these albums is absolutely massive and it really was engineered and is being output at those specifications, but just because I like the different version better, that doesn't mean that it is better. The difference just sounds better to me.
And lossy recordings really do sound like arse on decent headphones. Headache inducing, like the microphone was too close to the instruments and the singers mouth.
So, long story short, is this product worth it? I don't know, I have never used a portable amp, so I wouldn't have a clue. But I do know that if you want to deliver music bit for bit to your amp from your iDevice, then Apple's 30-pin connector is the best and only way to do it. The claims of transporting the music bit for bit over the 30-pin connector are not only believable, the capability of the connector to do this is common knowledge. So does the device itself do what it claims? Like I said, I don't have a clue. It's also USB compatible, so it might be worth looking into for using on my computer too, wonder what it could do for video games. I wonder just how big it is and how much of a drain it would be on an iPhones batter. It's max sampling rate is 48khz apparently, and input from USB is only from iDevices, now that I look at the listed specs. What a waste, such an expensive device and not making it compatible with notebook computers.
every time people do the tests, NOBODY can tell the difference because most of the sound deleted cannot be heard by our human ears.
