o86's Audio Reviews - An introduction to better quality digital music

Grado SR60i. You want these.

Good day, friends. This article kicks off a little series I’ve been planning for a while – the discussion and brief review of a few audio accessories I use. While not technically Android-specific, I do use these with my assorted Android devices, and thus considered it worthwhile to blither on about them a bit. Thanks in no small part to Supercurio’s amazing Voodoo Sound drivers for a lucky few phones and tablets, Android users are becoming increasingly concerned about audio quality, especially when playing music. The Wolfson audio chips in the original Galaxy S line set the bar for Android, and Voodoo sound took them to another level – they set the bar for mobile phones in general, over and above anything else on the market, iPhones included. With more interest in audio comes more scope for content like this, so here we are now.

I intend to cover three pieces of my own equipment –the little Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5 In-Ear Monitors (Or ‘earphones’, if you’re so inclined. This model has since been rebadged as the Ultimate Ears 600), the large Grado SR-60i headphones, and my wee FiiO E5 headphone amplifier. These represent on-the-go listening, home listening, and an optional add-on, respectively. To cap things off, fellow editor Neets has been kind enough to lend me her Koss PortaPros, which are somewhere inbetween the Ultimate Ears and the Grados in terms of size and portability.

We’ll start with some background on the industry and my experiences with portable audio in this instalment, and then ease into the actual review components. Read on after the jump, good people.

Koss PortaPro - Choc-full of retro charm.

While reading this series, one must bear in mind that I’m not an audiophile, here, merely an enthusiast, and a relatively recent convert at that. Times were (Ten years ago, mind you) I was content to listen to crappy <128k MP3s burned to crappy CDs in a crappy CD Walkman with crappy headphones. Now I listen almost exclusively to 320k MP3s, FLACs, actual CDs in one of my home sound systems (Of which I have two), and occasionally vinyl. I don’t spend thousands on studio reference-quality equipment, but then, I don’t think my hearing is quite good enough to bother with that (yet!).

Savvy readers may well ask why I'd use a phone for portable music at all, when greater quality can be had with dedicated devices. While I can't disagree, it's my desire for technological convergence that forces my hand. A dedicated digital camera, GPS unit, and yes, mobile phone are all likely to be better than the all-in-one solutions I favour, but I just don't want to carry a stack of different devices when I can use a single device that performs all of the above and more to an acceptable level.

I love music, and it’s an important part of my life, so although I was only wowed by the original Galaxy S and Voodoo Sound last year, I’d already graduated to listening to real CDs and ripping them to better quality MP3s by that point. I was conscious of the need to listen to the music I loved in the best way I could – I owed this both to myself, and to the artists who’d created the music I loved.

Now, as much disdain as I have for Dr. Dre’s Beats line of headphones – which is considerably more fashion-focused than audio-focused, as they’re ‘tuned by ear’ rather than to real mechanical precision (And by the accounts of those whose opinions I put weight in, HTC’s investment in Beats hasn’t translated to any increase in the sound quality of their phones) – Dre recognised this same issue, and started the line. Or so the spiel goes, anyway, outside of wanting to make mo’ money. Artists who care and producers with talent spend a long time mixing albums to perfection, and the majority of consumers listen to them through terrible headphones and tinny laptop speakers (Read more about the origins of Beats here if you're so inclined). This should not be. Rise up, music lovers, and buy something better than the headphones your OEM of choice chucked into the box to ‘add value’. Trust me on this one, the first place costs are cut in this cut-throat high-end smartphone market is in the bundled accessories.

FiiO E5 headphone amp. Pocket-sized punch.

Prior to getting onto this quality audio kick, I was motivated primarily by convenience. For me, convenience translated into Bluetooth headsets – no wires to get in the way, and handy music controls on the side. I still enjoy them for cycling and exercising, but have gone for a more analogue, wired route in search of better audio quality. Bluetooth is a great technology, to be sure, yet its audio compression leaves something to be desired. While it may get there in the future (Indeed, HTC’s new range reportedly feature lossless Bluetooth streaming. I’ll believe it when I hear it), wired is currently the only way to go if you really care about sound.

After Voodoo Sound hit the scene and I realised what I was missing out on, I quickly moved to grab my first pair of In-Ear Monitors, or IEMs – they’re those 'earphones' with the little rubber bits that go inside your ears rather than sitting on the outside, if you’re not familiar with the term. Sennheiser’s CX-400 IIs were an excellent starting point, and I do recommend them. Unfortunately for me, the right channel in mine died within six months of my owning them, and I couldn’t get them repaired. Swiftly moved on to the Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5s, then branched out into the Grados and beyond, including the FiiO E5 portable headphone amp. Next on my wantlist is a USB DAC – or Digital-To-Analogue convertor. Think of those as external sound cards, they’re very nice pieces of hardware. Unfortunately, as our editor in chief has recently mentioned, Android does not currently support USB DACs, whereas iOS does – if you’re so inclined, do star this as an issue here to help bring it to the mighty Google’s attention.

Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5/Ultimate Ears 600. My daily drivers.

So, that’s where I am now. Great music deserves to be listened to in great quality. I hope you all agree – and I hope my little reviews will help in that department. Stay tuned for the first real instalment coming soon to the same Bat-Channel. And remember, friends don’t let friends listen to 128k MP3s.