aashish351
Well-Known Member
Folks!
A lot of us at some point, have tried our best to improve the portable Hi-Fi experience by investing into gear like headphone amp, DAC, iPhone etc. A similar desire has led me too through a few experiments in the past. This review is about the latest such experiment which has truly made my portable Hi-Fi life much better.
Before I get into the latest experiment, a little bit more about the past endeavours would not be out of context here. My first setup was (no points for guessing) an iPod Classic 30 GB, which was intended more towards revolutionizing music listening convenience rather than Hi-Fi. For the 3 4 years that followed, a few different budget & mid-end headphone purchases were enough to keep the Hi-Fi interests satisfied!
With a job function demanding extensive traveling, an upgrade to the Portable-Hi-Fi was immediately on the cards. For someone who loathes traveling heavy, carrying multiple gadgets, an iPhone seemed like the perfect hybrid upgrade to take care of both portable applications communication and music, but, my absolute inability to develop a liking towards the iOS & Mac OSX, saw an immediate move back to Blackberry and along with it, the dilemma of carrying multiple devices again.
Since multiple devices were inevitable and my trusted iPod Classic was just not able to match the improved appreciation for High Fidelity, the FiiO E7 USB DAC & Headphone Amplifier was an ideal candidate. With newly surfaced shop abroad possibilities, the FiiO was delivered in a weeks time without a hassle. Not that my Sony Vaio VGN-Z58GG sounded bad at all with its Realtek HD 24/96 capable sound card, the 24/48 capable FiiO brought about considerable improvements both in terms of sound quality and power. My Sennheiser PX-100s, CX-300s, CX-500s, Bose IEs, Shure E2Cs were all producing sounds, I did not hear from them earlier. Combined with the long battery backup and the L3 iPod Line Out accessory, the iPod-FiiO paring brought a whole new meaning to portable music listening experience. Happy Days!
But, once a light traveller, always a light traveller! Yes, it was not long before the perseverance of carrying a cell phone, an iPod, a headphone amp, a laptop bag, hanging earphones, boarding pass, wallet, a copy of What Hi-Fi and still managing to look comfortable & suave in the boarding lounge began to dwindle. There has to be an all-in-one mobile device designed for the audiophile!
Someone did think about it at Samsung and included the Wolfson WM8996 chip in the Galaxy S and later in the Google Nexus S but for some reason, locked its full usage potential in the software. Another such thinker researched and found out the way to unlock the potential of the chip by gaining root access of the android phone and then building an app to use the Wolfson Chip to its fullest. Yes, this app is called Voodoo Sound by Supercurio. However, then for some reason, Wolfson was replaced with Yamaha and then Texas Instruments chips not capable of the Wolfsons fine performance and Voodoo Sound was not developed for the latest Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Nexus.
After a lot searching and going through ebay deals for used Nexus S (i9020 & i9023), I found a Mumbai based ebay seller trust.deals selling a sealed box Nexus S i9023 at the original price of Rs.22300/- for a discontinued model! A small price to pay for the experiment that could change the portable hi-fi experience for ever! Immediately ordered and got it delivered in 3 days.
The Samsung Google Nexus S is a decent looking phone with 4 inches of multi-touch capable curved Super LCD screen. It came pre-loaded with the latest Ice-cream Sandwich 4.04, but the best part and biggest differentiator with the Galaxy S is its upgradability. While Samsung may not make upgrades for Galaxy S after some time, Google Nexus phones will always be upgradable with newer OS versions. Next step, Rooting and installing Superuser app. Took a while with reading through various forums and a few failed attempts, but it finally worked. Then came the last and final step, installing the Voodoo Sound app. There are two versions, Voodoo Sound & Voodoo Sound Plus, the latter obviously was a paid version but a meagre Rs.190/-and definitely worth it, unless you are interested in taking more time in finding the right OS Kernel after the rooting process on which the app will work seamlessly. The plus version removes that drawback. Mine started working on the kernel installed by default in the rooting process. Actually, I didnt even care to find out which Kernel it is.
Unbelievable! Is that a cell phone I am listening to? Where is all this power coming from? What! Not much affect to battery power? This was my real unexaggerated reaction! FLAC files in true 16/44.1 lossless format sounded actually as good as CD through the Sony BDP-S470, in fact, better because there was an annoying extra sibilance in the Sony Blu-ray player that was completely gone but without any loss of detail. The Wolfson DAC in the Nexus S is detailed and warm. A perfect combination! There seems to be at least a 30% increase in un-distorted power to headphones which was making the Klipsch S4i, Sennheiser CX-500, and even the larger Sennheiser HD202 sound much better than through my laptop, iPod, even an iphone! The iPhone came close in detail, but could not match the excellent power of the modded Nexus S. You dont need a headphone amplifier / DAC after this, at least in the budget to mid-end category. A high end HPA may still make some improvements, but will not be able to beat this thing in the portability to sound quality ratio!
As soon as you run the app for the fist time, you are required to setup the initial preferences. The initial hardware analog volume levels and maximum volume levels can be setup separately. The setting kicks-in as soon as headphones are connected, and rolls back as soon as they are removed. There is Bass Boost setting, which I kept unchecked, a mono downmix again unchecked, option to tune phone speaker to music again unchecked (i don't care about music through the phone speaker). It also improves A to D while recording and those settings are separate. There is an Anti-jitter for improving sound quality. There is also 128x oversampling setting for both DAC and ADC operations. And the best of all, a DAC direct option which bypasses analog channel mixer for better SNR and lowest distortion. Despite all the features Supercurio has built into the app, he also suggests that this setting will offer the best sound quality. And, that's what I use for my listening also.
On the down side, there is no support for 24/96 in the DAC, so high-res files need to be down converted. Or there could be a music playing app that could do that in the phone itself. The Sound app works on the hardware layer in the background of any app.
The convenience of the favourite playlist in lossless FLAC format synced with the PC is so much that, now I use this as my primary source in the casual listening sessions in the morning on the Exposure + Dali and over the headphones in the night. Anyone who wants a combination of high fidelity sound and mobile device must give this a shot! Even iPhone die-hards!
Cheers!
A lot of us at some point, have tried our best to improve the portable Hi-Fi experience by investing into gear like headphone amp, DAC, iPhone etc. A similar desire has led me too through a few experiments in the past. This review is about the latest such experiment which has truly made my portable Hi-Fi life much better.
Before I get into the latest experiment, a little bit more about the past endeavours would not be out of context here. My first setup was (no points for guessing) an iPod Classic 30 GB, which was intended more towards revolutionizing music listening convenience rather than Hi-Fi. For the 3 4 years that followed, a few different budget & mid-end headphone purchases were enough to keep the Hi-Fi interests satisfied!
With a job function demanding extensive traveling, an upgrade to the Portable-Hi-Fi was immediately on the cards. For someone who loathes traveling heavy, carrying multiple gadgets, an iPhone seemed like the perfect hybrid upgrade to take care of both portable applications communication and music, but, my absolute inability to develop a liking towards the iOS & Mac OSX, saw an immediate move back to Blackberry and along with it, the dilemma of carrying multiple devices again.
Since multiple devices were inevitable and my trusted iPod Classic was just not able to match the improved appreciation for High Fidelity, the FiiO E7 USB DAC & Headphone Amplifier was an ideal candidate. With newly surfaced shop abroad possibilities, the FiiO was delivered in a weeks time without a hassle. Not that my Sony Vaio VGN-Z58GG sounded bad at all with its Realtek HD 24/96 capable sound card, the 24/48 capable FiiO brought about considerable improvements both in terms of sound quality and power. My Sennheiser PX-100s, CX-300s, CX-500s, Bose IEs, Shure E2Cs were all producing sounds, I did not hear from them earlier. Combined with the long battery backup and the L3 iPod Line Out accessory, the iPod-FiiO paring brought a whole new meaning to portable music listening experience. Happy Days!
But, once a light traveller, always a light traveller! Yes, it was not long before the perseverance of carrying a cell phone, an iPod, a headphone amp, a laptop bag, hanging earphones, boarding pass, wallet, a copy of What Hi-Fi and still managing to look comfortable & suave in the boarding lounge began to dwindle. There has to be an all-in-one mobile device designed for the audiophile!
Someone did think about it at Samsung and included the Wolfson WM8996 chip in the Galaxy S and later in the Google Nexus S but for some reason, locked its full usage potential in the software. Another such thinker researched and found out the way to unlock the potential of the chip by gaining root access of the android phone and then building an app to use the Wolfson Chip to its fullest. Yes, this app is called Voodoo Sound by Supercurio. However, then for some reason, Wolfson was replaced with Yamaha and then Texas Instruments chips not capable of the Wolfsons fine performance and Voodoo Sound was not developed for the latest Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Nexus.
After a lot searching and going through ebay deals for used Nexus S (i9020 & i9023), I found a Mumbai based ebay seller trust.deals selling a sealed box Nexus S i9023 at the original price of Rs.22300/- for a discontinued model! A small price to pay for the experiment that could change the portable hi-fi experience for ever! Immediately ordered and got it delivered in 3 days.
The Samsung Google Nexus S is a decent looking phone with 4 inches of multi-touch capable curved Super LCD screen. It came pre-loaded with the latest Ice-cream Sandwich 4.04, but the best part and biggest differentiator with the Galaxy S is its upgradability. While Samsung may not make upgrades for Galaxy S after some time, Google Nexus phones will always be upgradable with newer OS versions. Next step, Rooting and installing Superuser app. Took a while with reading through various forums and a few failed attempts, but it finally worked. Then came the last and final step, installing the Voodoo Sound app. There are two versions, Voodoo Sound & Voodoo Sound Plus, the latter obviously was a paid version but a meagre Rs.190/-and definitely worth it, unless you are interested in taking more time in finding the right OS Kernel after the rooting process on which the app will work seamlessly. The plus version removes that drawback. Mine started working on the kernel installed by default in the rooting process. Actually, I didnt even care to find out which Kernel it is.
Unbelievable! Is that a cell phone I am listening to? Where is all this power coming from? What! Not much affect to battery power? This was my real unexaggerated reaction! FLAC files in true 16/44.1 lossless format sounded actually as good as CD through the Sony BDP-S470, in fact, better because there was an annoying extra sibilance in the Sony Blu-ray player that was completely gone but without any loss of detail. The Wolfson DAC in the Nexus S is detailed and warm. A perfect combination! There seems to be at least a 30% increase in un-distorted power to headphones which was making the Klipsch S4i, Sennheiser CX-500, and even the larger Sennheiser HD202 sound much better than through my laptop, iPod, even an iphone! The iPhone came close in detail, but could not match the excellent power of the modded Nexus S. You dont need a headphone amplifier / DAC after this, at least in the budget to mid-end category. A high end HPA may still make some improvements, but will not be able to beat this thing in the portability to sound quality ratio!
As soon as you run the app for the fist time, you are required to setup the initial preferences. The initial hardware analog volume levels and maximum volume levels can be setup separately. The setting kicks-in as soon as headphones are connected, and rolls back as soon as they are removed. There is Bass Boost setting, which I kept unchecked, a mono downmix again unchecked, option to tune phone speaker to music again unchecked (i don't care about music through the phone speaker). It also improves A to D while recording and those settings are separate. There is an Anti-jitter for improving sound quality. There is also 128x oversampling setting for both DAC and ADC operations. And the best of all, a DAC direct option which bypasses analog channel mixer for better SNR and lowest distortion. Despite all the features Supercurio has built into the app, he also suggests that this setting will offer the best sound quality. And, that's what I use for my listening also.
On the down side, there is no support for 24/96 in the DAC, so high-res files need to be down converted. Or there could be a music playing app that could do that in the phone itself. The Sound app works on the hardware layer in the background of any app.
The convenience of the favourite playlist in lossless FLAC format synced with the PC is so much that, now I use this as my primary source in the casual listening sessions in the morning on the Exposure + Dali and over the headphones in the night. Anyone who wants a combination of high fidelity sound and mobile device must give this a shot! Even iPhone die-hards!
Cheers!
