I don't see much info on this. I want a good quality portable music player that can play up to the 196 files. Up to the £200 mark I hope. I the Fiio X3 is the current favourite but there must be others out there. I don't want to waste money on some irritating and hard to use item.

I have an HTC ONE phone so something with better sound than that hopefully. I don't think phones are designed for music use so that is why I am after a seperate player.

Thanks

I thought the HTC one had good sound due to the beats technology???

Presume you mean for use with headphones?

The X3 rates pretty well.

Others worth a look are a few from the Cowon range (X9, i10 etc). Sound quality has always been Cowon's selling point. I still use my A2 which I've had for years and it still sounds great. Supports FLAC etc.

Also noticed a couple of people mentioning the iBasso DX50 but I can't say I know anything about those ....

Although, I'm not convinced it's worth having alongside an HTC One? With a decent set of cans, it should sound good enough no?

I'm curious, why the number 196? I have never tried to queue that many but is that a common limitation?

lol

I wasn't sure what they meant by this at all. (Bitrate? Number of files? Playlist size? No idea ....) So I just ignored it.

From what I could gather, they just wanted something with high quality DAC. And to be fair, with decent headphones, most phones won't be far behind the dedicated players any more in terms of audio quality.

Thanks for the input - and sorry for the ambiguity, I was pushed for time. I meant 192 as in kHz and as a friend is in a band he uses this on his recorder. It would be good to hear the performances at native rather than downsampled I thought.

I see that it is possible to connect a Fiio E17 to my HTC - would that garner any worthwhile improvements? I haven't used the HTC as an audio player much so I dont know how things stand to be honest.

I'm no audiophile but this may help you.

http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one-review-912p7.php

I hope you can decipher it!

Think you answered your own question!

Without knowing what the quality of the output from the HTC One is like (which I don't), its impossible to say.

Having an inline secondary micro-amp between device and headphones seems like a bit of a faff to me. The original output would have to be pretty terrible before I even considered it.

First port of call, as usual, would be to replace the supplied headphones (which are almost always rubbish, although, again, I have no idea in the case of the HTC One) with some decent ones.

Have you read the page that I have cited in my above post? It has a section which gives detail on audio quality.

More to the point, 192kHz is only of any use in the mastering environment.

From the production perspective, and usage on a phone in a public environment you barely even need 44.1kHz @ 16 bits.

Sadly devices like the Fiio are of virtually zero benefit on a mobile.

To be honest I am suprised that this topic is not asked more often. Downloading is what som many people are doing yet how to listen to the downloads well is an unclear point.

I have been using my (modified) Sony D6C with a pair of JVC on-ear headphones and compared to that things like the I-Pod and mobile phones just sound empty. The D6C, when a bass heavy track starts, almost feels like the bass is vibrating the whole body - even at low levels - yet the treble is clear and has focus. Other devices just sound 'OK'. Well I got the Fiio X3 and gave it a try. It is better than the phone and most other portable players I have tried but still not quite as good as the D6C.

Its not just me - I have done some blind listening tests on friends and the D6C always wins.