Originally Posted by mooghead:
“I found a very interesting web 'quiz' recently which played sound clips at various levels of compression and its ridiculous how little difference their is (though I admit I was listening through laptop speakers and not through a hi fi or my decent in ear headphones), I will see if I can find it and post the link. I think a lot of it is a placebo effect to be honest. People get told that vinyl is 'warmer' or 'better' and just agree for the sake of it.”
You can't seriously expect to hear a difference on laptop spkrs, nor through a pair of normal h/phones.
Originally Posted by
mooghead:
“http://www.npr.org/sections/therecor...-audio-quality
Don't say I don't do nowt for you x”
But this sort of test exactly illustrates OP's question. You link to a web site that I look at on my iPad. I can listen to each sample through the inbuilt spkr which proves absolutely nothing, or I can play through the iPad's on-board DAC which has deconstructed the files and passed them through its lousy amp into my quite good phones. Or I can bluetooth it from the iPad through the streamer into my hifi, which is still 4 steps (DAC, pre-amp, bt, streamer) to get it to the hi-fi. I could go through the hassle of saving each file locally and feeding it straight into the streamer, but it wouldn't prove much. I got 4 right btw, if you believe that there's a difference between a WAV & a 320k MP3 file, which there isn't in real terms.
Originally Posted by gomezz:
“I suspect that you need a device to store your music digitally (in a suitable format, which means *not* mp3) and which allows you to play it back through a sound system that either has built in or allows the use of a good quality DAC which is the thing which is critical to converting the digital recording back to an analogue signal to feed the amp and speakers. The DAC circuitry built into any portable device is not going to be anywhere near the quality of a dedicated DAC device.”
MP3 is fine. 192k gives pretty good rendering, 320k is virtually indistinguishable from FLAC or the original CD, unless you listen on an oscilloscope. I prefer speakers.
OP - you're not going to find what you want in a run of the mill MP3 player. The basic economics of it make it unlikely that you'll find comparable electronics - DAC, error correction, pre-amp, sound shaping - in an MP3 player, that comes close to matching a 'top of the range' CD player. Nor will it be as good as a decent turntable at digging out the sound.
You haven't given an idea of budget but you're hinting at something half-decent, so your best bet is to save your MP3 files in as high a quality as possible, which means 320k. Storage is cheap as chips these days so there's no reason not to. Save them on a NAS drive attached to your home network, and investigate audio streamers. Cambridge Audio know a thing or two about streaming audio - look at their Stream Magic 6, which does a nifty job of being a pretty good DAC and a pretty good streamer. A few other companies make good streamers; CA do a good balance of cost & quality. That's the sort of thing you need to get a good sound out of your MP3s. I use mine into Naim amps into PMC speakers, in parallel with a Naim CD player. It's pretty good, and there's virtually nothing between a good CD on the player and the same track either as a FLAC or 320k mp3 through the CA SM6. The biggest difference is the quality of the original mastering - some CDs are crap whatever you play them on and can't be rescued.
A good quality streamer playing files directly off your storage will give infinitely better results than taking the same audio files through a cheap & cheerful DAC, a lousy pre-amp and out through the headphone socket. You should also find that the streamer can be controlled from your iPad, iPhone or Android device too, to allow more sitting in your comfy seat in the right place with a glass of red, enjoying it all at its best.