I'm going to organize testing of 100-200 most popular modern portable audio devices, covering almost all the market.
White paper of the Initiative - http://soundexpert.org/articles/-/blogs/audio-transparency-initiative/
FB special page for the action - https://www.facebook.com/Pump.a.DAP/
Any feedback will be helpful.
Hmm... at this day and age of DAPs' offering being relegated to niche, expensive gadgets and as smart phones have become the de facto versatile, high SQ DAPs that can play, unlike the former, practically any format you throw at them?
With which I mean no disrespect or sneering - just how relevant (and to whom) that actually is in these new-roaring 20s we live in.
... just how relevant (and to whom) that actually is in these new-roaring 20s we live in.
Smartphones are also DAPs, they will be tested as well.
More than 20 modern portable audio devices have been tested so far - http://soundexpert.org/vault/dpa.html
The progress in audio chip design/manufacturing is obvious, they become almost transparent for human hearing. The correlation between actual quality and price is absent just like in case of headphones.
Now it's possible to visually compare artifact signatures of the tested players . The closer they are in 3D similarity space, the more similar their artifact signatures.
http://soundexpert.org/vault/dpa.html#artifact-signatures