Portable Hi-Res Music Player Discussion

[cfmoran13]

So, I've been looking into high-resolution audio a lot lately and was wondering if anyone in here uses a portable hi-res player.  I use my phone as a music player mostly.  However, I have a ton of 24-bit/192kHz files that I can't play on-the-go anywhere.  Looking around, I see there is an extremely wide price range for these players.  I'm definitely not looking into a $2,400 player (or even a $500-600 one).  $200-250 is probably my upper limit.  One thing I am curious about is why the majority of them do not have Bluetooth capabilities.  I've read that Bluetooth usage requires compression of the source.  I'm not sure if that's correct.

I was hoping some people here might be able to share their opinions/knowledge/insight on this subject.

[me7]

Hi Res music is useless. 24 bit enables dynamic ranges above 96dB, there is no practical use for that and NO music is mastered with more then 50dB of range, not even classical.
192 kHz enables storage of high frequencies above what the human ear can pick up.

[cramx3]

I'm no audiophile and kind of agree with me7, where as for me, I can't tell much or any difference in high-resolution audio with my ears.

However, I just did a google search and it appears there are free apps for phones that would support playing this.  Found this one on android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onkyo.jp.musicplayer&hl=en and it says its also available on apple.

[Bolsters]

Check out FiiO.

[seasonsinthesky]

Bluetooth does indeed stream lossy, sorta like how SoundCloud works, or the Bandcamp web player.

Hi Res music is useless. 24 bit enables dynamic ranges above 96dB, there is no practical use for that and NO music is mastered with more then 50dB of range, not even classical.
192 kHz enables storage of high frequencies above what the human ear can pick up.

None of that has anything to do with the matter. Also, you'd figure if the topic was intended to discuss the merits of the thing, the OP would have said so, and it would be in the title!

[The King in Crimson]

I think it might be more beneficial to put some money into some decent or good-quality headphones rather than a hi-fi/lossless portable music player. Personally, the difference between some cheap, piece of crap headphones and some of even marginal quality is immense.

[Kotowboy]

I import CDs as AIFF ( Apple's own Wav format ) and use good quality in-ears.

it's just for listening to music whilst i'm out & about.

I don't need absolutely pristine audiophile music just for walking around...

[Bolsters]

Why use AIFF then? It's pointless if you aren't concerned about "pristine audiophile music" so you might as well just use AAC. Even if you did care about lossless, ALAC offers the same quality as AIFF but the files would use much less disk space.

[Kotowboy]

Why use AIFF then? It's pointless if you aren't concerned about "pristine audiophile music" so you might as well just use AAC. Even if you did care about lossless, ALAC offers the same quality as AIFF but the files would use much less disk space.

Well I import as AIFF so i can listen on the iMac through my powered speakers and there's no point importing twice just to put the MP3s on my phone...

I also use Deezer / Spotify on the phone...

But the reason I don't import as WAV is that for whatever reason - the iMac won't allow you to add artwork to WAV files. It took a *LOT* of frustrations before I figured that out !

[Bolsters]

Well I import as AIFF so i can listen on the iMac through my powered speakers and there's no point importing twice just to put the MP3s on my phone...

Yes but my point is, why are you using AIFF files? You can achieve the same sound quality and not use as much disk space by using ALAC, which is supported by iTunes/Mac (it's Apple's own lossless audio codec).

There is literally no advantage to using AIFF over ALAC, only disadvantage.

[Kotowboy]

I'll investigate 


One reason is that Bandcamp accepts AIFF files and so that became my go-to. I'm not really up on all the different formats.