upgrades to a UM1, custom ear moulds or portable amp?

[burping_boy 0]

Currently i'm using a UM1 with my Sansa E260. Loving it so far, but wonder wat other upgrades can improve it.

 

I'm considering maybe

A. Custom Ear Moulds

B. Portable Amp

 

May i ask which actually has more effect to the hearing experience? And perhaps average cost and etc.

I'm more inclined towards option A because one reason is my player, Sansa E260 (not a very good one i guess) has no line out or docks available, and i thought i read from somewhere that amps should work better on line outs bypassing the inbuilt amp and etc. i'm not very sure of the details though. Also an amp will make it less portable, i wonder if the improvements in sound is worth the reduction in portability.

 

Suggestions?

[loop_ 0]

some people say iems sound better with customs, but i think you really have to take that with a pinch of salt. My experience with earmolds is that they don't really improve sq much at all. It's really more of a comfort/isolation thing. Really, really, alot more comfortable than stock tips

 

 

So I'd get B, though I agree with you on your dap. you could head down to jaben/SE and try their portable amp ranges to see if you get anything out of the headphone out, or try their daps with a lineout to see how much better it is.

 

 

As regards cost I paid a bit less than 200sgd at Jaben for my custom earmolds for my er4s, and you can get portable amps starting from 50sgd i suspect...

Edited June 10, 2007 by loop_

[Singapura 0]

I'm not so sure about custom earmolds but they might improve bass a bit because of better isolation. Now for custom IEM's, that's a whole different story. The driver(s) and mold are made to sound better. I'm waiting for the first batch Livewires to come in before I make my decision though.

[rkivie 0]

I had the UM2 with the UM56 some time ago. The one thing that the UM56 did improve on was that it opened up the sound as compared to UM2 + Shure grey tips.With the Shure tips, it felt rather veiled and somewhat muffled across the entire range.

 

However, I cannot attest to the comfort of customs, be it earmolds (UM56) or full custom earpieces (ES2). To be honest, the Shure tips, or even the CX300 (albeit it doesn't go in as deep) were certainly more comfortable to put on.

[max111 0]

hi, u may want to consider portable amp such as mini-box d or ibasso t1/t2. they are very small and ultra portable

[sghound 0]

Currently i'm using a UM1 with my Sansa E260. Loving it so far, but wonder wat other upgrades can improve it.

 

I'm considering maybe

A. Custom Ear Moulds

B. Portable Amp

 

May i ask which actually has more effect to the hearing experience? And perhaps average cost and etc.

I'm more inclined towards option A because one reason is my player, Sansa E260 (not a very good one i guess) has no line out or docks available, and i thought i read from somewhere that amps should work better on line outs bypassing the inbuilt amp and etc. i'm not very sure of the details though. Also an amp will make it less portable, i wonder if the improvements in sound is worth the reduction in portability.

 

Suggestions?

 

i would change the source first. checkout new ones by Samsung & Cowon.

[iynaix 0]

Personally, I would forgo the customs and the amp.

 

I would sell off the UM1 and get either an sf5, um2 or triple-fi. But that's just me.

[radioactive28 0]

Meizu could also be a real decent upgrade for your source, but I think the money is better spent on heads/earphones/IEMs for now.

The UM1s were good for their price, but you were looking for an upgrade, I believe?

 

You'd want to think about custom tips and amps after you've sufficiently 'levelled-up' the basic rig.

Edited June 11, 2007 by radioactive28

[nofing 0]

I thought Meizu has some pretty bad hissing? And I don't think customs are a good idea for now. Try bumping your source and/or earphones to a higher tier first.

[burping_boy 0]

but it seems like there's no players out there now that has a real line out right? oh yah, at least sansa now can be rockboxed (tried b4 but wasn't too stable that time), but i dun usually use it, sadly because my library is primarily WMA, defaulted by ripping via wmp. One thing i dun like about mp3 format is the idtag is very unstable especially for unicode characters (chinese and japanese).

[Bushwacker 0]

I agree with sghound. Source is really the main thing you should upgrade. But I feel, if you do not have an amp, then it would most probably be amp first, then souce. So far, only the imod has a true line out. As for other models, I have no idea. When ripping your music over from cds, please you either flac or apple loseless.

[radioactive28 0]

but it seems like there's no players out there now that has a real line out right? oh yah, at least sansa now can be rockboxed (tried b4 but wasn't too stable that time), but i dun usually use it, sadly because my library is primarily WMA, defaulted by ripping via wmp. One thing i dun like about mp3 format is the idtag is very unstable especially for unicode characters (chinese and japanese).

 

The MP3 ID3 tags are plenty stable for Unicode, all my Chinese/Japanese tracks use Unicode.

The real issue is whether your DAP supports Unicode for both tags and filenames.

 

WMA has fairly widespread support, so it shouldn't really be an issue, but there are probably exceptions.

If you want to move away from WMA/WMP, you can try EAC with LAME encoder (FLAC can also be used if you can afford the space or hear the difference).