Clip plus vs Cowon Iaudio 9. Arghhhhhh

[srkmish]

Im so confused by which one to buy. After scouting the boards for these type of discussions, i am left even more confused by you audiophiles.
I enjoy clarity of sound in music, being able to listen to different instruments and also i enjoy the human voice. By setting my eq to Jazz in my old mp3 player, i feel like the person is singing next to my ear, but the bass gets terribly reduced. I want you to tell me in ur opinion which wud be better for a guy like me who

1) Wants great clarity in sound ( Enjoys listening to detail of individual instruments)
2) Enjoys human voice ( Wants it to "pop" out, as if the singer is next to the listener)
3) Enjoy a medium level of bass( Im not a fan of deep bass, clarity and crispness is more important. Also not a fan of EQ modding. Like basic adustments)

BTW, i will be using one of these with my soundmagic e10

[CrowdAds]

[skip252]

Welcome to Abi

What you're looking for is handled by the characteristics of your headphones much more than the player. I have them both and the E10. With the volumes matched and all sound enhancements off I can't hear a difference. I'd pick the one that has the feature set you prefer.

I mostly find sound presets to be fairly useless. They are generalized tweaks that work for some headphones and ears but they usually don't suit me. That doesn't mean they sound bad, just that they don't work for me. I've learned to use the equalizer on both the Clip+ and Zip (Rockboxed of course ) to adjust the sound to my liking. Using the equalizer along with a bit of the BBE effects on the Cowon gets me close to same overall enjoyment level. The overall sound isn't exactly the same but both sound very good to me.

[WalkGood]

+1 Headphones make the largest difference between two top tier players that are volume matched. That said, if you want BBE’s sound enhancements (JetEffects 3.0) you can only get that on a cowon. Although these days you can get an app; JetAudio effects for Android or BBE SonicMax for iphone/pod. I have both players and while I love BBE, I use my clip zip more often because of rockbox, expansion slot and its overall small size.