Clip Zip Sound Quality

[irwin]

To those of you who use Clip Zip players,are you happy with the sound quality ? Are any of you using a portable amp with your Zip ?

[CrowdAds]

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by irwin

To those of you who use Clip Zip players,are you happy with the sound quality ? Are any of you using a portable amp with your Zip ?

It sounds excellent. I have used an amp for the bass boost feature of the amp, with one particular set of headphones.....but now that I haveRockbox installed, that is no longer necessary. And withe headphones you have, I don't see any reason to amp.....I had the previous model PX100's and they are quite easily powered by a Clip/Clip+/Clip Zip.

[Mikerman]

Originally Posted by irwin

To those of you who use Clip Zip players,are you happy with the sound quality ? Are any of you using a portable amp with your Zip ?

I find the Clip Zip sound quality to match that of the Clip+ -- in other words, good (and no amp needed for my Shure or Panasonic in-ear buds).

[WalkGood]

I find the sound quality very good but it’s the same as any other top tier player. My reasons for getting the zip were to upgrade from current v1/v2 clips I already had, wanted a new “on the go” small size player to use during outdoor activities and wanted more room (expansion slot) to carry more tunes. If you like tweaking to enhance your IEMs/headphones then rockbox is a must and does make a big difference over the original firmware IMHO.

I don’t bother with an amp on this little player. That said if you want to drive big cans or overly sensitive armature driven IEMs it could help. I ran around the neighborhood one day with the zip/pico/650s for the hell of it but just couldn’t see using this with an amp all the time, it defeats my needs for a small on the go player ….

[orb9220]

Yep got mine 2 weeks ago and great little sounding thing-ma-jig! Tho sounded nice. Was thinking of earbuds to replace stock.

In a drawer had an old Philips SHE5910 and found I needed to down the volume by 30% or so and sounded like a whole new zip.
And wondering how significant volume use impacts battery life? 30% vs. 75% a significant real world savings?

Just wondering why the volume discrepancy that wide ranging for buds?
And any chime in with anything bud that is better than the phillips less than $50 would be appreciated.
.

[saratoga]

nwavguy measured that the clip can push about 2x15mw= 30 mW into a pair of 16 ohm headphones at maximum output. The rest of the player itself uses about 40-50mW, so in theory you can use a lot of power on headphones.

In practice though, most earbuds have ear-earsplitting loud volume much above 1mW, so except in special cases its not too significant.