Four Way Portable (Sony ZX2, iPhone 6, AK100ii, Chord Mojo) Shootout w/ Andromeda IEM

There is much more to sound than just measurements. Digitus, treble glare/ hardness, timbre , imaging, depth etc cannot be interpreted from measurements alone.
As far as idevices are considered they all suffer from glossed over brittle sound, poor layering, center image and headstage. However, they do have extremely clean sound.
Sony zx100+z7 combo wasnt good sounding to me as well. Simply not enough power and too wet sound. But as Marv mentioned, pairing a load that the dap isnt capable of driving results in such type of sound.

 

It would be great to test some portable headphones in any future shootouts, oppo PM-3 comes to mind as my personal favorite.

 

@Marvey What Samsung phone you have? I wonder how the Androme will be affected by the A17. Luckily my IEMS is a lot less demanding than what you are using...

 

Sorry to derail, but did you say Leckerton UHA-7?

 

I think he did that on purpose because it's called 6s mk2 - why not just call it 7 instead?

 

D'oh. OK, derail over.

 

Will the Wyrd improve the performance of the Mojo's USB ?

 

It would be helpful to have a reality check comparison, like how do all of these compare to a Modi/ Magni stack or similar? I think a lot of people have a hard time deciding between portable vs transportable/small desktop setup for listening at work. The convenience tradeoffs are obvious, but it's hard to come by SQ comparisons.

EDIT: I realize the iPhone comparison serves this purpose somewhat, but my panties are still in a wad because the phone had better be the worst. And I want to plug my headphones into extra doodads.

 

I spent a ton of time with iPhone 6s connected to Mojo at T.H.E. Show. Fantastic with SINE. With Noble Savant, I think the Mojo is surplus to requirements. Every generation of iPhone, the Cirrus chipset gets a little better.

 

At this point I don't want a separate device between my source and the transducer. That's why I've been enjoying the Sine+Cypher cable combo with the iPhone. But there are times where an IEM would be more convenient than an over-ear/on-ear headphone.

 

Mojo seems really temperamental about USB input. It sounds great out of my iphone via CCK (which isn't my normal usage scenario) but sounds like balls (comparatively) out of my macbook air. I can't speak for Wyrd but I have had good results using a Singxer F-1 as a bridge between my laptop and Mojo. It seems to ameliorate some digital 'edginess' I was getting out of my laptop.

 

does anyone know if the nwzx2 has/comes with a screen protector on it? also is that dumb hires audio logo removable

 

The logo is removable, basically a sticker.
if i recalled it right, they didn't include screen protector but you can buy Zx1's film for that.

 

No screen protector on mine.

 

ZX2 owners, which music player do you guys use?
Poweramp alpha? Neutron? UAPP?

 

I used to use jet audio, worked great on zx2. Neutron is by far the best, parametric eq...20 band can't be beat.