Audio quality of portable players

As perceived audio quality of portable players depends mostly on performance of their analog audio circuits, objective audio measurements is a must-have supplement to usual SE listening tests. The measurements are performed in accordance with the new audio metrics:

• all devices are tested with the same set of test signals and music material
• difference between input and output waveforms is measured in decibels of the objective parameter – Difference Level (Df, dB).

Such audio measurements are summarized in df-slides. One slide – one player. The most informative parameter on df-slide is histogram median – Df value which assumed to correlate well with perceived audio quality. The less the value, the higher playback fidelity.

The map below shows resulting medians with box-plots for tested players; it can be used to navigate around df-slides. Players, marked in bold have been also added to standard SE listening tests and their subjective ratings can be found here - http://soundexpert.org/portable-audio-quality-ratings.

SoundExpert thanks people who shared their devices for testing.