Well, those that follows me on twitter knows,
my net died on me earlier. And to make the best of the situation, I decided to go bowling:
Well, no, that wasn't fun actually. What's more fun is, I picked up my
Fiio E5 from the post office today! The postal system did a good job on damaging the package, but thanks to my crappy iPhone's auto-no-focus camera, I won't be able to show that...
To be honest, aside from the out-dated iPod Shuffle look alike, the controls made it looks (and feels) kind of cheap:
Oh well, I can live with that I guess. Let's try to plug it into my Audio Technica A700 and see how it sounds...
Because the E5 is intended to be a pocket amp, my guess is that its target earphones aren't usually too good with bass. The frequency range it supports is 10Hz to a ridiculous 100KHz. But my A700 does 5Hz to 35KHz, so I guess I'm going to be missing out some bass... oh well, not like I can hear those 5Hz anyways (I might feel it, but that's for another discussion)...
Preliminary testing gives good impression on the iPhone, because it did as promised, improve the output quality, and sound volume. I can hear the layering of different instruments and sounds a bit better than without it, which is definetly a plus. But on the other hand, I'd still need to put the phone's output volume to be pretty high to hear the quality, so it is by no means going to help save battery.
Next up, MacBook. When it gets plugged into my MacBook, unfortunaetly, it didn't sound so great... I got the feeling of literally plugging something in between my earphone and my laptop, which acts as nothing more than an external volume control... There might even be a little bit of distortion to the higher sound spectrum (16 to 18KHz range, beyond that I can't really hear, but only feel, so I can't really judge it)... and the sound layering feel isn't as obvious as well... that's probably because the MacBook already gives a pretty decent sound output. Oh well, you get what you paid for...
In general, I did noticed that the sound seems to be muddled a bit... that is to say, I wasn't able to tell the exact direction of the instruments anymore. Also, I noticed that the "Bass boost" switch is best remained off. When the bass boost is enabled, the entire sound sounds like it is being covered under something. Not my kind of preference, maybe it'll float some other people's boat better.
All in all, I think it's a good buy. For pocket amps, anything under $100 USD is probably as good as a fancy toy with volume control... and this one is only $17. So its ability to make my iPhone sound better is good enough. I don't foresee myself whipping out my MacBook to plug E5 and A700 in, but I do foresee myself keeping it plugged to my iPhone.
