Buying a Mobile Audio DeviceSurvey and Report by Joe Gstettner

joe_ringmaster@yahoo.de

Thanks:Sabine for inputs to the survey, Christian for confirmation of the idea, headfonia.com for postingthe link on facebook and everyone who spent some minutes to fill out the survey!

Published: Austria,June 2013

Copyright: This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution­NonCommercial­ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­sa/3.0/.

The IdeaAs I am looking for a mobile audio device, which may play high quality files in FLAC or WAVformats, I found lot of different test reviews, opinions and possibilities. So how to find the rightone and whom to trust and what are the key figures for a over 300€ spent? Of course I discusswith friends and read lots of websites ­ one of the was headfonia.com, which has a quite openbut fair discussion culture at every published article. So it was easy to set up a survey and ask toput this on the facebook site to gain some inputs and thoughts from an expert community.

The SurveyFrom this starting line I designed a survey to gain some inputs how other did chose their mobiledevices to enjoy music. First of all I wanted to know, which one they already own ­ this gives anoverview of products which are already in use. Starting with Apples iPod, I picked some moreconcrete gadgets like the Colorfly C4 or the Askell&Kern 100 besides the Hifiman and Ibassofamily which I passed within my researches. Of course there are other mp3 players on themarket and mobiles are used to listen to music too. And maybe there are people out there, whoalways will listen to music only at home.

In the next slide I ask for “what’s most important” and filled in criterias I am aware of. The size ofthe device for instance and design and form. Other specs like battery life time, usedcomponents and supported file formats are options take from a mostly technical point of view asthey are mentioned at every product description so far. But no one told me so far how importantthey are for a solid decision making. What’s about usability, price, availability and product image­ are you keen on things like that? Or will the playlist and mediathek support be a “now or never”criteria? I think about changing the battery by myself and extending the storage easily as Inoticed in other product categories like cameras and mobile phones. I found reviews,recommendations and amazon product appraisals, but are they helpful or is it more like “payedcontent”, I wonder.

After the identification of the most issues, I would like to get some input how important aretangible factors like price, file types, design, usability, test results and technical specifications.

At the very last question, I ask for personal data like sex and if the submitter would describehimself as an audiophile character. To give some place for personal messages and inputs whichare not mentioned in the questionnaire, I add a free input field at the very end.

None of the questions is mandatory and there is no personal data asked for. It’s impossible tofind out, who did the survey (unless he or she will put in his/her name in the last field) and in thisreport the results are presented mostly aggregated. The survey was published on May, 28th2013.

The Results

In the end (June, 6th 2013) there are 81 answered questionnaires and some people just clickedthrough the survey without giving any input (they are not included into the mentioned 81). This isa pretty good number and the response especially at the first day was overwhelming. No morenew inputs were given after 4 days as published posts on facebook are drown out by newermessages, which was expected.

Own Devices

About 50% do own an iPod, which is a quite high number as I was expecting more people to usegear for FLAC or WAV files. 23 out of 81 (nearly 30%) do use another gadget or the mobilephone to listen to their favorite music and 2 answers stick to not using a mobile audio device.

Let’s have a closer look at the iPod owner:24 of 42 (57%) has put a checkmark on the iPod possibility only. 7 of 42 (16%) are using themobile additional to the iPod and then there are some other combinations.

Buying Criterias

There are 4 criterias, which are above the 50% mark: battery life (75%), supported file formats(66%), price (52%) and usability (50%). These are the key figures in buying behaviour when itcomes to mobile audio players.

Unfortunately I did not add an input field for “others” (in German: Sonstige) to get moreinformation about missing issues.

The leading number one “battery life” was a surprise for me as most players do not have thepossibility to extend the battery life with an additional battery pack or an easy way to exchangethe batteries. This is something I already noticed when it comes to mobiles as the iphoneintroduced the non removable battery pack and other follows.On the other hand it would be interesting to set up another research to find out, what long“battery life” means to the customer. Is it about more than 6h or 16h or 26h? Why is it the mostimportant criteria (e.g. long travels)?

On second position we find “supported file formats” ­ as most of the headfonia.com communityare hifi­passionated persons, this is no surpise. Interesting will be another survey about the usedfile formats ­ AAC, FLAC or WAV. As far as I could see, most player do support most of existingformats, so the decision breaking point is, which one is not supported and which format ­ bitcombination can be used. The more important criteria may be found in the already existing audioarchive of the customer.

Price as number three in the ranking was a bit surprising as I expected an audiophile audience tochoose other elements on higher prioritisation. For uncompressed audio players the price rangestarts under 100$ and ends somewhere over 1000$ mark. This is a quite huge range with a lot ofpossibilities in between.

To specify some of the criterias the next part of the survey contains questions to answer withweightings from 1 (very important) to 4 (not important).

For most votings, price is important, around ⅓ choose very important and about 10% say thatthe price does not matter.

Out of the detailed reports, there is no correlation between the not important and the owneddevices.

More impact on buying an audio device do have the possibility to play certain file formats likeFLAC, AAC or WAV. Over ⅔ of all participants say this is very important for them.

This is one big result in this survey as most players do have special formats they support andnearly no one supports all lossless digital formats. The only solution to play most ofuncompressed files is rockbox, which is an alternative firmware (which “normal” users won’teven know).

Design, form and color are right in the middle between important and not important. The majorityaims for the average.

No product with horrible interface and usability will be bought in our days. This might be aheritage of Apple’s iPod new way in usability and integrated system iTunes.

Remarkable this is the only issue with a “0” result ­ no one chooses “not important”. Quiteinteresting as most usability failures will only be noticed during using the device.

How important are testresults for buying a mobile audio device? They are more ok than really adecision driving factor as over 60% are in the middle range.

With a look in the comments, test results are fine but personal experience and hands­onsessions are more important before buying a player.

What’s about technical specifications? As the target audience are headfonia.com readers, theresult is no surprise.

Used components are important and much more: can they transform the theory into hearableimprovements? For this question another survey is needed.

The Audience

At the very end I asked for the sex and if the person is an audiophile character. The answers aremore than clear:

Unfortunately no woman did the survey, so we do have the result of a male dominated and hi­fienthusiastic public. Maybe some results would have another focus (e.g. design) if some femalepersons would have answered, but that’s just a guess.

Something Else

Some persons gave me some really cool comments in the text field at the end of the survey andthey do have great insights, so I decide to mention citations here:

“Sound is the most important, followed by price. Just make sure the UI isn't broken, and we willget along fine.”

“This hobby is complicated and quite expensive. Many audiophiles will do incremental upgradeson audio gear and frontend systems (playback) over many years, but some, like myself,choose select products to cover a wide area of uses and to last for a long time.[...] in either case,either make sure that the amp section is good for what you need, or if it can work well with anexternal amplifier. Check the output of the device and compare that to the sensitivity of yourchosen headohone(s), or buy a product that can change these settings to match your 'phone(s).Make sure you have a good user interface too ease of playing, good file format coverage, andeasy transferring of files from PC to pkayer.”

“Don't lose yourself in the marketing schemes of audiophile boutique brands. Sound qualitySTOPS at a certain point in a mobile player. There is a ceiling. A cap. The rest is placebo.I've tried almost every DAP out there; Hifiman, Colorfly, Sony, Cowon, Nationite/Teclast andended up with a Sansa Clip Zip 8gb (+32gb MicroSD) with Rockbox Installed in combination witha Headstage Arrow portable amplifier. It's just so practical, pocketable and sounds as good as aportable source can. Portable audio will never sound as good as a full blown home systemspeaker setup so just go with "good enough". :) Good luck!”

“[...] I am not concerned about 'technical specifications' themselves but about what theytranslate to in audio quality. [...] I use my phone as a portable audio player because I output toan amp that I matched to the headphones I use.”

“as long as it has a really big storage memory, great sound quality, and since we're talkingabout mobility, the option for an amplifier should be less to none.”

“I love my studio v 3rd anniversary :p. But on the other side I love my ipod touch too. It's betterto have more than one device. So you can choose which one depends on the situation ;).”

“I wish i have more money to spend on great sounding audio quality devices”

“For your input:sometimes we also consider some other factor whenever we choose some DAP (Digital audioPlayer) like e.g:

­ Power / ability to drive full size cans as if its handle very sensitive custom iem­ Input / output option (balance, usb, coax, usb, etc)­ Built quality, HM series never become my choise because of the built quality issue,even AK100 with noticeable less technicality than HM801 seems to be better justbecause the built quality it self, bringing DAP means it must be tough.

Hopefully its could help”

“Buy an iPod classic 160GB because of capacity.”

“In a media player designed for music, sound quality would be the first thing i would look for.”

“if you are looking for a good High end audio player. try to test them before buying since it willcost alot and it will stick with you FOREVER”

“Audio quality is the most important criteria!”