Show off your Portable Audio Gear

This is a picture thread with hopefully little worded posts but showing your Digital Audio Player/s (DAP), Portable Media Player/s (PMP) and your portable headphones/IEMs. A show off your portable audio gear pr0n thread and yes it’s shamelessly ripping off the idea from anythinbutipod and Head-Fi. To start out, here is an example of a some of my gear …

I love to see others gear, so start posting up your stuff

The first picture is of two SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip’s, they have 8GB onboard flash with 32GB microSD card. Both Clip Zip's are running alternate firmware called rockbox.

The second picture is a Cowon i9 with Meelectronic M31 IEMs, I’ve already sold off the IEMs but wrote a review about them here if the read interests you.

The third picture is of a SanDisk Sansa Clip v2, at that time the Clips did not have expansion slots so this one is only 4GBs. Rockbox was made in beta when the first v1 series came out and I've been running it on all my Clips since the beta days. While I normally do not pair the Clip with an amp, I did so on this day to test various headphones with it. The portable amp in the picture is a Pico portable amp/DAC and I wrote a review about it here.

Those are some nice earplugs, must come in handy at loud concerts or are you a musician?


Nice Hello Kitty Boombox how's it sound

Nice idea, I wear these down the street for the same purpose but I get different results as I get to enjoy my tunes ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪

Headamp has 3 different portable amp models, pico amp, pico amp/DAC and the pico slim. The Pico amp/DAC runs with a 2-Cell Lithium-Polymer battery and the slim runs on a 1-Cell Lithium-Polymer. I don’t believe it’s hard to change the battery yourself but sourcing it is another thing. I do know that headamp carries them but I’m not sure if they’ll sell them without the install. I’ve not opened mine but my guess is that you’ll have to de-solder the old and solder in the replacement. But then not everyone solders or would be comfortable trying that themselves. BTW the original battery is rated at 20 hours but the new one is rated at 30 hours.

Edit: I received an email from Justin at Headamp telling me the batteries for the Pico aren't soldered, they attach with a connector. So they can be user replaced easily.

If you need thinner portable amp (about nano size) with longer battery life headamp makes a 60 hour portable called the pico slim. If you want to read a review about the slim I wrote one you can see it here, hope that helps. The headamp gear is expensive because they're build quality is excellent. If all you want is an amp to test out with your portable gear, you can buy one of the fiio portables easily from amazon for a fraction of the price. Edit: BTW fiio has a lot of different portable amps, so a little research here would help in making a selection. Also keep in mind that the USB DAP option is so you can use the portable amp with your laptop or pc bypassing the onboard sound card.

Last but not necessarily directed at you is where is everyone’s gear pictures :/ I got to believe that with a forum this size there’s plenty of members that have cool portable gear they can post …

I hear you, I wouldn't waste money on a portable amp if your IEMs/headphones do not need one, I wrote my opinion on portable amps here if you care to read. That said, the Pico's are very nice IMHO. I've tried a lot of portable amps and have found that the pico's by far have one of the best build quality/performance of all the portable amps which I have tested/tried out. That said, next in build quality wise or tied are the Ray Sammuel portable amps but I'm not fond of the guy or the company, even though I've tested a few which performed fine IMHO and they do have favorable reviews on the net, you can look on their website here. Now if you live in the EU, a good friend of mine uses the Headstage Arrow which he thinks is very good (also the price is better), he wrote a review about the Arrow here if you're interested in reading.


Accessing the inside is very easy as most of all the high end portable amps I have seen have access via the front and rear plate which are held on by screws or socket cap screws. Some of them have the batteries soldered in and others may use a clip connector, depends on the manufacturer. The lower end amps, like fiio and others do not have easy access into them like you say about ipods (although you can get in, that is for a different conversation). BTW there's nothing wrong with ipods, the only reason that I don't have one any more is that I prefer open access devices that offer connection via MSC protocol and their lack of sound tweaks compared to cowon or rockboxed devices (I know there are now EQ apps and even FLAC apps but at the cost of battery life IMO). That said, rockbox is available on some older model ipods.


Post up a picture of your ipod & IEMs/headphones, they're always great to see


IEM is short for In-ear Monitor or canalphones, they are headphones that are inserted directly into the opening of the ear canal. When sealed correctly they can create a high level of isolation and can be listened to at lower volume levels (available in universal or custom fit) (quoted from here). They differ from earbuds which are what apple includes with their mp3 players, in that they sound best when one gets a proper seal and isolate best as well. Many prefer this type of headphone for portable use as they can be stored in small space. On the other hand, some people can not get use to the isolation or feel and prefer full size headphones or earbuds. Customs is short for custom fit monitors similar to the UE-11 pictures I posted a picture above, I wrote a review about them a few years back here, side note hope you notice that my macro pictures have gotten better since then In closing, universals are standard IEMs that use different tips to fit different size ears and can be used by anyone when the proper tips are used (something like these), hope that helps.

Finally to keep the thread going, I'll post another picture of portable gear and hope others start posting their stuff too ...

Nice gear Thunder9000 what's your favorite or most used?

I hear you, I think that's the reason I now like my Sansa Clip Zip best myself. It's onboard is 8GB and I have a 32GB microSD card fully loaded with tunes. I also like the fact that one can run rockbox on the Clip line which gives you much more functional sound enhancement features than the original firmware provides. The ones I use are: balance, stereo width, crossfeed and 5 band parametric equalizer. Although there are many other features as well ...

Edit: I didn't hot link the card to ebay, must be site software. I got my sandisk class 6 for $26.00 from amazon.
Edit: it appears the hot link form the "SD card" has been removed, thanks mods