Can a Portable Amp Make Your Smartphone Sound as Good as Hi Fi Audio Equipment?

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These days we can stream almost any track from any location, but music quality has suffered as a result.There’s a lot of products that aim to make the mobile music listening experience better. Examples of this are Tidal, Deezer Elite, and Woojer.

Uamp is a new product that wants to improve sound quality by adding a portable amplifier to the mix. Plug your smartphone or digital music player into Uamp, and then plug your headphones in.<!–/*
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// ]]>The product’s co-founders launched a Kickstarter campaign, and the product was quickly funded. The campaign has raised $133,499 AUD ($103, 790 USD) so far, way more than their goal of $15,000 AUD. The Kickstarter campaign still has 22 days to go.

How does Uamp work? Here’s a diagram of its components:

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Co-founder Joseph Chehade gave me this explanation:

“Headphone amplification is more common in the high-end audio industry. It works by having a very low output impedance (10x better than a typical phone), much higher range and better performance under load. This means that the output is less affected by the changing load that is your headphones.

Basically, this results in your phone or laptop performing at its best, while the Uamp does all the hard work with your headphones. Good quality headphones benefit the most from dedicated amplification, as they can be quite difficult to drive. Not to mention higher impedance or lower sensitivity headphones won’t reach acceptable volume levels without amplification.

Does Uamp live up to the hype? We’ll be reviewing the product when the first production run is completed.

 

Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @nine_u

The post Can a Portable Amp Make Your Smartphone Sound as Good as Hi Fi Audio Equipment? appeared first on Digital Music News.


Source: Industry News

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