Recently I’ve been big into trying to figure out how to upgrade the sound coming from my audio system. I’ve looked at tube amps to make proper use of my turntable. (Yeah, that’s right… vinyl.) But I also have a ton of music as mp3 and flac files. I’ve looked at the monoprice tube amp which has a ton of good reviews. Trying to find the best way to morph it into my current hardware collection…
But I’ve noticed that some disconnected components I have are ridiculously good. First, the Amazon ‘echo’. Its pretty much the best bluetooth speaker you can get that also talks back to you. Its not as good as my Samson BT3, but it has more features then it. The quality from this single tower of speakers is nice if not slightly limited. I played a bunch of old music tonight from my mp3 files via Google music and it sounded nice. Easy enough to do… sounds ‘good enough’. Definitely worth the $100 when it first came out. I can’t complain.
Then I played from my Nexus 6p.
Digression… I really do love this phone. Considering the hell I’ve been through with the Nexus 9, its nice that the 6p has been so great since I got it. In every aspect this phone has performed well, better then any other device of this nature that I owned… and surely better then I expected by a long shot. My Diamond Rio Karma still had the best music playlist implementation of any MP3 player… I even had devices that predated that dinosaur (MP3 Man)… Palm Pre, HTC and Samsung phones galore. While still holding on to my Cowon for the music quality while spending cash on these… well, phones… where music was secondary at best.
But the audio quality of this 6p… the clarity… its speakers…
I’m a nut job. I’m the first to admit it. I grew up in a house-hold of Bang and Olufsen… overpriced but sounds great. Cerwin Vega speakers was my own ‘low-end’ system until I got something real. I never did spend what a quality system needed… I’m a cheap-skate nut job I suppose.
But I played Peter Gabriel on the Nexus 6p from the YouTube ‘Red’ music app (Don’t Give Up with Kate Bush) and seriously was moved. I’ve not heard this quality in a long time. No expensive head phones… No highly specialized amp… just the (mostly) regular music app provided by Google. Just damn. Speakers didn’t buzz or sound over-powered. Just filled the space with music that I hadn’t heard in years.
The Nexus 6p is a quality music playing device.