The DAC+amps I currently own now are the Fiio E17K and E07K, some lower-end audio interfaces for recording, and a cheap generic outboard USB based upon the CM108. The Apogee Groove sounds significantly better than them all. The Apogee Groove also has the least amount of bells and whistles out of them all. Granted the Groove retails for almost twice the price of all the other ones I've listed. However, Fiio E07K is meant to dock with the Fiio E09K - this combo price brings it closer to the Groove pricewise. The Fiio E17K will dock with Fiio's forthcoming K5 dock. The E17K + K5 together will match the retail price of the Groove. Even though the K5 is not out, it is possible to get the same performance by using the line-out of the E17K to feed the E09K. The Groove still sounds better than either of the Fiio DAC+Seperate Amp Combos.
I can't believe how much Apogee packed into such a small space. Taking up less room than the size of my two largest fingers is a box with micro-USB in, 3.5mm headphone out, volume buttons, and 3-very bright LED indicators that Apogee does not explain in the included manual nor online. When listening in a dark room, the LEDs are quite bright and always flashing. I have to turn the device on it's back or I find myself looking over at the dancing lights.
I'm using a Windows 10 laptop. The Groove did not work out of the box with the laptop. However, downloading the driver was a simple matter of registering my product - then the driver became available. It installed without a hitch - works great. Even though the website claims the driver is only for Windows 7 or 8, it works fine with Windows 10.
Way back in the day, when I was satisfied with my onboard audio, I thought my onboard audio sounded fabulous. This is also because I grew up in the age of vinyl records and cassette tapes. The onboard audio sounded miles better than what I was used to in the 70s. The first DAC that I noticed had significantly better sound was actually an audio interface meant for recording. What it made me realize was that the onboard audio was smearing some of the sounds together. If a passage had a particularly powerful bass, it would sound as if the energy needed to reproduce that bass was sucked away from the energy needed to reproduce any other frequencies also present in the music. The same thing would happen with a particularly powerful cymbal crash. This was not something I noticed until I bought a new DAC and compared. Recently, I had bought both the Fiio E17K and Fiio E07K. However, even these smear sound - even though I wasn't aware of it until listening to the Groove. The Groove keeps all the instruments separate in their own space within the soundstage. The Fiios will smear the sound a little bit - it is most noticeable with powerful bass or cymbals. Its as if the attack of the cymbals makes the part of the sound that comes after the attack briefly smear itself with the rest of the music. With the Groove, the sounds stay where they are - never blending with the other instruments - even for a moment. My onboard audio (Skull Candy approved - damn you guys how dare you put your name on something that sounds so awful) smears and blends audio almost all the time. The Fiios do it a little, and the Groove never does it. I can only imagine that somewhere down the road, I'm going to find myself with a $500 DAC, which will then make me reevaluate everything all over again.
One thing I noticed when moving from onboard to the Fiios, was that with the Fiio, I could tell what kind of guitar or bass the performer was using - and sometimes even the effects the guitar/bass signal was processed through. This is even more noticible with the Groove. With the Fiio, sometimes I would have to concentrate to hear some of the differences. With the Groove, it is immediately even more apparent.
When comparing the Groove to the Fiios, the Fiios have a little bit of grain - and the Groove is transparent clean - that fades to a black hole of silence when no signal is present. I didn't notice the grain in the Fiios at all until auditioning the Groove. Damn you Apogee for turning my once clear and open Fiios into grainy frequency smearing paper weights! Granted the grain is very little and the smearing is also very subtle.
The Groove currently retails for around $300, but it seems like almost every week, Adorama is bundling it with a set of higher-end cans and discounting it like crazy. I got this along with ATH-M70x cans for $300 for both. I've seen Adorama also bundle the Groove with HD600s and HD650s as well as a few others.
I'm still going to keep my Fiio stuff because the Groove can only be used with a computer. I've seen some hacks online where people have managed to use it with phones or tablets - but these are hacks and will most certainly void your warranty. The Fiios have a plethora of features - such as tone/balance/gain controls - as well as the ability to be used as an amp accepting line-in and digital signals. However, I don't find myself ever wanting to change the tone controls with the Groove. I'm listening with flat EQ. My sources range from CDs to 24-bit FLACs purchased from an online retailer that specializes in "high-res" FLACs from the source - to crappy 128k mp3. The Groove seems to make the 128K mp3 sound better.
The icing on the cake is when I took the Groove to the club where I DJ and used it as the system sound card. I had been doing this with the Fiios - previously. The difference with the Groove is immediately apparent - particularly in the bass. The bass is distinct and the notes sound like they are supposed to - rather than this thunderous indistinct boom. Other differences can be best described as an additional shimmer that is heard with acoustic guitar and strings. It sounds noticibly better. I've read a lot of comparisons on head-fi where someone will say it is difficult to hear differences between two DACs. With the Grooves and the Fiios, it is clear that the Groove is superior. But this is expected since the Groove costs more than 2x the E17K and 3x the E07K. On a side note, the difference between the E17K and E07K is not that great.
In general what I've noticed is that the better sounding the equipment is, the less volume I need to hear details. I remember with cassette walkmans and orange colored pads headphones - I'd have to crank it up very loudly. With each improvement in the signal chain I make - the sound becomes clearer and more details emerge - this in turn makes me turn down the volume - consequently with the Groove, the volume is way down low. This is also probably what happened at the club - the increased clarity resulted in me playing with less overall volume.
I'm currently using the Groove with the ATH-M70x cans that came with it as a bundle. I can't get enough! I did briefly try some of my other cans and IEMs - the Groove made them all sound better than I remember, but none of them sound as good to me as with the M70x. The volume on my computer is currently set to 4% - or 4 out of 100 - and it is loud enough. I don't have any difficult to drive cans or high impedance cans, so I can't comment on the ability to drive those. I'm wondering if the Groove will possibly power speakers given that they are powering my cans fine at 4/100.
Some cans have a 3.5mm male jack coming out of them to hook to a m-to-f cable. I've been using these cans with an Ipod Shuffle or Sansa Clip for quasi-wireless music. The Apogee Groove can also serve in this capacity - except it becomes kind of like a cheek warmer because it gets so warm. Here is the Groove with a pair of Superlux 668B with velour pads. The sibilance commonly heard using these cans is gone - left with pure sound. The Superlux 668B never sounded so good.
One Week Update: Still going strong. On a whim, I hooked the Groove up to my Moto X 2014 with a USB OTG cable AND IT WORKS!!!! It sucks the power out of the battery about 4x faster than without it - but slower than playing game apps like Candy Crush. The battery does not get significantly hotter than using the OTG+groove - running about 20 degrees F above ambient temperature (Candy Crush drives the battery temp to something like 50 degrees F above ambient). The drain on the battery with the Apogee is about 4x (200mA vs 800mA - the app I use to measure current drain doesn't tell me the per time units) than using the onboard phone DAC+amp. The minor disappointment is that the onboard and the Apogee do not sound all that different at the same volumes. The Apogee has a little bit cleaner bass and a little more shimmer in the cymbals, but it's not the night and day difference I experienced when comparing the Apogee to my onboard Dell laptop. Yes, the phone does smear the cymbals a little bit, but the difference between the Apogee and phone onboard at the same volume is very small - I had to critically listen and repeat passages a few times to really distinguish the minor differences. However, the onboard phone max volume is not that loud at all - although it is certainly respectable and listenable. The Moto X cranked up all the way is about the maximum volume I prefer to listen when using the phone as a source - usually out in public. However, the Apogee is able to play the volume to a unnaturally loud deafening level (to me) that I wouldn't be able to tolerate for too long. - while remaining clean, open, and transparent. Keep in mind that when I go to concerts where any amplification is used (meaning almost everything except classical music), I wear noise attenuating earplugs. This could also be a testament to the DAC+amp of the Moto X 2014. The phone is good sounding and loud enough. I'll have to compare it to the Fiios with an OTG sometime in the future. Also, keep in mind that for this particular evaluation that I'm using cans that I normally don't use with the phone (ATH-M70x). I'll have to compare using the devices I normally use with the phone (Koss KSC75 or Porta Pro and Hifiman RE400A) at a later date.
5-stars. Sure it lacks features, but I actually don't miss them.
I can't believe how much Apogee packed into such a small space. Taking up less room than the size of my two largest fingers is a box with micro-USB in, 3.5mm headphone out, volume buttons, and 3-very bright LED indicators that Apogee does not explain in the included manual nor online. When listening in a dark room, the LEDs are quite bright and always flashing. I have to turn the device on it's back or I find myself looking over at the dancing lights.
I'm using a Windows 10 laptop. The Groove did not work out of the box with the laptop. However, downloading the driver was a simple matter of registering my product - then the driver became available. It installed without a hitch - works great. Even though the website claims the driver is only for Windows 7 or 8, it works fine with Windows 10.
Way back in the day, when I was satisfied with my onboard audio, I thought my onboard audio sounded fabulous. This is also because I grew up in the age of vinyl records and cassette tapes. The onboard audio sounded miles better than what I was used to in the 70s. The first DAC that I noticed had significantly better sound was actually an audio interface meant for recording. What it made me realize was that the onboard audio was smearing some of the sounds together. If a passage had a particularly powerful bass, it would sound as if the energy needed to reproduce that bass was sucked away from the energy needed to reproduce any other frequencies also present in the music. The same thing would happen with a particularly powerful cymbal crash. This was not something I noticed until I bought a new DAC and compared. Recently, I had bought both the Fiio E17K and Fiio E07K. However, even these smear sound - even though I wasn't aware of it until listening to the Groove. The Groove keeps all the instruments separate in their own space within the soundstage. The Fiios will smear the sound a little bit - it is most noticeable with powerful bass or cymbals. Its as if the attack of the cymbals makes the part of the sound that comes after the attack briefly smear itself with the rest of the music. With the Groove, the sounds stay where they are - never blending with the other instruments - even for a moment. My onboard audio (Skull Candy approved - damn you guys how dare you put your name on something that sounds so awful) smears and blends audio almost all the time. The Fiios do it a little, and the Groove never does it. I can only imagine that somewhere down the road, I'm going to find myself with a $500 DAC, which will then make me reevaluate everything all over again.
One thing I noticed when moving from onboard to the Fiios, was that with the Fiio, I could tell what kind of guitar or bass the performer was using - and sometimes even the effects the guitar/bass signal was processed through. This is even more noticible with the Groove. With the Fiio, sometimes I would have to concentrate to hear some of the differences. With the Groove, it is immediately even more apparent.
When comparing the Groove to the Fiios, the Fiios have a little bit of grain - and the Groove is transparent clean - that fades to a black hole of silence when no signal is present. I didn't notice the grain in the Fiios at all until auditioning the Groove. Damn you Apogee for turning my once clear and open Fiios into grainy frequency smearing paper weights! Granted the grain is very little and the smearing is also very subtle.
The Groove currently retails for around $300, but it seems like almost every week, Adorama is bundling it with a set of higher-end cans and discounting it like crazy. I got this along with ATH-M70x cans for $300 for both. I've seen Adorama also bundle the Groove with HD600s and HD650s as well as a few others.
I'm still going to keep my Fiio stuff because the Groove can only be used with a computer. I've seen some hacks online where people have managed to use it with phones or tablets - but these are hacks and will most certainly void your warranty. The Fiios have a plethora of features - such as tone/balance/gain controls - as well as the ability to be used as an amp accepting line-in and digital signals. However, I don't find myself ever wanting to change the tone controls with the Groove. I'm listening with flat EQ. My sources range from CDs to 24-bit FLACs purchased from an online retailer that specializes in "high-res" FLACs from the source - to crappy 128k mp3. The Groove seems to make the 128K mp3 sound better.
The icing on the cake is when I took the Groove to the club where I DJ and used it as the system sound card. I had been doing this with the Fiios - previously. The difference with the Groove is immediately apparent - particularly in the bass. The bass is distinct and the notes sound like they are supposed to - rather than this thunderous indistinct boom. Other differences can be best described as an additional shimmer that is heard with acoustic guitar and strings. It sounds noticibly better. I've read a lot of comparisons on head-fi where someone will say it is difficult to hear differences between two DACs. With the Grooves and the Fiios, it is clear that the Groove is superior. But this is expected since the Groove costs more than 2x the E17K and 3x the E07K. On a side note, the difference between the E17K and E07K is not that great.
In general what I've noticed is that the better sounding the equipment is, the less volume I need to hear details. I remember with cassette walkmans and orange colored pads headphones - I'd have to crank it up very loudly. With each improvement in the signal chain I make - the sound becomes clearer and more details emerge - this in turn makes me turn down the volume - consequently with the Groove, the volume is way down low. This is also probably what happened at the club - the increased clarity resulted in me playing with less overall volume.
I'm currently using the Groove with the ATH-M70x cans that came with it as a bundle. I can't get enough! I did briefly try some of my other cans and IEMs - the Groove made them all sound better than I remember, but none of them sound as good to me as with the M70x. The volume on my computer is currently set to 4% - or 4 out of 100 - and it is loud enough. I don't have any difficult to drive cans or high impedance cans, so I can't comment on the ability to drive those. I'm wondering if the Groove will possibly power speakers given that they are powering my cans fine at 4/100.
Some cans have a 3.5mm male jack coming out of them to hook to a m-to-f cable. I've been using these cans with an Ipod Shuffle or Sansa Clip for quasi-wireless music. The Apogee Groove can also serve in this capacity - except it becomes kind of like a cheek warmer because it gets so warm. Here is the Groove with a pair of Superlux 668B with velour pads. The sibilance commonly heard using these cans is gone - left with pure sound. The Superlux 668B never sounded so good.
One Week Update: Still going strong. On a whim, I hooked the Groove up to my Moto X 2014 with a USB OTG cable AND IT WORKS!!!! It sucks the power out of the battery about 4x faster than without it - but slower than playing game apps like Candy Crush. The battery does not get significantly hotter than using the OTG+groove - running about 20 degrees F above ambient temperature (Candy Crush drives the battery temp to something like 50 degrees F above ambient). The drain on the battery with the Apogee is about 4x (200mA vs 800mA - the app I use to measure current drain doesn't tell me the per time units) than using the onboard phone DAC+amp. The minor disappointment is that the onboard and the Apogee do not sound all that different at the same volumes. The Apogee has a little bit cleaner bass and a little more shimmer in the cymbals, but it's not the night and day difference I experienced when comparing the Apogee to my onboard Dell laptop. Yes, the phone does smear the cymbals a little bit, but the difference between the Apogee and phone onboard at the same volume is very small - I had to critically listen and repeat passages a few times to really distinguish the minor differences. However, the onboard phone max volume is not that loud at all - although it is certainly respectable and listenable. The Moto X cranked up all the way is about the maximum volume I prefer to listen when using the phone as a source - usually out in public. However, the Apogee is able to play the volume to a unnaturally loud deafening level (to me) that I wouldn't be able to tolerate for too long. - while remaining clean, open, and transparent. Keep in mind that when I go to concerts where any amplification is used (meaning almost everything except classical music), I wear noise attenuating earplugs. This could also be a testament to the DAC+amp of the Moto X 2014. The phone is good sounding and loud enough. I'll have to compare it to the Fiios with an OTG sometime in the future. Also, keep in mind that for this particular evaluation that I'm using cans that I normally don't use with the phone (ATH-M70x). I'll have to compare using the devices I normally use with the phone (Koss KSC75 or Porta Pro and Hifiman RE400A) at a later date.
5-stars. Sure it lacks features, but I actually don't miss them.
