We listen to quite a bit of music. And by ‘quite a bit’, we mean excessive amounts. For the most part, the majority is played via iTunes through a variety of output sources. There are plenty of hardware options to improve sound, software options on the other hand are pretty limited. The concept of an iTunes audio plug-in is not something entirely new. But up until a couple of weeks ago we had only heard of one, SRS Labs’ iWOW. That changed with the introduction of Bongiovi Acoustics’ Digital Power Station. We had played around with iWOW before, but never had really taken a liking to it, our one question had always been was it the execution that we didn’t like or the concept itself? Time to find out we suppose.
Some Prefaces
We have a fairly comprehensive manner of testing headphones (and speakers.) We go through a lengthy test period to try to compensate for burn-in. We like to make sure we listen to the headphone at a variety of points to try to measure the effect of the burn-in. We test with a variety of sources: MacBook Pro, iPhone, amp, etc… In addition to testing while feeding our addiction to music (i.e. random listening), we also have a playlist that plays a variety of genres all at lossless quality. (We’ll do a post on bitrates later) Obviously for this review burn-in isn’t something we are totally worried about, but for the most part we generally followed our normal audio testing procedures: lossless playlist, casual listening, variety of sources, amped vs. unamped, etc.
All of us have various thoughts about products before we get them. For example, Oleg makes the prettiest apps (he made DaisyDisk), we think that the combination of the e4, e5 and SE530 are about as good as IEMs get and no one does it better then DC when it comes to iPhone App reviews. Anyways, going into our review of the DPS Plug-In we had quite a bit of thoughts already regarding iTunes plug-ins, these came exclusively from our experience with SRS Labs iWOW. To keep it short, we didn’t like it. The first noticeable difference is that the application (iWOW) raised the volume a noticeable amount, this was somewhat annoying. But the largest issue was that when connected the amp it made the music sound worse. When we adopted to go sans amp, it was hit or miss depending on the song and what we used to listen to the music. When we used an amp, it was miss 24/7. In general, the better quality audio devices were worsened by the enhancer while the lower-end stuff got some artificial improvements.
A Different Approach
That was SRS iWOW, not the application we are reviewing. Bongiovi took a slightly different approach when designing their DPS Plug-In. The noticeable difference is the way the plug-in functions. Rather then giving you options for different settings based on genres (like iWOW), DPS gives you settings for device. There are three basic categories, Built-In, Desktop and Headphones. Each has built-in settings for specific devices (all Apple) like our 17″ MacBook Pro’s speakers or Apple’s In-Ear Earphones, as well as universal profiles for headphones and speakers. This has its obvious upsides: a sound engineer (or two) spent hours specifically tailoring an equalizer for a pair of Apple In-Ear Earphones. Unfortunately, we haven’t used a pair of Apple earphones in the past five years.
The Interface
If you have never used an iTunes plug-in before, then some of this might be new. If you have fooled around with the iTunes equalizer before, you know what this is like. Rather then being a whole separate application, the DPS Plug-In functions within iTunes. After installing it, it can be found under Window via the menubar. The window is rather small. You have to set-up defaults for each of the three aforementioned basic choices via the preferences within DPS. You then select the output, media and then press the big blue button and bam – your music is enhanced. To turn it off, press the button again. Fortunately, if the pictures don’t do this justice – we are going to do a video review next week and there is an information button on the plug-in itself, it’s the little “i”
The Technology
We still haven’t transformed into TheAudiophileFeed, so we’ll keep this short. The DPS Plug-In analyzes the audio in real-time and then adjust the sound via the preference that you have chosen. It’s not an equalizer in the sense that you have little custom control over how it sounds. Engineers at Bongiovi custom tune profiles for specific audio outputs (like our MacBook Pro or Monster Cable’s Beats by Dre) and then users select that specific profile. According to Bongiovi, each profile contains settings for over 120 calibration points.
The Shining Moment
When we first got our MacBook Pro, we thought we owned a notebook that had some pretty impressive stock speakers, for a notebook. Let’s not kid ourselves – sure, plenty of headphones or speakers will blow them away, but for built-in? Then we heard Twelve South’s BassJump. Still, we thought absent the woofer the size of a Mac mini we weren’t doing that bad. The DPS Plug-In puts that idea to shame. Without any hardware, music becomes fuller. The bass becomes noticeably richer, while the highs are raised to levels that seem to compliment the increase in the low-end near-perfectly. In the midst of the mass commotion that is the vast improvement in our notebook’s stock sound the mids never get muddy. No matter what we listened to, we liked it better with the DPS Plug-In when it came to just us and our MacBook Pro.
The Rest of the Time
Here’s the problem in as few words as we can describe it: currently they don’t make a profile for the Shure SE530, the Swan M10 or the thinksound rain (review to come next week.) The custom profile that was made for our unibody MacBook Pro’s speakers were great. We have to imagine that those custom profiles for the other Apple headphones are impressive as well. The universal profiles are not really universal. We are way too snobby to be listening to music through standard iPod buds and find ourselves using just the stock speakers less and less (thank Twelve South for that) and finding a profile to fit a specific headphone, let alone all of the headphones we own was not easy. We found that for some of the upper-quality earphones (Shure SE530 and thinksound rain), the Universal Headphone 2 profile seemed to be a nice compliment a decent amount of the time. For full-size headphones, we were out of luck.
Problems That Couldn’t Be Overcome
All of this was unamped. As soon as we put another audio product in between our headphones and our MacBook Pro – there was a different story. Even the combination of a simple mixer and the DPS Plug-In produced worse sound. Without knowing the inner-workings of the technology – we aren’t sure what causes causes this problem, but this was something that both DPS and iWOW couldn’t overcome. The music didn’t get muddy, just massively artificial. Maybe not a five year-old with an equalizer muddy, but it wasn’t good. Additionally, we still don’t understand why the volume has to increase, but this was no different the iWOW. When testing, not only did we just simply press the interfaces button on and off to compare the difference of having the plug-in, but we also opened up the same track in VLC and increased the volume within VLC. Is it a massive problem? No. Is it annoying? You be the judge.
(the parts we couldn’t find a place for within the rest of the review)
Yes, we did just use that as a title. For anyone wondering how large the difference is – that’s a good question and that’s why Bongiovi has a free trial. (On that note, you may just want to stop reading, but we suppose if you have gotten this far, why stop now?) It makes the music sound fuller and larger, when you get a profile that works for you. When you don’t, it’s literally hit or miss: some songs sound better, some songs sound better in certain parts, some songs sound worse, etc… Does it transform your listening experience – we think not. Despite what the beautiful model video posted on Bongiovi’s website said, we didn’t hear any new instruments, we just got a richer sound. The second portion of the random section is a tad bit more technical. Another video on the website claims that it restores some data to compressed files. (Don’t worry, Daniel is writing the post on compressions as you read this) This raises the logical question of what happens to all of our glorious lossless tracks?
In The End
The success of the plug-in will inevitably depend on how many profiles get added and how quickly. In terms of plug-ins, we take DPS over iWOW any day of the week. We actually use the DPS Plug-In, which is way more then we could ever say about iWOW. Do we make sure that it’s turned on when we open iTunes? No. But when we are on a plane last week and without an amp, we turned it on. Finding a profile is key and if Bongiovi adds profiles quicker then we review headphones, they might be able to get somewhere. If not, there is no way this application can survive. If you owned just a pair of standard Apple buds and were told to spend $30 between the DPS Plug-In or a new pair of headphones, we’d take the latter. Is that necessarily a fair comparison, probably not. (What can we say, we like to take things out of boxes) We alluded to this earlier, but Bongiovi gives users a free trial and that’s a good thing. Sound is completely subjective. No matter what we say, it’s not entirely applicable to you and if you have read all of what’s above, you surely have enough time to download the plug-in. We think it’s a good start, give us a profile for the Shure SRH840 and we will likely have to write another review. You can download your free trial and purchase the Digital Power Station Plug-In directly from Bongiovi for $29.99.
Video review will be on YouTube on March 20th.
Related Posts
- Some Thoughts on Headphones
- Review: Twelve South’s BassJump
- Review: Astro A40 Audio System
- Review: Tritton AX 180
- Review: Urbanears Plattan
Categories: Audio, Mac Apps, The Feed, TheMacFeed Reviews:
