Quality lost using the 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapters?

[RicanJoe]

Hello everyone, i need help with quality and loudness.......i have a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and a 2.5 in put mpx player, do 2.5 outputs have less quality or is it all the same stuff, oh and does adding 2.5 to 3.5 adapter up the quality??? please help .

[_Odyssey]

RicanJoe, I'd say that the adapter would reduce the quality, but I doubt the human ear could distinguish the difference. My cousin has an mpx player with the 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and i can't really say if there is a loss... actually his player sounds awesome with the new ear phones he got recently. The sound was pretty good with the original earphones too.

[Podder]

I found the earphones make all the difference. I bought sound-isolating earphones and most of the decent brand earphones are far superior to the ones that come with the player. The companies who make the player are just cutting costs and don't care to build decent earphones. The adapter shouldn't make any difference in the quality. Just make sure the 3.5 earphones fit in as they're supposed to. I initially bought an adapter that was defective.

[michiganjfrog]

Originally Posted by RicanJoe";p=&quot

Hello everyone, i need help with quality and loudness.......i have a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and a 2.5 in put mpx player, do 2.5 outputs have less quality or is it all the same stuff, oh and does adding 2.5 to 3.5 adapter up the quality??? please help .

It's never all the same stuff. Yes, I believe the 2.5mm std will produce an inferior connection, as a matter of physics. THere is less contact area on a 2.5mm plug. If your player sports a 2.5mm plug, well its not like you have much of a choice in changing it (although I have heard of some very brave souls modding their 2.5mm jack for a 3.5mm one, but its not easy, as space is often a consideration). Yes, an adapter will degrade the sound, no matter the adapter, and yes, humans can hear the difference (I certainly can and most days, I consider myself human). There is also a physical reason for this, the signal has to traverse yet another connection. There are differences in the sound of various types of adapters too (and other aspects....). Although I haven't compared the sound of my solid 2.5-2.5 adapter to my flexible wire one, I'm guessing the solid one sounds better. But the flexible one with its small right-angled connector is less bulky, and that can make the difference between a broken socket and a non-broken socket in the end. However, it needs to be secured, otherwise its internal wiring may fail due to flexing.

[RicanJoe]

THANX for the great help this helps alot

[Mark_F]

Is any poor sound-quality possibly an earphone issue?

The first earphones that I used were its supplied 2.5-3.5mm adapter on my pro-audio Shure E3c sound-isolating in-ear "canal-phones" .... I heard every change in its processor-state via a changing pitch of whistling pink-noise, only cut-out during MP3 or video playback, and menu animations were so clearly blipping at me that I thought this was programmed. However, no blipping/pink-noise was heard on either my Sennheiser PX-250 headphones or my cheap Philips earphones. Using its supplied 2.5mm earphones, I could discern when the unit was either ON or OFF, but nothing as dramatic as with my Shure canal-phones.