digiZoid ZO2 Personal Subwoofer Preview

[admin]

The real story here is the price. At just under $120, the digiZoid ZO2 Personal Subwoofer is practically an impulse buy. If it really does save your phone's battery, those with long commutes (or weak bass response) may want it for this feature alone. While it may be misnamed, "Personal Subwoofer" sounds better than "pocket headphone bass-boosting DSP amp". We've requested a review sample of the ZO2 so we should be able to tell you more about this interesting little gadget soon.


Discuss "digiZoid ZO2 Personal Subwoofer Preview" here. Read the article.

[iam808man]

Hi Tom,

I'm the designer of ZO2 and would like to clarify a couple of points associated with your preview:

- The ZO2 does not utilize a DSP, it is pure analog signal conditioning technology, no digital whatsoever in the signal chain.

- When adjusted to the lowest Green color setting, the ZO2 does provide a flat frequency response. The pic on our website just doesn't show that setting. We're in the process of fixing this.

- It's actually not a headphone amp with bass boost, rather it's an analog sound enhancement device that happens to have high power headphone drivers at its outputs.

Thanks much for the product preview and forthcoming review, we at digiZoid do appreciate it!

Regards,
808man

[BBF]

"SmartVektor(TM) technology", "Signal Conditioning", " analog sound enhancement device"... meh sounds like a lot of jargon.

Also 808man, having "no digital whatsoever in the signal chain" doesn't mean that the audio quality will be great; There can be poor analog only designs as well. Let's just hope the digital pot in the device used to control the volume isn't in the signal chain... I'm surprised there wasn't a big *** knob connected to an analog potentiometer for volume/mode adjustments because Digital is so "evil".

I also noticed in the demo on the ZO2 site with the spectrum analysis display, that when the ZO2 was "on" even the high frequencies were increased by approx. 10dB, although the lower frequencies were increased by more than 20dB. However, it is unfair to compare with the ZO2 "off" mode since it is widely known that "louder" sounds better... it would have been much more "fair" if the non-boosted higher frequencies stayed at the same level for the comparison.

Let's hope Tom can get a sample unit, take it apart and send the pictures to the Clint and Gene so they can describe in basic EE terms exactly what the device is doing.