N91-8GB vs N82 **SUBJECTIVE** audio test

I received a request to compare the sound quality of the Nokia N91 to the N82. Since the N91 is marketed as the flagship music phone from Nokia, I thought it would be interesting to see how it stacks up against the new generation N82 with regards to music playback.



So here goes. This is how I did it.

1) I chose 2 songs from Quincy Jone's Q's Jook Joint album, "Moody's Mood For Love" and "Is That Love We're Missin", and sent them from my iTunes library to my N91-8GB and N82 via bluetooth. I chose these 2 songs as I feel they are 2 extremely well-produced pieces of music and know they sound through studio reference speakers very well.




2) Just for the hell of it, I took out my trusty 3rd generation 40GB iPod (both songs already inside compressed with the same iTunes settings) and threw in into the test against the Nokia's.


2) I used my favourite pair of headphones (AKG K271 Studio) to listen to all the devices.


3) I set the EQ settings on the Nokia's to "Default" (which sounds like off to me) and the iPod's to "Off".

4) I judged the quality of audio reproduction with my critical "work" ears, listening to any frequency spike/dip, distortion, sense of space...etc. I must mention the usual disclaimer that this is my personal opinion of the sound quality of these devices. Everyone will have different views of what is "good" and "bad". As a music producer, I like my music to sound as uncoloured and as possible.






So here are my findings:

First thing that anyone will notice is how LOUD the N91 can play. It's much louder than the N82 in terms of output gain. It's fair to say the N91's 70% volume = N82's 100% volume. Against the iPod, I would say the N91 is comparable but cleaner than the iPod.

The next thing I have to say is the Nokia N91 plays back music BEAUTIFULLY. You don't notice it when you're using it alone, but put it beside the N82 and iPod, you begin to see how good this thing is.

Let's talk about the general sound first. The Nokia's have the same "type" of sound. It's nicely balanced, reproducing the music with similar quality to my Genelec studio monitor speakers. There are no obvious frequencies that stick out in an irritating manner. Both Nokia's are clean even up to 100% volume with barely a hint of distortion.

The iPod's sound is distinctly different from that of the Nokia's. The mid frequencies (800hz to 1.5khz) seem to be more pronounced. This makes the snare drums unnecessarily upfront. Vocals take on a more nasally quality. Reverb spaces are harder to perceive as your ears tend to be drawn towards the in-your-face character of each syllable, each snare hit (anything that resides in that general frequency range) and by the time they recover, the reverb tail ends are lost.

As a sound engineer, the topic of "imaging" is usually not applicable to headphones as there is no space between the ears and the music source. But I'll talk about it here because the illusion of space is still created with reverbs and delays that the mixing engineer used to mix the music. Besides, I did perceive a difference in all 3 devices in the way they present their soundstage.

As I mentioned, because of the iPod's mid frequency response, the illusion of ambience tend to be somewhat masked. Music presentation tend to be more 2 dimensional. Panning of the instruments are clear but lack depth.

With the Nokia's, the sense of space is presented in a better way. You can hear reverb tail ends decay nicely, telling you how big a space the sound engineer wants you to feel. The mid frequencies are natural sounding. Vocals sound relatively uncoloured, and I can even make an intelligent guess as to which mic was used to record them. With the iPod's coloured character, they just sounded like cheaper mics were used in the recordings.

Not all is bad on the iPod. It does have better high frequency extension than the Nokia's. For low frequency extension, they are comparable, but I would say the Nokia's edge the iPod out slightly listening through my headphones. It's a very small difference and it may even be attributed to my imagination, but I did hear the kick drums and bass reach down lower to tickle my brains.

Of course, this contributes to the iPod's "sharper" or "clearer" sound, which most consumers would probably prefer when they're out and about fighting off traffic noise listening to non-pro-level earphones.

At 100% volumes, the Nokia's are cleaner with less discernable distortion. At max volume, the iPod seems to distort more. The N91 is as loud as the iPod, and it's cleaner than the iPod.

So, my conclusion is, the N91 wins. It wins the N82 in terms of sheer power to drive earphones and the iPod in terms of sound quality. Overall, the N91 simply sounds more refined than the other 2, more "expensive" if I may.

Again, this is my own personal opinion and not everyone will agree with me.