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Ever since the invention of the Sony Walkman and before, people have listened to music whilst walking or travelling. The concept has been around since the 1970’s and has developed over many years from a bulky and heavy compact cassette player to today’s ultra modern i-phone or android device with either wired or wireless headphones playing 1000’s of songs stored digitally on a glorified memory stick.
Whilst the method to store the music files has changed from a cassette to a cd to mp3 one thing has remained the same, the sound quality leaves something to be desired. An mp3 file is a compressed version of a full song, the mp3 is a compression format to make the songs smaller in size to fit more onto the storage device. During the compression process sound quality suffers drastically, if you want to hear your songs as they sounded on the CD use Flac instead, or at worst apple lossless (not as good as flac though).
First thing to up-grade when your new i-phone 4 arrives is the headphones. You simply cannot get good sound quality from the supplied white in-ear slugs! 100’s of quality portable headphones exist, audiophiles use these brands to release the sound from compressed music, Senheiser, Grado, Beyer and Stax.
Fast forward to all those mediocre sounding files on your i-phone, i-pod, HTC desire or other music player and help is at hand. A good set of headphones will help make the sound more realistic, the bass will be fuller and treble clearer, however for portable audio there is only one real solution, a portable headphone amplifier. Enter the Furutech Cruise to save the day. The Furutech Cruise takes what is there and makes it better.
The cruise is the size of a portable phone and connects to your music player using the 3.5mm jack socket, it has a volume control and built in long life battery, it looks so cool all your friend will be jealous, and boy does it sound good too. Listen with it connected and then listen without. You cannot fail to be impressed. On the train, on the bus, walking or travelling anywhere, the cruise is small enough to fit in your pocket or laptop bag and can be re-charged with the supplied mains charger or usb via a pc or laptop, it even works connected directly to a pc using the usb input to amplify computer audio with great results.
