If not the Cowon D2, then what???

[shigzeo]

if you did not hear hiss with the shure se530... either you just don't hear hiss or your canals are broken. it is freaking amazing hisser.

the sony has about the easiest and most immedately recognisable gui commands i have used outside of old cd/md players. simply perfect control design. the d2 is not bad there but what is terrible is trying to find part of a song or often, just operating without the stylus that i threw away

[nywytboy68]

I love the UI on the sony myself - very intuitive and easy to operate. Great if on the move or sitting and vegetating and enjoying some tunes. I still have love for my D2 "BUT" it's gathering a lot of dust at the moment.

[Random Access]

Originally Posted by shigzeo

if you did not hear hiss with the shure se530... either you just don't hear hiss or your canals are broken. it is freaking amazing hisser.

I hear hiss on my iriver s10, hbh-ds200 with HTC Touch, iMac and V8 (with nothing playing and during playback).
No hiss on my PC.
Less hiss on my HTC Touch with usb to headphone jack.
I do not hear hiss on D2 with nothing playing. But still I am unsure as to whether or not I hear hiss during playback.

Do you hear hiss during with nothing being played back?

I'm 34 so maybe the hiss is a very high frequency hiss. I can barely hear 17khz signals. I can just "perceive" them.

[shigzeo]

yes. i think though i may be overly sensitive to hiss. the only source i have not heard hiss from is my usb transit: with canals of ohm 16 and sensitivity of 100-110. but... with um2, even that made some noise and a laptop hissed like mad, the meizu sony and irivers annoyed me madly with e500 but not as much as um2. e500 is not that sensitive compared with some but... it hisses like a snake for me.

i hear it during playback too even with d2 or nano 3g. the d2 has low level of hiss and nano hisses madly until you navigate to music section: then something kicks in and it gets as quiet as the d2.

my sony i can hear hissing even when on a bus. i think i would not hear it if i was on an airplane

[malkekoen]

Thanks for all your inputs... I finally made up my mind, and...........

I went with the Fuze!!! Not that its the best player, BUT... I like the design. Its affordable. SQ is good. Its expandable. It will support almost all filetypes with the next firmware update.

I could have chosen a lot of the other suggestions. D2 came in second....

Once again, thanks a lot for all your very informative, pleasant and nice inputs. Really, really appreciated. I'll report with my experiences as soon as I've had some time to play with the Fuze.

[geekchic]

Originally Posted by shigzeo

d2
features taken out then written back hastily
stage is for heavy bass music intolerably small
no gapless
bass roll off

Shigzeo, I have been reading your posts on the D2 comparison with other players with a lot of interest. I'm a pretty happy D2 owner myself but I have noticed the bass is 'lacking' compared to my IRiver H300 - I would say in non-technical language - less warm and enjoyable, it makes me sit and listen, but not get up and dance. Is that what you mean when you say the stage for bass is small?

Which 'phones do you recommend with the D2 (you mention big phones in your post).

Look forward to hearing your reply, thanks!

[neoufo51]

Normally I would say to get the updated Sony players but I think Cowon is coming out with the D3 pretty soon and once that is announced, I'm setting my sights on that. There's no way Cowon won't follow up on the success of that player. I'm guessing something with a 3 inch screen, capacitive touchscreen, and better video playback. Something to try and destroy it's closest competitor, the Samsung P2.

[Mr_Junesequa]

The telechip wolfston dual core thingo with the cowons is hard to beat...even with the sound halving effect of an impedance adaptor its still louder than most of the players..

just remember you wont get truly great sound from any small form factor dap exp mp3 players.

[shigzeo]

when i mention large phones, i mean ones that have imp ratings of over 100ohm. the stage is able to open up then. for trance, i found it to be the most headache inducing player as it does have boom but little definition and has a very very centred stage rather than casting much of a stereo image with iem and canal phones of 32 ohm and below.

most players suffer similar problem but the d2 is hit rather hard by it. if you don't listen to trance and thus don't really need a huge stage or don't mind balloony bass, it is probably a great player for you: also, if you don't mind no gapless. for trance, i find it the worst player i have tried but i did not mind it at all for other genre.

[Chri5peed]

For my money the D2 wins. The first point to be made is a little DAP is hardly where you'd strive to reach for high-SQ. Its all much of a muchness.

So the features are immediately important.


A D2 in a 16GB flavour with a 32GB SDHC card is almost 50GB of Flash memory! With medium jeteffects, playing decent audio files and volume maybe 20-50 you'd get 30-odd hours of playback per charge.

Rockbox firmware is in production, but for one, it'll allow gapless playback. Also with the dual-boot mechanism, it means you can have both firmwares installed[COWONs/Rockbox] and use either.