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Cowon vs. RAmos/Teclast/Nationite

post #1 of 17
9/8/09 at 4:19am
Thread Starter 
I'm looking to buy a Cowon iAudio 7 8/16GB, but I've recently found a host of "the above" players available from MP4Nation.

Does anyone know about the quality of these players?

Is Rockchip's DAC superior to the one found on the i7?

RAmos even has a player with Rockchip and a Wolfson DAC.

Thanks
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post #2 of 17
9/8/09 at 7:17am
Hi

I do not think, that the integrated rockbox dac sounds better than the one from cowon iAudio 7.
My experience with chinese players i got from the Ainol 3000hd. What I can say is that this player has a cirrus dac and is one of the best sounding players I heard. On par with Sansa Fuze in non EQed state.

The actual problem is, that this player is not able to play correctly flac files shows and shows no cver art, has no eq... It has so much potential, but not the software for it.

I prefer the Fuze, because of its flac playback and EQ. Other thing is the Build quality. I like the look of the Ainol and how it feels in the hand, but the buttns are low quality.

I hope this helps
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post #3 of 17
9/9/09 at 4:02am
Actually even Cowon/iaudio doesn't use any sort of "amazing" chipsets anymore, but I think they're probably still better at tuning their sound, and they should have better quality control and interface standards.

I remember one time when iriver, apple and rio all used Wolfson. It did not stop anyone from insisting that the ipod sounds a lot worse than the other two. Some people, especially East Asian, swear by their chips, but I think it's a logical fallacy to put so much faith in a chip. (I get to say that, cause I'm ethnically chinese :P)

The Chinese players can be fantastic value for money, but you should also be prepared to live with lots of bugs. I have one that's got a volume control bug that remains unresolved through 4-5 versions of firmware. Is it still usable? hell yes, but make sure you know what you're getting into. And they get better with each passing year too.

mp4nation may or may not have brought better quality control to the player firmware, I don't know. Also remember the Nationite players are no cheaper than the major brands (at least at US price levels), and that's a bit too expensive imo.
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post #4 of 17
9/9/09 at 4:13am
RAmos RM850 in terms of sound quality blows away any Cowon I have ever heard. However I can't comment the newer RM850+ version. The RAmos V80 prototype (was it ever produced?) was the best sounding DAP I have ever tried while the ones I appreciate the most are iRiver H100/300 series, iRiver ifp series, iRiver E10, Rio Karma, iPod Nano 1st gen. and iPod Shuffle 1st gen.
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post #5 of 17
9/9/09 at 10:10am
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I was wondering when someone would speak out about the quality.

I've used the iPod Classic for about 2 years now and I detest the hard drive spinning up; down and its dreadfully bad touch wheel.

So I guess an iAudio 7 would be a substantial upgrade in terms of SQ and usability.
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post #6 of 17
9/9/09 at 2:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by majkel View Post
RAmos RM850 in terms of sound quality blows away any Cowon I have ever heard. However I can't comment the newer RM850+ version. The RAmos V80 prototype (was it ever produced?) was the best sounding DAP I have ever tried while the ones I appreciate the most are iRiver H100/300 series, iRiver ifp series, iRiver E10, Rio Karma, iPod Nano 1st gen. and iPod Shuffle 1st gen.
What's wrong with the newer RM850+? Sound bad? Or, other problems?
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post #7 of 17
9/9/09 at 11:38pm
ramos can sound that good? i think i will buy one to testing. other choice than ramos? i only need sound quality
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post #8 of 17
9/10/09 at 4:20pm
interesting
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post #9 of 17
9/10/09 at 5:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by righteousball View Post
Actually even Cowon/iaudio doesn't use any sort of "amazing" chipsets anymore, but I think they're probably still better at tuning their sound, and they should have better quality control and interface standards.

I remember one time when iriver, apple and rio all used Wolfson. It did not stop anyone from insisting that the ipod sounds a lot worse than the other two. Some people, especially East Asian, swear by their chips, but I think it's a logical fallacy to put so much faith in a chip. (I get to say that, cause I'm ethnically chinese :P)

The Chinese players can be fantastic value for money, but you should also be prepared to live with lots of bugs. I have one that's got a volume control bug that remains unresolved through 4-5 versions of firmware. Is it still usable? hell yes, but make sure you know what you're getting into. And they get better with each passing year too.

mp4nation may or may not have brought better quality control to the player firmware, I don't know. Also remember the Nationite players are no cheaper than the major brands (at least at US price levels), and that's a bit too expensive imo.
Well put.
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post #10 of 17
9/10/09 at 7:32pm
There is a new Teclast T51 coming. Here is a quote(from MP4Nation) of it's audio set up(it's a Rockchip 2806 for video etc.)...

"It will also have two Wolfson WM8740 audio chips and it...WAIT! TWO Wolfson chips! why you ask, well there will be one chip for both left and right audio channels, allowing for unprecedented isolation and high audio quality for each channel, not to mention a max 120dB PER channel.

The combination of Rockchip with Wolfson in the past has always resulted in some of the best sounding audio players, but now with dual Wolfson chips, well it sure makes my mouth water just reading it, but the goodness doesn't stop there. The T51 will also have a line out feature for use with your Hi-Fi system, built in will be TI Op Amp OPA2604 chip. The TI amp for the line out is joined by the Philips UDA1308 professional headphone amplifier for the players headphone output.To make sure that there is even more limited loss of audio quality Teclast will be employing a CBB polypropylene filter capacitor"

Sounds good and will be inexpensive, 8GB for $110-$130 for the MP4Nation branded one(S-flo series). Seems like one of the models that will sound better than the Cowon's
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post #11 of 17
9/10/09 at 9:22pm
If I ever get one of those, I'll have to do a side-by-side comparison. Maybe after I expand my headphone collection.
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post #12 of 17
9/11/09 at 12:40am
Hope someone does a review for this, sounds promising.
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post #13 of 17
9/11/09 at 4:33am
if only they would make one that would take 2.5 inch hdd
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post #14 of 17
9/12/09 at 12:06am
Meizu M8 is a dap that can phone call or mobile phone that can become dap ???
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post #15 of 17
9/20/09 at 3:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jant71 View Post
There is a new Teclast T51 coming...
T51 really has an interesting spec: Rockchip’s RK2806 which supports multi-formats 720P playback, dual Wolfson WM8740 DAC (one channel each) for 120dB SNR, TI's OPA2604 for the line-out output stage (with a standalone line-out jack), Philips UDA1308/TDA1308 for the headphone-out, polypropylene film capacitors for all the DC-filtering in the signal path

The spec sure looks very Hi-Fi-ish. I might be able to review one, finger crossed.
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