Philips GoGear Ariaz Impressions Thread

Hi

I got my 16 Gb version of Philips GoGear Ariaz few days back.

Here are my first impressions.

I have just finished organizing my Flac collection, selecting out favorites (379 total from 99+ artists), inserting album art (~ 512 x 512 pix png files) with MediaMonkey.

EDIT 3

Use jpeg format album art, png is not supported by Ariaz.

The player has fat32 file system 14,5 Gb of reall total space.

My 379 flac format tracks take 11,4 Gb and sending them on player took 1 hour and 17 minutes ( 2,53 MB/sec), now that's really slow. Around 6 -12 times slower than my other flash memory devices.

Volume output is 2 x 2,4 mW, @ max vol level the AKG K702 play something between low and average what i'm used too.

EDIT 5

Some tracks play so loud as i'm used to. Also some tracks start silent and go lound, It's actually pretty enjoyable and i didn't notice it so much if i listened more loud.

Then i usually tuned down the volume and lost the loudness dynamics comparison moement.

The weirdest thing so far is with fullsound, if i turn it on then crisp heights don't come anymore. So now i have user EQ of and fullsound also of. Also the fullsound introduced a lot external noise or was it like sound came throw pinhole.

Player looks nice (scratched dark gray metal) colours go well together with AKG K702.

It has all external buttons.

Is small and very portable.

Some radio channels don't play so good (antenna should be inside supplied headphones cable )

Battery was charged fully ~2h 15min

Ok just found out it doesn't show album art, not from music file folder image named same like album

neither from inside music file.

EDIT 2

Yes it will show album art only if you insert jpeg album art with Philips SongBird inside FLAC file and use only SongBird to send files to player.

Also then player will have more music sorting groups by tag info.

Sound got jerky few times with one of my music track. EDIT it happens only with 1st track after u send new tracks to player and start playing first time after the sent.

Sound is pretty natural and better than my computer int audio, quite loud actually and flowing like water in complex river.

Sounds so deep i love it for the sound quality.

I think i don't need portable amp after all

EDIT 4

Short tutorial how to use Philips GoGear Ariaz

* Re-encode older flac files (from year 2006) with MediaMonkey to flac-1.2.1b (newest)
(by using MediaMonkey it keeps tag info).
* Insert JPEG album art with Philips SongBird.
* Send files to player throw Philips SongBird.
* Delete files throw Philips SongBird.

Then everything works, all files play, album art shows up.

EDIT 6

There is a bug.

If i add more songs from same album to player then new songs don't have album art.

I need to delete full album and reupload the full album.

EDIT 7

Battery life

With normal screen use, sound volume max, playing only flac files with album art is:

20 hours 11 minutes.

EDIT 8

Output power (RMS): 2 x 2.4 mW
Average voltage 0,9 volt, peaks between 0 - 4 volt

About battery life i can't compare with mp3 because i don't listen them with that portable player.

But yes, shure flac files are larger and take more energy to read from flash memory and maybe more energy for oudio processor to decode.

I just started listening the player 1 hour and 20 min back, i will count the time when battery is empty and post the battery life time.

I listen with volume maxed out, default energy saving settings, with my K702 's.

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BTW oo good i love the sound soo much

No album art kind of sucks. I spent so much time for the nice looking album art.

Ok Philips Songbird doesn't see any of the album art, so i will re insert album art with player official tool inside flac file.

I don't know if it converts to jpeg but the player dosn't open png files, but SongBird can add png's in file.

PS SongBird is stupid enough to not find album art from harddrives same folder where audio track is, album art name is identical to album name. I need to give the image file name with batch process rename an addon code phrase like cover / folder /suckitbadorwhatever

example Blood Like Lemonade_suckitbadorwhatever.

Then i tell songbird search that word like suckitbadorwhatever but it doesn't work if u have multibe albums art in same folder.

No it can't display even jpg jpeg format album art inserted with Philips Songbird.

And battery is not empty after 5h 50 min, will use tomorrow more.

Some file names look weird wrong in player, the tag info don't match. But 3 software players show it the same correct way

Some files don't play, i need to re-encode some flac's.

From 379 tracks only 352 show up on track list in player.

I tested long file 27 minutes flac it plays ok.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deep Funk 

It should, if my Clip + could not play "Tubular Bell" it would be trash can worthy...

Yeah, true so true

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3602 

I once heard a Philips GoGear (forgot model, probably Opus) with stock Sansa earbuds. The thing sounded better than my iPod + AirHead + XB700 when FullSound is activated. That thing right there is amazing. Mind you, stock Sansa earbuds.

No plans for earbuds at the moement other than, maybe at some point i get some in-ear buds style, not the in-ear canals type, earphones.

Maybe http://www.akg.com/personal/K%20317,pcp_id,171,pid,101,_psmand,1.html

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I have came to knollege player is reading Artist from tag "Album Artist" not from "Artist"

I need to spend some time to insert missing or wrong tags.

The player can't decode older flac encoded with libFLAC 1.1.3 20061120
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meelis 

Sound got jerky few times with one of my music track. EDIT it happens only with 1st track after u send new tracks to player and start playing first time after the sent.

Sound is not jerky WOHOOOO

I asked from Philips helpdesk about album art not working.

They wrote to me: album art max resolution is 320x240 and format JPEG BMP.

I tested 240x240 pix JPEG saved with GIMP (quality 100, optimized, smoothing 0, subsampling 1x1 1x1 1x1, DCT method integer)

inserted with Philips Songbird inside FLAC which tag was cleaned before opening the file with Songbird.

Still no album art.

I need to format device after i have deleted files.

Otherways device can't receive new files, but it will tell you that after 0,5 hours of copying nothing,

and u have found there is giant broken 3 Gb file on it and few files gone missing.

Also doing format u loose all other files like user manuals in pdf format and so on.

Only thing that stay is device software and main folders (music, videos, folder view....)

But i have the manual in paper no biggie

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So if you copy files and don't see player displaying " do not disconnect!" but only "charging"

then copy process is gone bad.

So i reencoded all my tracks with MediaMonkey and sent to player.

No artist no album info.

I sent 379 tracks, player showed 381.

No update libary after turning on device maybe because of i did format and some system files went missing.

Now i installed new firmware, maybe same version i had, but no artist or tag info.

I tested my original flac files that showed tag info, they don't show anymore in player

Oooo Yeeee

If i send my flac's with Philips Songbird to device and insert album art with it before then i have all tags + i see album art oyeee oyeee me soo happy.

Again Oyeeeee