The New iRiver AK100: A High-End DAP - Page 150

Correct me  if i'm wrong folks - can an impedance adapter for AK100 be an option for those who don't want to spend a money for a new pair of IEM of RWAK100 upgrade? 

I would like to know if any of you own a (non-modded) AK100 and satisfy with pairing with some iems?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Szadzik 


Essential is a very strong word. 90% of us have lived without gapless the whole life and no one suffered the lack of it until the time if Internet and pseudo-audiophile features.

 Actually, since you mentioned "the whole life", I expect gapless myself, as that's what I listened to on vinyl all those years ago. I can't imagine a Pink Floyd album played back without gapless (Also, Shpongle etc.). Of course, you can be creative to circumvent the problem by ripping the whole album to WAV first and then making that into an MP3. You just wouldn't have the marks for the separate songs, but hey, you wanted to listen to the whole album in the first place, didn't you? :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by skamp 

Quote:

Originally Posted by kcee 

I am all for being critical about deficiencies in a product, but not owning the product or possibly even using/hearing it makes your participation worthless.

I disagree. One doesn't need to own the DAP in order to criticize the lack of a very basic and essential feature.

+1

Quote:

Originally Posted by skamp 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Szadzik 

90% of us have lived without gapless the whole life and no one suffered the lack of it until the time if Internet and pseudo-audiophile features.

You've got it all wrong, actually. CDs, minidiscs, vinyl records, cassette tapes were all gapless. Maybe you're too young to remember those. CD-Audio was launched in 1982 and that's the year I was born, so that's literally my whole life.

It's with the advent of MP3 and computer audio in the late 90's that hardware and software players started appearing without that feature.

Also, gapless playback isn't a pseudo audiophile feature. It's an essential feature with albums where some or all tracks flow into each other without interruption. Would you enjoy it if a live orchestra suddenly stopped playing for a second, right in the middle of a melody?

My thoughts exactly.

Is anybody having a problem with there device not powering on? I had that problem when I first got the unit, but the problem went away in the 1.20 firmware. But I updated the firmware to 1.30 over the weekend and now the device will not power on again without plugging it into usb.

Quote:

Originally Posted by skamp 


You've got it all wrong, actually. CDs, minidiscs, vinyl records, cassette tapes were all gapless. Maybe you're too young to remember those. CD-Audio was launched in 1982 and that's the year I was born, so that's literally my whole life.

It's with the advent of MP3 and computer audio in the late 90's that hardware and software players started appearing without that feature.

Also, gapless playback isn't a pseudo audiophile feature. It's an essential feature with albums where some or all tracks flow into each other without interruption. Would you enjoy it if a live orchestra suddenly stopped playing for a second, right in the middle of a melody?

Agreed, though I would like to add that I feel it is sad that one has to think of gapless playback as a feature. The ability to play music without ripping holes into it should go without saying for a DAP, and if it cannot do that, then it should be regarded as defective (by design). And there is no excuse to design DAPs that way, given that Rockbox, a firmware developed by hobbyists in their spare time, enables gapless playback even in ancient DAPs like the Archos Jukebox from 2000. A modern DAP lacking gapless playback can only be due to highly incompetent designers or due to drastic shortcuts in the development and manufacturing - either way, the result cannot be a quality device. Who knows what other flaws it hides when it cannot even do basic playback right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kcee 


Obviously.

Just kind of sad to think about someone going out of there way to consistently nit-pick a product they don't own and to insert their opinion on a topic in such a negative snarky manor.

IMO gapless playback is such a non issue and is a very minor negative when considering all the positives that can be attributed to this player.
There is a chance that a firmware update will make it gapless in the future, and if not there are other ways around it if need be. Anything that can be fixed with a firmware update should be seen as a temporary issue with a possible fix in the future. Look at the dx100 and all their ui issues in the beginning, one thing ibasso cannot fix with a firmware update is the fact that it is a un-pocketable brick.

You can find positives and negatives in everything, I just happen to find more critical positives with this player than any other I have owned or tried. Which is quite a few.

Well, I am obviously not the only person that feels gapless is important, judging by the majority of today's posts here.

Maybe RockBox will fix the UI, like it did for the HDXXX series, making the HD120 and 140 and great little dap. Gapless should be a no brainer for this and will all the power at iRiver, it should be a foregone conclusion. I will have a AK100 in a couple of days and will let it burn in.

Where do you get the latest firmware for the AK100? Never mind, I found it.