The New iRiver AK100: A High-End DAP - Page 161

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnakChan 

 

I'm gonna be honest mate, out of a 100 songs of standard res vs hires, probably I can count in one hand how many I can tell the difference...the other remaining 95% I most likely can't. I just have the hires on there for a psychological peace of mind ;-). And my SACDs aren't new but most of them are old jazz, or 80s pop when mastering was still done on track tape. I understand that -sometimes- modern mastering are done on as low as 48kHz, only later to be upsampled and converted to SACD (or in the case of Norah Jone's original Come Away With Me SACD from 2003 wasn't even' upsampled - and only last year they re-released a proper SACD version...I've got both and for that I can tell).

Thanks, let me tried using my SACDs. I got a few...................................

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnakChan 

 

Sadly not since CD's are "merely" 16/44.1 (sorry, don't mean to sound snobby - nothing wrong with 16/44.1 FLACS/WAV). I've been converting and downsampling  my SACDs to 24/192 and they appear on MQS section but to be honest, I hardly ever go there. I just use Albums most of the time.

What do you use to convert SACD to 24/192? I only have a couple of SACDs that would like to convert.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nabil 

What do you use to convert SACD to 24/192? I only have a couple of SACDs that would like to convert.

Kinda tedious process and off topic. PM me and I'll reply to you tomorrow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shotgunshane 


I mean it cuts the last 3 seconds or so off amazon tunes. I have no problem with 256 vbr music for portable use, especially when amazon discounts the album to $3.99 or less on release date. Not to mention all the free tunes I've picked up from their mp3 promotions.

Amazon does have extraneous tags on their files...comments, discnumber, ID3.v1 etc.  I always clean them up when I get them. Maybe that is affecting your player?

I use MP3Tag....here are my option settings for MP3's....

Using those options, the files play and are recognized on every player I have used.....Sansa, Samsung, Creative, Cowon, Apple, Sony, and anything running Rockbox.

Never had any problems with Amazon MP3s on any device, incl. the AK100, and honestly I strongly doubt that tags would affect the actual audio data, as per the symptom of cutting off the last seconds of a track... On the other hand the iRiver codec implementations (not just MP3) seem to be a bit finicky to put it nicely, so I guess it's possible.

Keep in mind if your re-convert an already lossy file (i.e. MP3) it will further deteriorate. You can convert it into a lossless one like FLAC or ALAC but that would be a bit of a waste of space... I guess it's worth a shot just to test if the track is not somehow corrupted.

If you're on a Mac, Kid3 is a nice free tag editor that does batch conversions etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shotgunshane 

I mean it cuts the last 3 seconds or so off amazon tunes. I have no problem with 256 vbr music for portable use, especially when amazon discounts the album to $3.99 or less on release date. Not to mention all the free tunes I've picked up from their mp3 promotions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kcee 

That's strange I would not know where to start since amazon is supposed to be drm free and just standard mp3's. That is odd.
Maybe try re-converting it just to test if that changes it.

Amazon mp3 files contain "record company required data" in addition to the usual mp3 tags, which contain your purchase details and make it possible for copyright owners to identify you. Maybe that's what's causing your problem.

Read more about it here, this site also provides a tool to remove these extra tags.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WNBC 

Blue Jeans Cables is not a super expensive cable company, esp. relative to WireWorld, etc...

 

...No frills, no designs.  Just quality craftsmanship and parts.

 

 

And GREAT Customer Service.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremy1234 

Thanks, I think here in Singapore got one shop also do custom Belden cable. Maybe I go and checked with them..........................

 

Just wondering is it worth while to get those super expensive cable..........................

Its cheaper to get the cable from LHS than from BJC. The matter of 'worth' belongs to another thread altogether

                                             - Couple random musings on the RWAK100-

I still need more time before I give more than the preliminary impressions that I gave earlier, but I can comment on the interface:

Its generally very impressive- responsive, and minimalistic. This DAP is as straightforward as an apple product, and that's a good thing. Having said that, it still could be more polished:

1)  I'm not sure if other (RW)AK100 owners experience this, but if I have an artist that starts with "The" (i.e.: "The Neighbourhood," "The Beatles"), it sorts the band as under "The" which sucks because now I have a list of bands that start with "The" in my artist list, when I should be able to find the Beatles in the "B" section, not the "T" section.

2) The other thing thats nonsensical is that the go back function is sometimes located in the bottom left corner and sometimes in the upper left corner- why not keep it consistent?

3) Lastly the missing search function- I agree it would be impossible to make a virtual keyboard on the touchscreen to find an artist/album/song- I think what they could do is use the volume dial as for a scroll function to go through the alphabet and use the play button on the side of the device for the enter function- sort of like what the mid 2000s Mercedes/BMWs did with their navigation sysems.

4) +1 on all of Anakchan's suggestions too

Unrelated to the interface- I can confirm that dsaloman's micro SD card to SD card extender/adapter trick that he used for the DX100 works also for the ak100.  That means that if one were inclined and had the money, one could make this device have around 540gb of storage!

(2 256gb sd cards + 32gb internal memory) 

Question to the (rw)ak100 owners:  what small amps do you recommend pairing with this?  I'd like to maintain the portable footprint, and I'm wondering if the rsa shadow's amp is (markedly) better than the internal amp...  Anything else that I should look into? fiio e6, etc.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChrisSC 

                                             - Couple random musings on the RWAK100-

 

1)  I'm not sure if other (RW)AK100 owners experience this, but if I have an artist that starts with "The" (i.e.: "The Neighbourhood," "The Beatles"), it sorts the band as under "The" which sucks because now I have a list of bands that start with "The" in my artist list, when I should be able to find the Beatles in the "B" section, not the "T" section.

 

Question to the (rw)ak100 owners:  what small amps do you recommend pairing with this?  I'd like to maintain the portable footprint, and I'm wondering if the rsa shadow's amp is (markedly) better than the internal amp...  Anything else that I should look into? fiio e6, etc.

 

Thanks in advance,

Chris

1)  I can confirm that it's exactly the same for me.  It's also the same for albums. 

About amps, although I haven't tried amp pairings with the AK100 I do have the Shadow so maybe I'll give that one a try.  Gotta find a 3.5 to 3.5 cable first (not sure if I have any at home).

@ nanaholic:

thanks for confirming #1 for me.. definitely something that needs to be fixed!

re: the Shadow, please post findings with the shadow amp as soon as/if you find the 3.5 to 3.5 cable! (I'd just ship you one of my spares, but seeing as how you're in China it'd be more trouble than its worth) 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChrisSC 

... if I have an artist that starts with "The" (i.e.: "The Neighbourhood," "The Beatles"), it sorts the band as under "The" which sucks because now I have a list of bands that start with "The" in my artist list, when I should be able to find the Beatles in the "B" section, not the "T" section.

 

Help me out here: How would it recognize the difference between any band that starts with "The"? It would lump all the "The"s together just like the best UI > Rockbox does....alphabetically.

Isn't your only choice to remove the "The" from the file name? Or, get used to looking for 'The Beatles' in the "T" section, after all their real name is 'The Beatles', not 'Beatles'....or am I missing something?