Cowon S9 16 GB Video MP3 Player with Touchscreen (Titanium Black)

If you are in search for quality sound, reverb and loves flac, then here you go. The UI is decent and nice, I dont know why people give negative comments, the thing is that it takes two to three weeks to get going with the interface.
The audio enhancements have limitless enhancements, if you dont adjust it properly you may have scrambled audio. With proper adjustment of the several enhancements like mach3bass, 3d surround, stereo enhancement, reverb  and a properly set EQ, you may have bliss.
Recommended in earphones
Sennheiser IE 8 Earphones
 
The only cons are
battery charging time (more than five hours) and low USB data transfer rate.
 

If you want good, customizable sound, then the S9 is a good buy. May not be the best MP3 player out there but definitely one of the best, especially when it comes to sound reproduction. User interface is way behind the iPods and iTouch. Video is also exceptional with the AMOLED display. It is also a powerful portable player that can easily drive higher impedance phones. If sound is your priority then the S9 would be a good buy

Awesome sound quality, awesome video quality, bad stock UI (but menus can be customized and changed). A very light product - I can hardly feel the weight in my pocket

my rio karma is dying (well the battery only really, so i could just replace that, but the software is incompatible with win7 w/o some major headache so i'm taking the easy way out) so i figured i'd audition a few new players to see what works. on my short list: cowon s9, cowon j3, nationite s:flo2, hifiman hm-602.
 
with regards to the s9, i'll just break it down by pros and cons.
 
i listen (mainly) to classic rock, alt rock, prog rock, trance/dance, classical
i use cheap IEMs, grados, and aux connector to car
i am on firmware 2.5.2
 
 
pros:
-small and thin and light. google up dimensions if you must. wouldn't run with it, though one could, but for keeping in pocket and sitting, it's great.
-if you like the wolfson dacs like i do, apparently it uses WM8750.
-it has actual buttons for no-look music control!
-the sq is decent. nothing spectacular, nothing bad either really. plays flac, mp3 V0, and mp3 320 with good clarity. the 5 gajillion EQ presets can nearly fix any problem you may have otherwise.
-battery life is fairly good for flac playback. (anything over 20 hrs is good enough for me because i'll have hooked it back up to the computer to transfer more music by then.)
-you can lock the touchscreen! suuuuuper important!
-apparently it does other stuff than play music. and the screen is bright with nice color for video playback. if you care for that sort of thing. really, all i need on the screen is the artist/album/track and codec.
-you don't need to install special software to transfer files to it. windows sees it as another usb storage device. awesome!
 
cons:
-touchscreen is unresponsive (or just plain slow) especially if you have cold, dry fingers
-fingerprints stick to the screen sooo much (i guess it does for all touchscreens)
-the stupid flip cover to the usb port is hard to open if you have no fingernails
-the stupid usb is not a micro nor a mini so you need their special cable
-usb transfers are sloooooooow. i've never seen it go faster than 7 MB/s
-when the usb is plugged in to the computer, it appears you cannot use the player because the touchscreen is locked to the "usb charging" animation
-no expansion slot. it's not too much of an issue for me since i transfer music so frequently, but the lack of a slot smacks of nonexistant forethought.
-the amp section is poor. volume is 20-25 for IEMs, 30+ if you use open headphones in noisy environment, 35+ in the car. without tweaking the equalizer settings (for which there are far too many presets), the bass is fairly nonexistent or becomes mushy and horribly uncontrolled when you crank the vol.
-looks pretty impossible to replace the battery. the screw holes have stuff in there with no visible attachment points.