SyncMate, per the developers and my personal experience, doesn't work with the AK240 - which is no surprise, given that it relies upon libMTP and that doesn't support any AK products. See the code here: http://sourceforge.net/p/libmtp/code/ci/HEAD/tree/src/music-players.h   If anyone has...

Another tip: the utility Bliss is fantastic. I had it go through my entire collection, change the tags to the correct version of IDv4, ensure all the artwork was sufficiently small and this solved a bunch of odd behaviour. The other thing I found really improved load time and prevented problems...

Anyone?

Au contraire :)

By dynamic: A playlist where you can use conditionals (like iTunes does with Smart Playlists) such as: Genre contains "Rock" Year is between xxxx and yyyy (play all 1990s music this way, for example)   And critically: can you copy all music to the device based upon it being in a playlist...

For $2,500 I expect the level of UI features, functionality, and ease of use of an iPod Classic combined with iTunes, and the sound quality to be better than the already-excellent AK120.

Hey thanks! I'm really focussed on usability. Are these proper implementations of the formats? The PLS implementation in the AK120 was quite broken, is why I ask.   And: how can you get the playlist - both the file and the files - synced to the device?   Thanks in advance for any help - I've...

And usability?

It is very fiddly - it has always been - but if you try it enough times you can get it to work. It is just (one of many) things iriver need to fix.

Thanks! It doesn't really tell you what support for playlists there is other than making and editing one on the device itself - but it does mention an app for the Mac called MTP. Unfortunately, this cannot be downloaded by anyone in Switzerland as AK have done something that prevents any page on...

1. How does the playlist support differ from the 120? 2. Is it possible to define playlists on a PC or Mac and export them to the unit? 3. Are dynamic playlists supported - like those iTunes supports? 4. What playlist formats does the machine support? 5. Does the unit sync contents with a PC...

+1 - I have a 20,000 track collection, of which more than 1/3 are 24-bit. Hence my obsession with usability, playlist support, etc. And space ;)

That's all great - but until we see some real details on the differences between 120 and 240 in usability...

Jude, thanks so much for all the detail. The point above is tantalizing: can you tell us more about what features the UI has? What about playlist support, ratings of songs and ability to dynamically play songs based upon criteria - basically, what elements other than search are there?   I'm...

I'm with you. This is a premium-priced product with a UI that's appropriate to a cheap small 8GB player. There's no way I'll be paying for any further A&K products unless there's a dramatic increase in basic functions like dynamic playlists, ratings support, much faster library scanning, real...

My fear with that one is the cable is too short - I want to tape it to the AK and then slide the leather case over it. Also, shipping time is really long - which would be OK if it weren't for the short cable concern.   Or is this one something anyone else has used with the AK, and I needn't...

Thanks for that very helpful reply ;) It did occur to me to try those things in advance of asking the question. As you'll see from the following reply, the prices are stupidly high and/or the cable length is too long to be useful in another case.

None whatsoever.

Morning all - I've got a space problem on my unit and need to use a 128GB SD card to solve it. I know that someone else here has done the same and found a very compact ribbon cable to connect the larger card to the slot in the AK - I've searched and searched and I know it is here somewhere, but...

I found some information on other threads here that may help, though they require running Widows.   See these threads: here for how to generate the playlist that the AK can deal with and here to edit the playlists as the AK implementation of M3U is a bit off (meaning, broken...).   I have...

I don't have that problem either, and never have.

I get album art (mostly reliably) using FLAC and ALAC

Kid3 on the mac does this beautifully.

I'll get it - but only if the playlists etc work properly. The AK1xx players have great sound, but the overall usability I find quite low-grade especially for the price.

I am also driven crazy by the very rudimentary AK120 selection - no ratings, playlist support for M3U that is broken, etc.   I've started a support incident with iRiver to ask them what they recommend be used to manage playlists. I suspect they'll say iRiver plus4, but perhaps they'll also...