[rvikul]

Do you get better SQ out of the Zune dock vs the HP out? I didn't get the dock because it is not a true line-out in that it has a volume control.

 

[daglesj]

Well it sounds good to me. I use it with a 3.5mm jack that I silver soldered to a set of NVA Bronze IC's that plug into the AUX on my HiFi.

I set the Zune volume to 20 and away I go.

 

[nismo96]

There's some disheartening news floating around the techblogs right now. The Zune's sales are down 54% from last year. Also, MS is in the process of letting go of 5,000 employees. A big name on the Zune team, Cesar Menendez is among that group.

LINK

 

[Ojsinnerz]

Ouch. That's pretty bad.....

I want to buy a Zune myself, but the Cowon S9 is far too tempting.

 

[daglesj]

Well it might help if they started selling it further than North America (inc. Canada). I didnt even get to see one when I was looking in the shops in Vancouver. Plenty of Ipod but no Zunes anywhere.

If you want to sell stuff you at least have to bother getting it into the shops.

Zune still is a cult buy and needs pushing harder if MS is serious.

I can maybe see them dropping the HDD based ones and keeping the flash line going if the worst happens.

 

[Signal2Noise]

Problem I find too is the stores that have Zunes tend not to sell or mention them to people looking for a DAP. They always lead them over to the iPods. If I'm around I'll usually butt in to the sales pitch and tell the customer to check out the Zune!

 

[rvikul]

I hope the Zune doesn't go away. I hate the ipod interface and especially itunes and those were the main reasons i went with Zune. At the time of buying the Zune, i didn't realize it would not have an LOD option. Thats my only disappointment.

 

[daglesj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rvikul /img/forum/go_quote.gif I hope the Zune doesn't go away. I hate the ipod interface and especially itunes and those were the main reasons i went with Zune. At the time of buying the Zune, i didn't realize it would not have an LOD option. Thats my only disappointment.

Its not such a problem really as output is pretty darn good anyway.

What ticks me off are the folks that bitch that the 80+ doesnt have an EQ. Then they say "I dont use EQ at all but man it really p*****s me off it doesnt have it!"

I have a 30 and never use the EQ. Such a waste...

 

[marleyfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daglesj /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well it might help if they started selling it further than North America (inc. Canada). I didnt even get to see one when I was looking in the shops in Vancouver. Plenty of Ipod but no Zunes anywhere. If you want to sell stuff you at least have to bother getting it into the shops. Zune still is a cult buy and needs pushing harder if MS is serious. I can maybe see them dropping the HDD based ones and keeping the flash line going if the worst happens.

You must not have looked very hard. Both Future Shop and Best Buy have been selling them for a while in the Vancouver area. Future Shop in particular has a whole section for Zune.

 

[daglesj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marleyfan /img/forum/go_quote.gif You must not have looked very hard. Both Future Shop and Best Buy have been selling them for a while in the Vancouver area. Future Shop in particular has a whole section for Zune.

Are these slap bang in the centre of Vancouver because I just covered the 3-4 malls (Sears etc.) in the centre?

They arent exactly common place. I did look.

 

[rvikul]

dapreview DAPreview.net: MP3 Player News and Reviews: News / Comments / Zune sales are down 54% from last year still thinks there is hope:

"Although this news looks bad on the surface, I'm not too worried about the Zune. It has become the clear alternative to iPods and Microsoft isn't going to abandon it so prematurely. They just need to release something new. If I had to guess what that was, I'd say a touchscreen Zune is what they need and what many of us want. "

 

[swanlee]

I want one more hardware revision from the zune

Zune Touch
240Gb
full 10 band EQ
Same great Sound Quality

Yes I'm pissed the newer Zune's do not have an EQ and YES I use the EQ presets on my zune30.

I even went so far as to put a 100GB hard drive in my zune30 instead of buying a newer Zune because they lacked the EQ presets.

A DAP with NO sound customization options? That was pretty silly of MS. Thankfully MS left us with the volume control.

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rvikul /img/forum/go_quote.gif Do you get better SQ out of the Zune dock vs the HP out? I didn't get the dock because it is not a true line-out in that it has a volume control.

Lets be fair here. Fader control on the line-out is unnecessary, but what you're complaining about might be more of a software feature than anything else.

the line-out ports on the very well respected iriver h100 and h300 series all have volume control, but are in fact outputs taken directly from the codec without the added noise of a chip amp.

The line out on my rockboxed gigabeat F40 has no volume control, but from what i can glean from the datasheet for the wolfson codec in it, that's a matter of each of 5 outputs on the codec having it's own fader. Yes, I said five. the gigabeat doesn't use out_3, which is usually used to either provide an active virtual ground for the headphone jack or is combined with out_1 as a push-pull drive circuit for a speaker.

From what the wolfson datasheet says, four out of five outputs have the same power rating and iirc 98db SNR. The only major difference between headphone out and line out on the F series gigabeat is the size of the output coupling cap (when not using out_3 as a virtual ground).

And i can tell you that the line out on the F40 sounds as good or better than the line out on the H120.

The F40 also doesn't have as much oomph on the headphone jack as the H120 - because they didn't add a relatively noisy outboard headphone buffer chip.

So, to say that the zune doesn't have a real line out because it has volume control on the line out doesn't really examine whether or not that line out is genuine or not.

 

[insicor]

Er, BB and FS here all stock them. BB had a great sale a while back where they were giving away free 8 gig flash Zunes with the purchase of the 120.

 

[daglesj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by insicor /img/forum/go_quote.gif Er, BB and FS here all stock them. BB had a great sale a while back where they were giving away free 8 gig flash Zunes with the purchase of the 120.

But are they slap bang in the centre of the city in the main shopping areas?

Thats just two stores. How many stores can you buy an Ipod in?

Its not really trying is it?