Hello, folks, I finally got into the world of Hi-Fi audio with the AK JR, and so far...
Well, I thought I'd ask here for some help on getting the most out of my device, as well as give my own impressions so far.
First off, disclosure; I got this largely because I was sick and tired of devices dying after a year, maybe half a year, and I figured Hi-Fi devices ought to take a bit more punishment.
Second - well, the quality really is pretty great, even with junky earbuds.
I picked up some high fidelity plugs, but they're the type that go directly into your ears and - in addition to being pretty uncomfortable - don't seem to stay put, or offer a huge amount of variation in sound quality, especially when compared to song quality.
At this point, I'm thinking I just might wear clunky headphones around for the sound quality and comfort.
So, the AK Jr...
It seems a little questionable, to be honest, I kind of feel like I wasted my cash. Maybe I'm handling it wrong, but there's usually a 3-8 second delay between switching songs, something that I haven't dealt with on low-fidelity Ipods, Zunes, or the APGtek (my previous player). I've read this might be due to the vast majority of songs being stored on the device, but - what's the point of that capacity if it takes so long to use? Currently removing all but a hundred to see if that has a noticeable effect. If not, I'd
love to know some ways to speed up song-swapping.
Two - what do you all use to copy your music over? I've used Musicbee for some time, but the format it exports for playlists - m3u - doesn't seem to work. There's an option to export static playlists as .pls files, but even with the song data located correctly (Music\AlbumName\Song_Title.format), the playlist is detected on my player... But doesn't detect music, instead displaying gibberish as if it's reading some things from the playlist, but out of order. I'm open to suggestions here!
Battery life seems pretty good, the player is really sharp, though, and there seems to be no efficient way to lock it while allowing for transfer between songs. Tapping the power once disables the volume control on the right, but like
Hellkitchen, I get a pretty bad audio variance between songs, even songs that have a fairly similar output pre-transfer. Not sure what that is, and not
100% sure it's the JR, trying to narrow it down so I can get some more help/help other people looking for answers...
Honestly, I just want a rugged player that plays music and only music, with a big capacity. No art, no frills, no touchy-buttons and the like. Alas, I don't think there's such a thing, haha!
Though I mentioned a lot of complaints, I'd wager most are user unfamiliarity, and I'm hoping to get some advice on those things (especially what y'all use for your music transfer. Help a guy out, natch?); the audio quality is definitely better then the faint, tinny sound I'm used to, and I won't deny that the player
looking and
sounding great is a nice change of pace.
Hellkitchen; if I figure out what's causing the audio disparity, I'll report back here.
Things I'm gonna test, unless someone comes back with the obvious solution I'm probably missing, are file formats (does it only occur with certain formats? If so, what? I've got a lot of different types of music... .mp3, .flac, .ogg, more uncommon formats), the shuffle feature, and maybe trying to get it volume locked. That's all that jumps out at me at the moment. Here's hoping we can crack this one!