[shigzeo]

yes faichuu, cowon make good products that are flawed ultimately like every other player. i do wish so much that they did release better firmwares that had gapless and well, rid the horrid processing they have.

i know i am no staunch supporter, but mate, you make me look a faery here and you a troll. wait one more big important thing: recording not in wma, recording some sort of linear pcm and either ogg or mp3, why oh why in wma? and why limit it to 256? bother me bother me.

a proper line in for me would do wonders over even a proper line out. the cowon's headout to an amp at volume 50 seems to do great with an amp attached. check this link with headsix. this is supplied by dfkt here on headfi who obviously spent hours making these tests. i hope to bright and almighty that s/he does not own all of these and was able to borrow them otherwise, next the computer might have to go to fund the habit and then we will have fewer of these wonderful tests.

the amp as you can see changes the entire nature of the thing with low imp phones. when the headout is unloaded, it provides very very good sound - really, a line out is unneeded portably. If you want to hook up to large systems i can see the need but at the same time, just use your computer instead, a portable supplying a hifi has always been funny.

line in rather than combined line in, usb and charging would make me think twice about being such a half-troll on their products.

 

[LostPhil]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo /img/forum/go_quote.gif i hope to bright and almighty that s/he does not own all of these and was able to borrow them otherwise, next the computer might have to go to fund the habit and then we will have fewer of these wonderful tests.

You've obviously never seen DaHarder's collection on DapReview.net. It's insane!

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo /img/forum/go_quote.gif the amp as you can see changes the entire nature of the thing with low imp phones. when the headout is unloaded, it provides very very good sound - really, a line out is unneeded portably. If you want to hook up to large systems i can see the need but at the same time, just use your computer instead, a portable supplying a hifi has always been funny.

Personally speaking, it would be nice for them to have a "line out" setting to switch to volume 50/no effects or EQ rather than having to fiddle about with it but there you go. I use my laptop now anyway.

I really want to know how the U5 sounds and whether it's got the same problems as the D2...

 

[LostPhil]

Here is the email I sent earlier. I'm not too happy with it now I've read it back but it was the best I could come up with in a short amount of time:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Me! Hi Jeff, I've heard on the grapevine that you could forward on some ideas about which direction people would like Cowon to go. I've just made a quick list of common problems stopping people from buying Cowon products although I know some are catering for niche markets. - Native gapless playback. Currently only the Trekstor Vibez plus a very small other players can do this without the help of a program to load music onto the player. The iPod can do this with the help of iTunes. I believe that just implementing a good gapless solution for most of the supported formats would be enough for a lot of people to take note. - A Hard Disk Drive player for the western market is desperately needed since the only competitors are the Microsoft Zune and the iPod Classic, both of which tie you to software on the PC. The A3 and Q5W are just too big to be used as an audio player. - Proper playlisting support on the flash memory players. I had read a statement from Cowon that there is no plan to support this but it doesn't make any sense. With the flash memory players growing in capacity, surely .m3u playlist support makes sense? - A lot of people, including myself were/are getting frustrated with firmware updates for the D2 because for most of them, new features such as notepads were being added/corrected with problems such as the ogg vorbis track ordering in the music library were being ignored (which was needed since then the SDHC card integration was worthless). Also, it was puzzling that features that were in no way related to music/video playback were being added at all. Thankfully, the latest update is a step in the right direction with correct flac ordering and the ogg vorbis being worked on but it's taken a year... - A dedicated line out would be nice. It would come in handy and the audiophiles will take note too. - Thorough testing with 16 and 32 ohm headphones would be nice since the D2 can't produce decent bass through these (I mean the lowest frequencies are completely lost) and Cowon's reputation for top-sounding players is a little hurt because of this. I hope this doesn't come across as a guy who thinks the company doesn't know what you are doing and that it's some help to you. I own an X5 and a D2 and would like my next player to be from you too but if the competition stays like this, I will have to jump ship! I just want the best player for listening to music and I know others are after the same. Thanks for reading Phil

 

[UseName]

I first have to say that my D2 is probably the 'best-fit' DAP for me at this time. However, it is far from perfect.

The thing that really bothers me about cowon is that they have a ton of features (which is great) but they are all kinda half-assed. And they seem to add new features with new firmware updates when other more basic functionality problems remain.

It's frustrating because it looks like they have the resources to make one of the best players, but really fail to allocated them appropriately. It's almost like the programmers are free to code whatever they wish.

I buy a player to play music and video, not to add and subtract or draw crappy small pictures with my finger.

 

[sigsegv0x0B]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cowon_1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Man if a new Cowon had all that you listed I'd pay a high price for it...and add ape support to that list. I'm getting so tired of all these small capacity flash players, I have so many of them but none that can hold all my music. I'm so close to buying a zune....it's just so embarrassing for me to carry around a Zune or an ipod...kinda like your in with the stupid masses. Carrying around a Cowon...now that is style.

Or maybe ego and ignorance for not knowing any better? If other people like it it's not cool enough for me logic is silly... but unfortunately very common lately.

 

[faichiu]

So you suggest that if I need to use cowon product, i need to sell all my phones and buy a warm sound earphone just for this particular player that you suggested?

Well, for this, I will say goodbye to cowon. sorry.
I will go for other companys that compatible with my currently owned earphone. Sony, apple, and chinese made player like meizu and Teclast does not have this problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shauntell47 /img/forum/go_quote.gif ok, i think we've heard enough of you and your fellow cowonhaters... you might be right about cowons not having very good sq using flac... but the reason your iaudio u3 sounds digitalized or robotic is probably your headphones or your imagination... i have mostly warm, dynamic headphones and do not perceive any robotic voices singing to me... unless you can find proof of alien invasion, i suggest you give up this idea...

 

[zotjen]

For me it would be:

larger HDD
Line out without the subpack
Continued support of ogg
Continued inclusion of FM radio

 

[breakfastchef]

Contacting Cowon may be less than useless. The company will design and release DAP's that, first, appeal to the Korean market, and then meet the needs of the rest of the world. I am certain they do market research and figure out what types of players will yield the greatest amount of monetary return.

I am a mod on the Cowon America website and have yet to see any interest in the posts by forum members by the corporate offices - U.S. or Korea. So, I think lambasting them with email pleas for certain functions will likely be ignored.

I personlly think the X5 series of DAP's was their best. I do not hold out hope that they are inclined to increase disk size or change any direction they are moving with their products. That said, a barrage of reasonable emails with feature requests may be valuable.

 

[LostPhil]

Quote:

Originally Posted by faichiu /img/forum/go_quote.gif So you suggest that if I need to use cowon product, i need to sell all my phones and buy a warm sound earphone just for this particular player that you suggested? Well, for this, I will say goodbye to cowon. sorry. I will go for other companys that compatible with my currently owned earphone. Sony, apple, and chinese made player like meizu and Teclast does not have this problem.

But then the X5 doesn't have the problem even if the D2 does (never heard the U3) so firing off generalisations about their entire product range doesn't help. And before anyone jumps in, I've never made any about Apple products apart from that I don't like them.

I really don't like that email I sent them, it sounds like I know it all when I don't. I couldn't fit my dry sense of humour in there at all!

sigsegv0x0B, I'm not sure if that was intended humour! I have to confess I like carrying around/use something that's unique but then if it is common then I'd rather customise it than hate it for it.

 

[syed786]

hey lostphil,
how is the sound of cowon d2 with all your earphones, BECAUSE I HEARD COWON D2 HAD ROBOTIC DIGITIZED

AND SMALL SOUND STAGE SOUND IS THAT TRUE?

PLEASE ANSWER QUICK BECAUSE I NEED TO MAKE MY PURCHASE OR WHICH PLAYER YOU CAN RECOMMEND ME IN

TERMS OF SOUND QUALITY,

IPOD TOUCH, ZUNE 80, COWON D2, IRIVER, SONY NWZ-A800 SERIES.
THANKS....

 

[LostPhil]

I couldn't make a recommendation since I've only heard the D2. You seemed to have asked around about this a few times and I doubt I can add anything further since I don't know what you want from the player.

 

[TonySunshine]

a UMS 40GB+ HDD player is all I ask for

 

[ShinyFalcon]

I have an iRiver ifp-799, A818, and a Cowon D2 waiting for me at home, so I'll tell you what I think about the D2 when I get back home. I do love my iRiver, and I feel sad neglecting it since I thought it sounded bad... but I used earbuds back then

. And only 1gb too...

 

[Cowon_1]

I emailed them...

I requested pretty much the same things curbfeeler minus the wifi, although it would be a very nice feature it is something I could go without. I just want an awesome high capacity music player that can do video half decently, and 3 inch screen would be awesome to, but no bigger so to keep the overall size as small as possible.

Man if Cowon put out a dap with all that, it would be soooo awesome, I salivate just thinking about it.
I'm still very close to buying a Zune, I just wish you didn't need to use software and you could view everything in folder view and use it as a mass storage device so I could store files other than music and videos. Those are the reasons I still don't own a iPod classic or Zune. I still can't figure out why Cowon didn't come out with a new version of the X5. Boggles my mind.

 

[majkel]

To Cowon (I guess) - Get rid of Telechips systems on chip. They corrupt ogg playback, especially TCC7801. Or force Telechips to fix it. This is a big disadvantage for me when the best lossy codec gets "flavored" with all the time static in the background and false beeps accompanying the sounds. mp3 and wma codecs sound incomplete to me and regarding lossless - I don't distinguish ogg Q8 and higher from lossless on portable players so I don't want to waste memory on a small device (I'm not a jukebox fan), but the advantage of ogg Vorbis over mp3 and wma matters to me. I didn't buy the clix2 for myself due to the same issue I heard on Cowon D2, and now I'm currently a happy owner of iRiver E10 - clear ogg Vorbis playback and terrific sound quality overall. I'm looking forward to a flash based player being at least around as good SQ-wise. Good luck!