[swanlee]

So I have been pretty happy with my SFLO:2 for the last year as a side note I have been looking for a good Win7 tablet for pretty much the last 5 years. Little did I think these paths would cross.
 
As you know win7 tablets have been slow to come out, people have harped that Win7 cannot be used for touch screen devices and heralded the Ipad as the second coming.
 
For my needs an ipad is useless, simply a bigger ipod touch. I've always wanted a really good win7 tablet.
 
Well a month ago I got an EXOPC, 11.6 inch Win7  tablet,  2Gb ram, very fast 64GB SSD etc.
 
You can see it here
 
www.exopc.com
 
I'll include a picture in this post.
 
For starters win7 works great on a touch device win7 out of the box is built for touch but a few tweaks and 5 mins later and it is even more usable. Don't let anyone talk down Win7 on a touch device as chances are they have not used it and are just parroting some apple talking points.
 
It works, it works well and it allows you use of millions of programs.
 
Now onto the Audio portion of this shpeal.
 
So the cool part of a portable win7 device is the ability to install any audio program and playback any audio codec.
 
This right here cuts out alot of issues with normal portable audio devices,
 
So I installed Foobar 2000 and played tweaked the EQ within it and played back some .wma and .flac files
 
low and behold the headphone output on this device sounds stellar. I was quite surprised I never intended this device to end up as my primary portable audio player but it has done that now.
 
As you may know I really loved my SFLO2 and posted ALOT about it here, it is still a great player but I have to admit I enjoy the output on the EXOPC more than the SFLO:2
 
I have not done any RMAA tests or anything but here are some thing the EXOPC does better.
 
No background noise at all, the noise floor is completely silent, no buzzing in the background, no hiss no nothing, literally has a super clean and silent noise floor.
 
Very powerful output, the SFLO:2 is pretty powerful but the EXOPC output is even more powerful with no distortion and is able to power headphones very well.
 
No high end drop off, high are crystal clear, adjusting the high upper freqs in the foobar EQ makes a huge differences so the hardware is not limiting higher up freqs.
 
So from a straight sound perspective I was pretty shocked but really do think the EXOPC sounds better than my SFLO:2
 
So the other cool part of a Win7 portable audio device is it gives me full access to my 1TB of lossless audio. The unit only has 64GB on board and it has an SD card slot as well to give you up to 96GB of storage. But on my Wifi network I simply map a drive to my external media drive and just like that my 1TB of lossless audio is there and playable over wifi.
 
Something so simple as simply mapping a drive in windows just opens up huge possibilities and takes away any storage space issues while you are on your network.
 
something to consider though
 
For purely portable on the road use with no wifi access you are stuck with 96GB max, after win7 and programs it is more like 80GB. Battery life is only a little over 4 hrs, bummer but pretty good when you consider this is a full blown pc in a tablet form that has great headphone out SQ. But I'm sure some people will simply run away at 4hrs battery life. at 11.6 inches it is not pocket friendly
 
Now for the way I use a portable audio device this does not bother me, I actually tend to be at home and use headphones to not bother my wife and 1 year old son. So it is pretty cool to be listening to music in great quality, surf the web, walk around the house with it.
 
From a pure portable standpoint it still can be useful as it is more codec and player friendly than the ipad and I'd hazard a guess that it sounds better as well since it trumps the SFLO:2 in SQ.
 
As a windows device with USB ports you could also connect an external DAC for even better SQ.
 
 
I'm aware that size, and battery life may make it completely useless to most as a portable audio device, but if you are in this tiny little niche that can deal with this and wants a good sounding tablet that can map a drive to Windows pc's and play back any codec audio then this would be a great option.
 

 

[anadin]

You must have big pockets.

 

[swanlee]

Not totally big pockets as I bought it to replace my old netbook that sounded horrible and was seriously clunky and never did what I needed a win7 tablet to do. I've been waiting along time for a good usable windows tablet this year we finally got one. The EXOPC just so happened to sound great so now it replaces two devices. Well worth it in my opinion

 

[BotByte]

Well, to say I have a Asus Netbook (some thin black one with 10 hours battery, don't ask for the model) that shows I don't use ti much.
 
I use it for school, and other then that, I use my zune as a music player. I like something small to stow away instead of a netbook I need to make sure ti doesn't fall off the table.
 
It might sound like a good idea to combine two products, yet you might find it to be more cumbersome then the two. IMO
 
You can buy a great music player that has wifi to it (Ipod touch, Cowon d3 -still not out!-) if you have your own wifi
 
I use the netbook because my school is stingy and won't allow anything without a massive virus protection on them, It I could use my zune, I would love to, or even my kindle.

 

[Szadzik]

Battery life kills it for me. As soon as someone makes a Win7 tablet with 10 hours of battery life I will get it. For now I will pass and keep looking at Android tablets.

 

[swanlee]

 
Quote:

Battery life kills it for me. As soon as someone makes a Win7 tablet with 10 hours of battery life I will get it. For now I will pass and keep looking at Android tablets.

Better battery life would be awesome but somehow this device exactly fits my needs even though I was not expecting it. The key here is with Ipads, android devices etc you can't map a drive to a Windows PC and play back any media type. Some programs allows you to stream your media from your pc to a browser based device but none I have  tired allow lossless streaming to the device and it is usually pretty picky on the type of browser you can use to access it.  So you are still dealing with local storage issues.
 
In essence for my use my storage issues are completely freed up, instant access to 1TB of lossless audio at the expense of battery life which for my uses is a good trade off.
 
You can also plug in any USB external DAC if you want to improve the SQ.
 
Also external battery pack work with the EXOPC, I'm not trying to imply this is a very portable solution but there is a small segment of head fiers that use laptops, ipads etc as there portable audio devices and the EXOPC is very flexible being a Win7 and just so happens to have a great baseline SQ which alot of netbooks\notebooks lack.

 

[Szadzik]

What I always wanted from a tablet was better battery life than my laptop to make it more oprtable. My laptop will last 4-5 hours on battery and thus buying a tablet that lasts less is out of hte question. I travel a lot and need a device that will enable me to watch movies and browse internet at airports etc,. but it needs to hold charge for a long time to do that.
 
Quote:

 


Better battery life would be awesome but somehow this device exactly fits my needs even though I was not expecting it. The key here is with Ipads, android devices etc you can't map a drive to a Windows PC and play back any media type. Some programs allows you to stream your media from your pc to a browser based device but none I have  tired allow lossless streaming to the device and it is usually pretty picky on the type of browser you can use to access it.  So you are still dealing with local storage issues.
 
In essence for my use my storage issues are completely freed up, instant access to 1TB of lossless audio at the expense of battery life which for my uses is a good trade off.
 
You can also plug in any USB external DAC if you want to improve the SQ.
 
Also external battery pack work with the EXOPC, I'm not trying to imply this is a very portable solution but there is a small segment of head fiers that use laptops, ipads etc as there portable audio devices and the EXOPC is very flexible being a Win7 and just so happens to have a great baseline SQ which alot of netbooks\notebooks lack.

 

[Ricardo Dawkins]

Quote:

Battery life kills it for me. As soon as someone makes a Win7 tablet with 10 hours of battery life I will get it. For now I will pass and keep looking at Android tablets.

one word: OakTrail

 

[Szadzik]

 
Quote:

one word: OakTrail

Asus Eeepad looks interesting and I hope there will be more good tablets as at the moment I am not convinced there is anything on the market that is really wort buying - and I have no fund limits. I hope someone will soon release something, I am really waiting to buy a good tablet with good specs and good battery life. 

 

[swanlee]

Just to follow up I have been using my EXOPC as my primary audio source for several months now and it works and sound amazing. I'm using AIMP2 as the player which sounds better runs better than foobar and is compatible with winamp plugins, I'm using the bass exciter winamp plug in with great results. I also replaced my hippo VB IEM's with a set of larger can the TMA-1's.
 
I really loved the sflo:2 but I have to say this combination of software and the audio hardware of the EXOPC trumps the SFLO:2
 
I map to my external drive through Wifi and have access to my audio collection and I'm able to wireless stream 24bit 96k sources files and play them perfectly at full res.
 
 
not sure if I will ever be able to go back to just a stand alone portable dap at this point.
 

 

[sbradley02]

Just started using my ExoPC as my portable source. Running Windows 8 Developer preview.
Currently using MediaMonkey will have to look at the app you mention.
Has anyone found a portable DC source (battery powered) that works with an ExoPC?

 

[Szadzik]

Quote:

Just started using my ExoPC as my portable source. Running Windows 8 Developer preview.
Currently using MediaMonkey will have to look at the app you mention.
Has anyone found a portable DC source (battery powered) that works with an ExoPC?

 
Try something like XPal 18000.

 

[sbradley02]

I ran across that also after I posted here. Will have to get one before my next trip. Someone did a video where they got over 9 hours with one.
 
Quote:

 
Try something like XPal 18000.