mwallace573
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 16, 2006
- Posts
- 1,390
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- 10
The reason I ask is that tax time is just around the corner, and I am looking to either upgrade to a newer player or just upgrade the HDD in my Zen. The Xtra is the only DAP I have ever owned or listened to, so I have no clue how other players sound. I have heard that the output of the Xtra is very neutral. I would like to rule out iPods as an alternative, as I don't really like the smallness of them (afraid of breaking it in my warehouse job), unless it sounds that much better than my Xtra. I would also like to rule out any not in production DAPs out there (H1XX series iRiver, Karma, etc...). Video playback is not necessary, this will be used solely for audio playback, and the capacity has to be over 20GB. I guess that rules out everything except for Cowon, Creative, and Microsoft.
The Zune: I have heard a lot of good things about this player hardware wise. The software seems to be a nightmare though, but that doesn't concern me too much. My big question is does or will the Zune have a line-out? That is the one thing stopping me from jumping on this player, as I go amped 95% of the time.
Creative Zen Vision M: I have heard lots of good things about this player as well. It seems to have a good line-out (via dock that is a little bulky but looks aren't a big priority with me). I have also heard that this player's output is a bit on the bright side (not neutral like it's predecessor). Is this just from the headphone out or does it sound this way out of the line-out as well?
Cowon X5: I don't know a whole lot about this player. The biggest complaint I have heard about it is the fact that the unit has a bad line-out (something about a bass roll-off). The OGG and FLAC playback don't really appeal to me, as I already have over 20GB of self encoded mp3s and don't plan on re-encoding my library anytime soon. I have also read that this device organizes files with a directory structure, instead of reading off the ID3 tag like I am used to. Does the unit still look at the ID3 tag to get song information like the track number, artist, etc, or does it sort it by filename as well?
So many questions I know, but I want to make the right choice and have something that I will enjoy for the next couple of years.
The Zune: I have heard a lot of good things about this player hardware wise. The software seems to be a nightmare though, but that doesn't concern me too much. My big question is does or will the Zune have a line-out? That is the one thing stopping me from jumping on this player, as I go amped 95% of the time.
Creative Zen Vision M: I have heard lots of good things about this player as well. It seems to have a good line-out (via dock that is a little bulky but looks aren't a big priority with me). I have also heard that this player's output is a bit on the bright side (not neutral like it's predecessor). Is this just from the headphone out or does it sound this way out of the line-out as well?
Cowon X5: I don't know a whole lot about this player. The biggest complaint I have heard about it is the fact that the unit has a bad line-out (something about a bass roll-off). The OGG and FLAC playback don't really appeal to me, as I already have over 20GB of self encoded mp3s and don't plan on re-encoding my library anytime soon. I have also read that this device organizes files with a directory structure, instead of reading off the ID3 tag like I am used to. Does the unit still look at the ID3 tag to get song information like the track number, artist, etc, or does it sort it by filename as well?
So many questions I know, but I want to make the right choice and have something that I will enjoy for the next couple of years.
