[dnewhous]

Any significant difference in audio fidelity between those 3 players? Any other difference between the 3 upon which I should base my selection?

 

[a_tumiwa]

i believe iAudio 7 is the best among 3

 

[Miyazaki]

x2. IA7 definitely the winner for audio fidelity. No competition whatsoever.

 

[dnewhous]

Re-using my old thread.

Changing the competition slightly. iAudio 9 replaces the iAudio 7. The Samsung YP-P3 is added to the competition. Samsung got on board with the FLAC club.

Is the iAudio 9 still the best?

I've noticed the reviews for the Sansa players aren't so good. And they are marked down at about half off of retail price, which is not a good sign.

 

[WalkGood]

Personally I'd go with the i9, new jeteffects sound tweaks and nice slim design, good luck with the decision. BTW the abi review is out here if you haven't seen it yet.

 

[theKraken11]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dnewhous /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've noticed the reviews for the Sansa players aren't so good. And they are marked down at about half off of retail price, which is not a good sign.

The SQ of the Clip/Clip+ and Fuze consistently get good ratings. The problem with the Sansa players is apparently that they are released with unstable firmware. A lot of people got burned because they bought their Sansa right away and found it had problems (you can read about this on Anythingbutipod), but there have been a number of firmware updates since then and they seem to be stable. As for price, Sandisk seems to be positioning themselves as a budget choice, not because they make lackluster audio players, just because they have fewer features than many other players, like no touch screen, no customizable backgrounds, no stellar video playback, etc. Even with these limitations, there are other reasons to pick up a Sansa, if something like expandable storage is a must.

Edit: personally, I'd recommend the Fuze over the Clip line. You get a larger screen with no (sorry) ugly black background, and a LOD in case you need it.

 

[dnewhous]

The most substantion criticism of the i9 is the nonstandard USB attachment. But the YP-P3 has the same problem.

Gomadic does have power adapters for the P3 and not the i9.

I also don't care about expansion cards. My main music storage device is a 500 GB portable G-Tech hard drive. I'm already using 56 GB of it and I have only ripped about 1/3 of my music collection.


The purpose of this unit is to keep my adrenaline rushing when I am at the gym.

If only Sony supported FLAC, then this would all be a total no brainer.

Also, it's clear that comparing the i9 to the P3 is comparing apples and oranges. Samsung's closest equivalent is the Q2.

ABI refers to the E100 as an "epic fail." The E150 is out, but is not listed on Iriver's site.

Sansa has one huge feature that truly does set it apart from the competition - the ability to create playlists using the device itself.