[shigzeo]

well, my cowon never got more than 40 hours even when not using the sdhc expansion. cowon state overmuch and you get a bit less. apple generally understate now as they got flack way back in the day. ive not heard an ipod that performs less than its spec since 2004 and the 3rd gen but it was my mates and he does not use batteries the way they are intended to work.

cowon are a good brand, but they are flying on the whuffie of their x5 series that was really just a solid player despite its so-so headphone driving power. it is a great player. i think the d2 has potential with rockbox to be great and that will possibly come out this year as an official build.

if you are really concerned about sq, you might shy away from any of these major brands and look at the new hifiman from head direct. it has some ifs about it but it certainly won't disappoint in true headphone driving power and dac quality.

i think that no matter what apple do, they will be a non-audiophile brand just because of their popularity. cowon will have the opposite problem, particularly as they ride on the x5 success and the fact that they used to have 'audiophile' in their name. whether we like it or not, audiophiles are market geeks more than anything though we will deny it.

i really wish all players would have access to rockbox. i would love it on my touch 2g, my meizu m6, my sony 636 and 615 and 828 and would have probably kept my d2 had it been available then.

 

[ziobob86]

-i changed the battery of my ipod 4 months ago,(i buyed the original from ifixit) but her life is shorter respcet at the original battery,

-the cowon software/menu is not intuitive? is better rockbox firmware?
i like me the original firmware of ipod and i like me rockbox too.

 

[SanDiegoDave]

To me the sound quality of the D2 is top notch (but it would be nice to have a line out). The firmware/GUI are much improved now days. You can even install the D2+ firmware on the D2 for the latest and greatest GUI.

 

[SanDiegoDave]

Also, the battery life of the D2 is great.

 

[RedSky0]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shigzeo /img/forum/go_quote.gif sound 'quality' or preference is very debatable. both are good sounding players and have many followers. i did not really enjoy the sound of my d2 and sold it, but find the ipod 5g to be a very nice and natural sounding player without any big defects but without any excitement. if you want excitement, you should go for a sony, cowon or some company who offer good eq variety and other enhancements. ipod is pretty for strictly neutral playback but not good at all for enhancements. i am using ipod touch 2g now which was the player i migrated to after selling my d2 (actually, that was the 1g touch which I also preferred to the d2). if you need things like aac playback and gapless playback, then the ipod is almost unparalleled. the zune also offers both if you have windows and sony players from japan do the same if you have windows and want to re-encode your CD's to atrac. if you just want to drag and drop and forget it and don't like apple, zune or sony, stick with cowon.

With rockbox, iPods are great for EQing the sound, far better in my opinion than anything that the D2 could do which sounded muffled if I budged its EQ more than a point or two. Same with drag and drop obviously, installing rockbox on the iPod enables it.

This only applies to the 5/5.5G and down of course. For 6G+ I completely agree.

I find Cowons pretty heavily overrated here when I compare it to my impressions. They are very articulate but they are also harsh and bright. 5.5G iPods are also quite articulate, not as much, but then they are not remotely bright. They (the D2) also have no deep bass to speak of, and this is regardless of whether you use high or low ohm headphones from my experience. Their sound stage is also narrow, although it can effectively be fixed by a built in enhancement.

 

[ziobob86]

i don't like the cold and clear and sour sound!
in conclusion you don't recommended d2+ and i remain with the ipod?

 

[Starsky5000]

I bought a Cowon D2+ recently & loved the sound signature. I like the cold, clear & analytic sound. It's the main reason i chose the Cowon D2+ is for it's outstanding sound quality above all it's other features. Before that i had my first ever mp3 player the Cowon U3 which introduced me to the great sound quality of Cowon players. I can't complain about the Cowon D2+ sound quality it's excellent. I don't like warm sound signatures...it's just not for me.

 

[shigzeo]

the clear sound mainly comes from the fact that when driving headphones, there is a steady decline in the bass and a steady incline in treble. the rmaa i have done and also seen form dfkt' shows that treble is bumped up in respect to the rest of spectrum. bass of course falls off very early with no semblence after 30hz at about minus 20 db. it starts falling about 75 or so.

but, i would have kept my d2 if it was rockboxed two years ago. it simply was not the player for me. if you like it, that is great as it is a good player.

 

[0947]

Oh what the heck I'll just lose my posting virginity here [long time lurker first time poster].

This turned into a mini-review somehow.

I had the Ipod 5g 30gig with rockbox for some time, even with a brand new battery rockbox still drained it pretty quickly. Rockbox was what I used the most because the regular apple firmware just felt so lacking and featureless. I didn't use any of the EQ in rockbox because before my D2+ I had no idea what to do.

The D2+ is great because of all the amazing features you will rarely use, but they are great like video you must convert and the drawing thing that can't be used while listening to music.

Let's talk about sound quality which is I think the only thing that matters for OP. Well I'm not an audiophile so I'm not the best person for advice but here I go; I find the 5g kind of smooth but not as detailed as the D2+, this is just with my Grado SR60i headphones which are not high-end enough to evaluate this well so this might all be placebo. I have a lot of fun with my D2+ going to the sound setting and changing the values around, I have learned some stuff and can better customize it to make my headphones sound their best [SR60i have little to no bass so i just turn the low end 80k up and Bass-3-mach-something effect up to 5 and get some base for a change]. I find that the other effects are useless[maybe it's my headphones] because they just make the sound all convoluted, it is like your music is running at the same time from a hundred different sources, I like to leave everything flat which makes the music sound clear and pleasurable.

I was in OP's situation, I had an ipod 5g and was deciding whether to get a D2+, I decided to do it. Do I regret it? No [I hated my ipod]. Am I completely happy? No [D2+ has a few problems].

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziobob86 /img/forum/go_quote.gif i don't like the cold and clear and sour sound! in conclusion you don't recommended d2+ and i remain with the ipod?

So my final advice is that if you like your ipod you should not get a D2+. I understand why you might not like cold sound but I don't get why you would not want clear sound. I don't think the D2+ is cold [not any much more than the 5g] specially with all the affects that can change the sound. The review on anythingbutipod.com said that the D2 is for tweaker and that didn't make sense until i actually started playing with the sound settings. If you just want to listen to music an you like the way that the 5g sounds stick with it until something better comes along. If you want to play with your music and experience a song in different ways get the D2+.

Why did I get a D2+? For me it wasn't really about the sound, the fact that people said it sounded good is just a plus. I got it because it was cheap, 160$ on newegg for 16gigs and it has expansion so i can just buy a memory card for cheap if I want more memory.

Things I hate about my D2+

1. It has hard drive corruption. If you dump a bunch of files in it, it will go wonky and not show you the files inside folders so you can't play any music or look at flash files. I have it under control now but sometimes putting files on it is like a video game [not a really fun one]. You are putting a bunch of files in your D2+, you must put them all in but you can only put few at a time [less then 1gig i found is the safest] remove the device check that the files are showing up, plug back in and repeat. I also found that the a cool flash map of new york that was very helpful just had too many files and was the main thing that was giving me hard drive corruptions.

2. You can't draw while listening to music

 

[RedSky0]

Try playing with your iPod EQ in rockbox as well, by pushing up the bass/treble boosts or fiddling with the gain on 20-60Hz frequencies, just remember to push the precut down to prevent it clipping. In my experience at least the D2 sounded incredibly muffled if you used the EQ, whereas the rockbox EQ does not suffer from this.

 

[EEXO]

I actually find the iPod pretty nice sounding. Though not on the level of the Zunes.
The D2 on the other hand was sold off after 1 week or so of usage. I just can't stand how they sound and the interface is really bad.