[carstenk]

iRiver SlimX 550

My trusty (though always slightly irritating) Sony D-EJ815 having recently started to make an annoying scraping noise as it turns the disk, I was in the market for a fresh portable CD player. Having also recently explored other options - a 3rd gen 10 Gb iPod and just using Windows Media Player 9 on my laptop with an Echo Indigo card - and being somewhat dissatisfied with all of them, I was looking for something that would just play my good old CDs on the go, and play them well. (I find the iPod's sound slightly distored and lifeless, even with all of its EQ "presets" off, and while the Indigo card is nice at work, do I really want to be tethered to my PC at all times to listen to music?)

So I surfed around these forums, conducted a few days' worth of Google searches for player reviews, auditioned a ton of players in-store, and finally settled on the SlimX 550 from iRiver - a company I had heard of before, but didn't have any practical experience with. A day before going on vacation, I headed out to a local retailer (Toronto, Canada) where I paid $219 Canadian for the pleasure of taking one of these puppies home.


What's in the box?

After wrestling it from the very annoying "retail plastic bubble" (one of these hard clear plastic shells meant to keep people from stealing the units), I had what seemed like a lot of 'stuff' in front of me, including

- the player itself
- the remote control
- wall and car chargers
- two rechargable batteries
- an external battery pack for two AA batteries
- a cassette-based car adapter
-ear bud phones
- a manual
- a 'headphone extension' cable (to enable non-iRiver headphones to be plugged into the remote whose socket is slightly recessed).

I charged it for a while and plugged in my trusty Grado SR60s (the standard phones I use for all portable listening). The manual is well worth reading - the player has a deep and complex set of menus that can be operated from the remote control, many of which take some explaining. Once you've read through the book, though, most of them make sense.


Multiple CD formats, FM radio, user-editable EQ

Main features of the player include that it plays regular redbook music CDs, MP3 and WMA data CDs, as well as CDRs with open sessions. It also has an FM-only radio with 20 preset channels. Lastly, and significantly, it has a user-editable EQ in addition to several presets (which sound a lot better than the iPod's!). While you're restricted to certain frequency bands, you can still 'edit' your own EQ settings and save them. This enables you to create a sound profile that works for your ears, music preferences and listening habits.

The SlimX 550 has "up to" 32 minutes of anti-shock memory (but that value was achieved with low resolution Windows Media files). I find that setting it to 80 seconds in the setup menu makes it sound great while enabling me to walk around with it. Of course I'm not planning on jogging with it - I don't think that would work out too well

Battery life

You can inspect the full marketing specifications at http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/iMP-550.asp. Perhaps the
"55 hours of battery life" needs to be qualified a little more: I would say that (after 2-3 initial charges to get the internal batteries up to a proper charge) the iRiver plays back regular CDs up to about 8 hours before needing another charge, without the external battery pack plugged in (using regular audio CDs - not sure how long it'll last using MP3s). I can imagine that this number goes up tremendously using the external battery pack, though. Haven't tried this (but I understand from the fine print that this is what iRiver did to arrive at their 55 hour claim).


Firmware upgradable

One slightly unusual thing about this player is that iRiver make firmware upgrades available on their web site. You can pull down a zip file that contains a .HEX file with a whole new firmware image. Burn it to a CD, insert the CD in to the player... and presto, the new version is installed. Going from v1.03 to v1.10 didn't seem to add massive amounts of new functionality, but it was a fun exercise anyway. The idea is of course that maybe this unit may be able to play back files using new codecs in the future.

After some Googling, there seem to be firmware hacks available on a Russian site, but I've not tried them. Don't particularly feel like frying my new unit so shortly after buying it

Playing back compressed files

As far as playing back WMA and MP3 files - works fine. I can't say that I'm entirely taken by the sound - I tried with a CD full of 192 kbps WMA files. It sounds "good" but not "great". Unlike using Media Player 9 on my laptop with the Echo Indigo (which sounds so great that I really cannot tell the difference between 1411 kbps regular CD audio and 192 kbps WMA), there's a certain dullness and some very minor digital artifacts using the SlimX 550. (The reason I said earlier that I'm dissatisfied with the Echo card is that I've had a lot of driver related issues with it - maybe that's only on my laptop.)


The sound

But since I bought this player to play back regular CDs, I'll comment on that in particular. I'm a seeker of near-perfect sound in a portable solution, so the whole MP3/WMA thing has never appealed to me 100% anyway. And I have to say that the SLimX comes pretty close. While my old D-EJ815 had always been ok but not great (limited sound stage, a little too focused on the mids), and had caused listening fatigue after a few hours of listening, this new player is amazing in that regard. I get no fatigue, the sound is clear, balanced and very musical. It's certainly able to drive the Grados very capably and goes significantly louder than I would be comfortable exposing my ears to.

Since I don't use a headphone amp (trying to stay 'portable' here without wanting to lug around a huge bag) I do use the customizable EQ to futz with the sound a little, but even at the "EQ off" setting I find the unit pleasant and musical. I like its sound stage (wide without being ridiculous), warmth and dynamic range.

I've been exercising the unit for several days now using a lot of mid-90s Verve remasters (basically Jazz with a wide dynamic range) as well as a lot of electronica and Nu Jazz, acoustic and world music and the like. It holds up very well. I'd even go so far as to say that it exposes some of the poor mastering on recent (2000 onwards) CDs (all the levels pushed as close to 0 dB as possible...) unfavourably, but that's not a criticism of the unit; it's something mastering engineers ought to think about

Not much to say on the minus side...

On the negative side, there's not very much to say. I'm not sure I like the fact that the unit cannot be operated without the remote control (I always feel like I'm carrying around all this superfluous 'stuff'...) but that's the operating principle of it - can't say I didn't know about it before I bought it. The player has no controls on the unit itself other than the slider to open it.

In summary, I think it's a spectacular unit for playing back regular Redbook music CDs - probably the best I've owned. Maybe a little pricy, but hey, the things we do for great sound...

And while I know that there are a lot of contributors here who prefer classic portable players from the heyday, I've not had the privilege of trying one, nor would I want a unit that didn't have any anti-shock protection. As far as new units go, this is the cream of the crop in my opinion. Glad I bought it.

Carsten

 

[Sugano-san]

I agree on the surprisingly high quality of the headphone out. I use the IMP550 with Etymotics (4P incl. S adapter), and together with the EQ that creates a sufficiently loud, good sounding combo. No need for additional amplification (but see below).

I would like to add a remark about the surprisingly low quality of the line out. I do not refer to the fact that the line out is influenced by EQ and volume settings, which is something I don't mind (turn off all EQs and set the volume to "max" if you don't like that). Unlike some others on head-fi I am not of the opinion, either, that the IMP550 has two parallel but otherwise identical headphone outputs, which would be a major design flaw (plug a headphone into the line out and you'll hear right away that it's not a headphone out).

I am talking about the muffled sound quality of the IMP550's line out, as well as to the fact that the line out is easy to overdrive. That makes it pointless to hook up the IMP550 to an external amplifier, because even the best amp can only amplify what it's being fed. In a way that's good news though, becuse it helps keep the entire combo small and uncomplicated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by carstenk The sound I get no fatigue, the sound is clear, balanced and very musical. It's certainly able to drive the Grados very capably and goes significantly louder than I would be comfortable exposing my ears to. Since I don't use a headphone amp (trying to stay 'portable' here without wanting to lug around a huge bag) I do use the customizable EQ to futz with the sound a little, but even at the "EQ off" setting I find the unit pleasant and musical. I like its sound stage (wide without being ridiculous), warmth and dynamic range.

 

[carstenk]

One additional curiosity that should be mentioned is the player's resume function. There are three different settings for this menu item: resume at the exact location where you left off, resume at the beginning of the track that you last played, or don't resume (just start from the beginning of the CD).

In combination with these choices, the 550 has a "fade in" function. When I read about this in the manual, I thought, "What a strange concept," and turned it off. The result is that the 550 starts each listening session with a fairly loud digital "click" noise before playing back the music - whether you're at the beginning of the CD or in the middle.

Turning on the "fade in" function counteracts this - it basically fades the headphone amp in gently for around a second or so. I thought about this setup as a shortcoming for a few days, but now I'm beginning to think it's actually quite pleasant... it's nice not to blast your ears when you resume in the middle of a track

On the subject of its line out, I haven't tried it yet. For my puposes, your observation wouldn't matter (I can think of better devices to connect to a stereo

), but I see how this would be a limitation for headphone amp users.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

Thanks a lot for this review. From most other people I had heard it could only spin redbook CDs for four hours before it needed another charge ... that and the assessment of the audio quality removes any reservations I had about getting this player.

Unless, of course, somebody cries foul and throws me back into confusion.

 

[carstenk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwistedKestrel From most other people I had heard it could only spin redbook CDs for four hours before it needed another charge ...

The batteries need some initial conditioning (a few full charges and discharges). Somewhere in the menus, the player has a "full discharge, then recharge" function... I now seem to be up to about 6 or 7 audio CDs, which I think translates to 8 hours or so. Obviously, I'm not using a stop watch

 

[formosa]

Thanks, carstenk. Great review!!
Even after I got a ihp 120, I still couldn't buy the whole thing of compressed music.
I'm still looking for portable CD players, and this is exactly what I'm looking for.