[eyeless]

Have bought the iRiver550 ... well it turned out that it was possible to tweak out-volume by clever use of the built-in EQ and set limitzer on levels out for distortion (though it sometimes seems to get a bit distorted anyway). You could gain up to 12dB this way, but I wouldn't recommend setting all the range to 12, but rather 9 or 6 extra dB across the spectrum. (One has to turn off 3d EQ and first turn of limit then change EQ all levels and then turn limit on again).

Only possible problem is that it is a bit picky with my discs and seems to be happy to point out problems in them ... .

Update process worked fine -- but had to reinsert the disc (burnt at 12x or 24x).

Nice case, but I am not used to all the peripherals... . The discharge and charge battery process was very confusing... .

Jerry

 

[blr]

Mine is picky with audio CDs as well especially CD-R. Seems like the iRiver engineers have decreased the laser power to prolong battery life. I've e-mailed iRiver about this from their website. Let's see what they have to say. I hope this can be fixed in a firmware upgrade, i.e. it is not a hardware weakness.

Try to e-mail them as well. The more of us do it the better the chance they'll release a firmware upgrade that fixes this soon.

 

[opresterud]

I havn't had any problems with pressed audio CDs, but CD-R audio discs needs to be burned at a rather low speed.

I am using Verbatim CD-Rs which I find to be very good, and burning with a Yamaha CRW-F1 there has been no problems with audio CDs burned at max speed of 44x. Until I got the iRiver unit... It doesn't like them if they are burned faster than 16x. I have several old CD players which takes the 44x discs without any problem at all.

 

[bangraman]

The IMP-550 is only a smaller 400, so 'new toy excitement' has been low enough not for me to use these more than half an hour so far. Even then I've some odd problems with pressed redbook, and I had to burn the firmware update disc at 24x before it took.


I won't be using the 550 regularly for a while since InCD seems to have packed up on the PC where I rip and burn... (It formats, then it reboots

) But I will keep an eye on it.

 

[richpjr]

If the players has trouble reading cdrs, well, that is kind of grim. If it's a burning speed issue, then I guess it depends on how fast. The burners are getting faster and faster. Of course, at some point the speed is kind of overkill. I mean if you have to wait 3 minutes instead of 2 it's not that big of a deal!

 

[blr]

Quote:

Originally posted by richpjr If the players has trouble reading cdrs, well, that is kind of grim. If it's a burning speed issue, then I guess it depends on how fast. The burners are getting faster and faster. Of course, at some point the speed is kind of overkill. I mean if you have to wait 3 minutes instead of 2 it's not that big of a deal!

I tried it with CD-Rs burned as slow as 2x, same thing. I also tried several different brands from generic cheap ones to Kodak Gold Ultima and this doesn't solve the problem either.
To me it looks like a weak laser. iRiver engineers would do this to conserve power I guess. If this is the case I much rather have an hour shorter play time than these annoying noise bursts with CDRs.
The guy from iRiver, who seems to be really nice will pass my post to the engineering department.
Meanwhile, to all iMP550 users check your players with audio CDRs. Let's try to establish if this is a serial flaw

 

[Thasp]

The laser in this player is just plain weak in my experience, and I don't think it's for battery life, but more cosmetic; to make it slimmer, along with battery life fixes. Take a look at this.. http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...anasonic+CT800

I can't walk with this thing. It's not a "portable" to me.