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Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2001
- Posts
- 68
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I just picked one of these up from CC for $80. Only comes with headphones, but I like the fairly small form factor. It loads up the an MP3 CD fairly quick, in just a few seconds, and is pretty quiet n operation. The display is OK, but the one line display can become a bit of a pain to navigate. It can also only display up to 31 characters, which might be a hinderance with some long track or album names, but the first few characters should be enough hint to jog your memory. The battery life quoted is nothing short of amazing either, with 30 hours for CD and 40 hours for MP3 discs with two AA alkalines! With rechargeables it is significantly less at 12/16hrs. I have not tested any of these claims yet. This is also supposed to work properly with multi-session discs and VBR tracks, which the Sony has been said to have problems with.
Now the important part - the sound. I'm listening to some high-quality MP3s encoded with LAME VBR --alt preset, through Koss Sporta Pros.
I'll start with the bad since these were most apparent when I first started listening. The one major annoyance I found was an ever so slight grainy background hiss, not unlike that of the Iriver MP3CDP's in that it stays consistent at all volumes. It's especially noticeable after the ~1 second gap between tracks, where it is dead silent. Fortunately, it's not terribly annoying, and you can pretty much tune it out after a while. Still, I'd think for a second-gen advanced product from a reputable manufacturer, this would have been fixed by now.
Otherwise, the sound itself coming out of the player is very crisp and dymanic, with a touch of brilliance that makes it sound a bit bright in some occasions (lots of cymbals), but very good elsewhere, if you like that kind of sound. The amp is also powerful enough to power these headphones to my usual listening levels, at volume 3. There's no lineout, so those using amps might want to think about that, although it may get rid of the hissing.
Well, I can't think of much else to say about this player. I'm debating whether or not I'm going to keep this, as the hissing is barely acceptable for me, and it doesn't have any frills such as .m3u support. I can do without a remote, but playlists are pretty important for me. However, for 80 clams this is a pretty good deal for the quality of build and overall sound you get. Does anybody know if an Iriver, Sony, or Rio could do better this?
Addedum 1: The player cannot search through a track. I also found that some songs were perfectly listenable at volume level 1! Seems to have a pretty strong amp. Also, when I tried to skip it, it sometimes made a really loud and sharp "ZIP!" noise. Kind of scary the first time, but hopefully it doesn't do any harm to the player. More addedums will be included as I discover more of the features of this player.
Addedum 2: The hiss from this player is getting slightly annoying since it's not exactly a "smooth" hiss, but a bit grainy. I'm wondering if any of the iRiver players suffer from this (ChromeX, SlimX) because I am thinking of going to one of those if it sounds better, and because it has many more features the Panasonic doesn't.
Now the important part - the sound. I'm listening to some high-quality MP3s encoded with LAME VBR --alt preset, through Koss Sporta Pros.
I'll start with the bad since these were most apparent when I first started listening. The one major annoyance I found was an ever so slight grainy background hiss, not unlike that of the Iriver MP3CDP's in that it stays consistent at all volumes. It's especially noticeable after the ~1 second gap between tracks, where it is dead silent. Fortunately, it's not terribly annoying, and you can pretty much tune it out after a while. Still, I'd think for a second-gen advanced product from a reputable manufacturer, this would have been fixed by now.
Otherwise, the sound itself coming out of the player is very crisp and dymanic, with a touch of brilliance that makes it sound a bit bright in some occasions (lots of cymbals), but very good elsewhere, if you like that kind of sound. The amp is also powerful enough to power these headphones to my usual listening levels, at volume 3. There's no lineout, so those using amps might want to think about that, although it may get rid of the hissing.
Well, I can't think of much else to say about this player. I'm debating whether or not I'm going to keep this, as the hissing is barely acceptable for me, and it doesn't have any frills such as .m3u support. I can do without a remote, but playlists are pretty important for me. However, for 80 clams this is a pretty good deal for the quality of build and overall sound you get. Does anybody know if an Iriver, Sony, or Rio could do better this?
Addedum 1: The player cannot search through a track. I also found that some songs were perfectly listenable at volume level 1! Seems to have a pretty strong amp. Also, when I tried to skip it, it sometimes made a really loud and sharp "ZIP!" noise. Kind of scary the first time, but hopefully it doesn't do any harm to the player. More addedums will be included as I discover more of the features of this player.
Addedum 2: The hiss from this player is getting slightly annoying since it's not exactly a "smooth" hiss, but a bit grainy. I'm wondering if any of the iRiver players suffer from this (ChromeX, SlimX) because I am thinking of going to one of those if it sounds better, and because it has many more features the Panasonic doesn't.