[root]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed When are manufacturers going to make their DAPs in sizes above 20GB? 20 will never again be of any interest to me. No hardship to stick in a 40 or 60GB drive.

There has been a DAP on the market with 80GB HDD for quite a time now. I'm thinking about Xclef HD-500 (80gb). As soon as the 80GB Toshiba perpendicular HDD's show up I'm going to upgrade my iHP 140.

 

[Chri5peed]

Yeah, I know you can get big capacity, but I'd rather have a broad choice than having to pick between a couple.

I want to walk into a Walmart(if I was in the US) or some high-street electrical warehouse with shelves full of 60-80GB DAPs.

Hopefully this video trend will force manufacturers to have to embiggen things?

 

[catscratch]

OK gents, thanks for the feedback. I will risk importing the HD30GA9, and I'll report on any compatibility issues that I do or do not have. If there are problems, then hopefully the Japanese speakers on the forum will help me out.

Brave new Kenwood territory, here we go...

 

[isamu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed When are manufacturers going to make their DAPs in sizes above 20GB? 20 will never again be of any interest to me. No hardship to stick in a 40 or 60GB drive.

You took the words RIGHT out of my mouth! I would import the HD30GA9 RIGHT NOW if it had a 60gb HD!

Quote:

Originally Posted by hwanmeister catscratch, amazingly enough my HD20GA7 provided full English language support: the installation process was in English, the software for the player is in English, and when they even give you English-language manual (on paper and in Adobe Acrobat). So yes, HD20GA7 (so logically HD30GA9 also) is fully English XP compatible, and you won't have any problem using either the player or the software (or even the installation process) because they all support English natively.

That is fantastic news hwanmeister thanks for sharing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catscratch OK gents, thanks for the feedback. I will risk importing the HD30GA9, and I'll report on any compatibility issues that I do or do not have. If there are problems, then hopefully the Japanese speakers on the forum will help me out. Brave new Kenwood territory, here we go...

Awesome catscratch, please let us know your impressions and what you think. When do you speculate the player will arrive at your home?

 

[isamu]

Anyway I have a couple questions:


1)O.K. so the HD30GA9 has a built in digital amplifier. Nice, but what exactly will this allow us to do with the sound? Will this amp allow us to tweak anything like the treble, bass, mids, etc? Also I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere but does this DAP have any surround sound features? Any kind of echo/reverb/delay features? What I am looking for something similar to what I talk about in *THIS* thread. I would be in heaven if the player contained that sort of enho-ey surround sound.


2)OK so we also know this DAP supports a codec called "Kenwood lossless". Can anyone shed some light on this codec?

A)Do you speculate this lossless format is just FLAC under a different name?

B)How much space will each kenwood lossless track take up in comparision to say, a 320kbps mp3 file? In other words, many "Kenwood Lossless" tracks, each say, 5 minutes long, would I be able to fit into its 30gb hard drive?

C)Do you think the kenwood lossless format will be worth re-encoding my CD collection again, since I already them all encoded in Lame 320CBR and 192VBR?

 

[root]

Quote:

Originally Posted by catscratch OK gents, thanks for the feedback. I will risk importing the HD30GA9, and I'll report on any compatibility issues that I do or do not have. If there are problems, then hopefully the Japanese speakers on the forum will help me out. Brave new Kenwood territory, here we go...

That's nice catscratch. Too bad you haven't had a chance to listen to some iHP 120/140 to make a comparison with HD30GA9. It may beat X5 and iPods, but X5 and iPods are also inferior in manifold ways to iHP. Anyway, looking forward to hearing your thoughts regarding HD30GA9 and ES2.

 

[catscratch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by isamu Awesome catscratch, please let us know your impressions and what you think. When do you speculate the player will arrive at your home?

I have no idea. I'm currently negotiating the transaction. I would expect a week to procure and another week to ship, though it may be faster.

Quote:

Originally Posted by root That's nice catscratch. Too bad you haven't had a chance to listen to some iHP 120/140 to make a comparison with HD30GA9. It may beat X5 and iPods, but X5 and iPods are also inferior in manifold ways to iHP. Anyway, looking forward to hearing your thoughts regarding HD30GA9 and ES2.

I thought about the 140. A whole lot, actually. What sold me on the HD30GA9 was the review of the HD20GA7 that compared the treble response vs. the X5. The review mentioned a softer, warmer treble on the Kenwood player, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I haven't heard the 140, and I don't know how it compares to the X5 in the treble department.

I will probably hear one of these at a future meet; they're not too uncommon on head-fi.

I really wish a manufacturer would pull their head out of their a** and finally release a player that can match the 120/140 and the Karma for SQ and playback-related features. The current appetite for bigger LCD screens and movie/photo features over SQ is apalling, especially since I actually don't know anyone who uses the movie features on their movie-capable players. Yet, these people wouldn't think of buying a player without movie capability.

The public response to the HD30GA9 announcement (mostly babelfished) demonstrates this pretty clearly. Nearly everyone said: "No photos? No movies? And what the hell is this digital amp thing? Better sound quality? What's wrong with the iPod's SQ?"

 

[FenderP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by isamu Anyway I have a couple questions: 1)O.K. so the HD30GA9 has a built in digital amplifier. Nice, but what exactly will this allow us to do with the sound? Will this amp allow us to tweak anything like the treble, bass, mids, etc? Also I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere but does this DAP have any surround sound features? Any kind of echo/reverb/delay features? What I am looking for something similar to what I talk about in *THIS* thread. I would be in heaven if the player contained that sort of enho-ey surround sound. 2)OK so we also know this DAP supports a codec called "Kenwood lossless". Can anyone shed some light on this codec? A)Do you speculate this lossless format is just FLAC under a different name? B)How much space will each kenwood lossless track take up in comparision to say, a 320kbps mp3 file? In other words, many "Kenwood Lossless" tracks, each say, 5 minutes long, would I be able to fit into its 30gb hard drive? C)Do you think the kenwood lossless format will be worth re-encoding my CD collection again, since I already them all encoded in Lame 320CBR and 192VBR?

1. Do a search on what a digital amp does. You can google it. In essence, it allows everything to stay in the digital domain to create a high powered D to A converter since even the output terminal is part of the circuit. The Kenwood does have EQ options, but AFAIK, nothing the odd echo thing you're talking about. No DAP I know does, and I hope no one implements it. A DAP is a 2 channel playback tool, and none have Dolby Headphone for surround.

2. Kenwood lossless is Kenwood's proprietary format. It is not FLAC. There is no documentation anywhere other than blurbs on Kenwood's Japanese site. No one here owns HD30GA9 yet, so no one knows how big the files are. If you figure FLAC-ish compression, I'd say a 30 - 50% reduction in size from WAV. That means an album (assuming a full one at 650 - 700 MB of WAV), will be 300 - 400MB. Do the math from that.

It becomes a quality issue IMHO if you want to re-encode. If you care about quality, sure, re-rip. If you don't care, don't. To seek out an "audiophile" dap and not use it to its fullest extent seems a bit of a waste.

 

[FenderP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by catscratch I thought about the 140. A whole lot, actually. What sold me on the HD30GA9 was the review of the HD20GA7 that compared the treble response vs. the X5. The review mentioned a softer, warmer treble on the Kenwood player, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I haven't heard the 140, and I don't know how it compares to the X5 in the treble department.

The Sony I have sounds better than the iAudio. It's not hard to do. The Vaio Pocket is a very warm player.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catscratch I really wish a manufacturer would pull their head out of their a** and finally release a player that can match the 120/140 and the Karma for SQ and playback-related features. The current appetite for bigger LCD screens and movie/photo features over SQ is apalling, especially since I actually don't know anyone who uses the movie features on their movie-capable players. Yet, these people wouldn't think of buying a player without movie capability. The public response to the HD30GA9 announcement (mostly babelfished) demonstrates this pretty clearly. Nearly everyone said: "No photos? No movies? And what the hell is this digital amp thing? Better sound quality? What's wrong with the iPod's SQ?"

Sony has. Their achilles heels are codec support (which is largely moot these days; the new NW-Axxxx players support ATRAC, MP3, and WMA) and software. Sony's SQ on all of their players is top notch, and for the most part, build quality is excellent. Other than the Vaio Pocket, all of Sony's players have not had color screens.

JVC Victor has had the same response it seems with the XA-HD500.

The one thing all but Sony (and Rockbox) don't get is implementing gapless. No excuse at this point, especially on a more "audiophile" DAP.

 

[LFC_SL]

OFF TOPIC warning (sorry):

While my old Sony HD3 had acceptable SQ, the software is so infuriating, its enough to put you off Sony until they do something more than what they actually did, which is replace SS with worser software, that is go software free

 

[FenderP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL OFF TOPIC warning (sorry): While my old Sony HD3 had acceptable SQ, the software is so infuriating, its enough to put you off Sony until they do something more than what they actually did, which is replace SS with worser software, that is go software free

SS 2.x had legitimate gripes. 3.x, especially 3.2 and now 3.3 are good. The HD3 came out about the same time as the Vaio Pocket, and 2.3 was the version at the time. I never found SOnic Stage to be *that* bad even in 2.x.

SS does what it intends to do, no more no less. COuld it be better? Sure, but I'll take 3.3 which is very usable and stable.

Connect Player with the new update is supposed to at least be stable, however you still need SS for old players. Connect is only for the NW-Axxxx series.

 

[boodi]

so no others can pronounce on the kenwood SQ ?
I'm in search as well for the bestSQ dap , I'm very interested in getting it if it compares well ( line out / hp out ) to ipod 5g , Karma and Sony players .

 

[hwanmeister]

Quote:

so no others can pronounce on the kenwood SQ ? I'm in search as well for the bestSQ dap , I'm very interested in getting it if it compares well ( line out / hp out ) to ipod 5g , Karma and Sony players .

HD20GA7 has a 6-band EQ, plus a whole assortment of SQ choices. As far as any comparison goes, well, iPod's SQ up to now has been pretty much useless since it distorts the sound (bass particularly). I don't know about 5G, though. Haven't heard it so can't say but according to reports although improvements have been made the distortion issue hasn't entirely gone away.

Haven't had any experience with Rio or Sony players. But I can tell you that comparing with X5, while the choice of different bands in the EQ is narrower, HD20GA7's sound is extremely subtle, warm and refined, defintely superior to X5 in most ways. I know most Head-fiers will disagree but HD20GA7 I feel defintely benefits from having the EQ on. There's no DAP out there that sounds like it with the custom EQ enabled.

 

[root]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hwanmeister Haven't had any experience with Rio or Sony players. But I can tell you that comparing with X5, while the choice of different bands in the EQ is narrower, HD20GA7's sound is extremely subtle, warm and refined, defintely superior to X5 in most ways. I know most Head-fiers will disagree but HD20GA7 I feel defintely benefits from having the EQ on. There's no DAP out there that sounds like it with the custom EQ enabled.

I'd like to believe in that as I'm interested in the player's SQ myself. But how can you tell so pending the DAP and having had little experience with other DAP's (or maybe you just haven't mentioned them). I've heard most of them (including X5 and 5th gen) and could not find a rival to just one and only iRiver player w/ rockbox (other DAP's of this very company can't compare as well).
Also, the headphones you are using play at least an equally grave part (I've found in your profile ER-6i and you should remember that they are colored in a way and more treble-oriented when judging the rig). I'm waiting for your thoughts when you get the player as well as opinions of other head-fi'ers.
And you are right, I'm never going to use any equalizer on my DAP; there's no such need (lossless/optical out, etc., as I said before).

 

[isamu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FenderP 1. Do a search on what a digital amp does. You can google it. In essence, it allows everything to stay in the digital domain to create a high powered D to A converter since even the output terminal is part of the circuit. The Kenwood does have EQ options, but AFAIK, nothing the odd echo thing you're talking about. No DAP I know does, and I hope no one implements it. A DAP is a 2 channel playback tool, and none have Dolby Headphone for surround. 2. Kenwood lossless is Kenwood's proprietary format. It is not FLAC. There is no documentation anywhere other than blurbs on Kenwood's Japanese site. No one here owns HD30GA9 yet, so no one knows how big the files are. If you figure FLAC-ish compression, I'd say a 30 - 50% reduction in size from WAV. That means an album (assuming a full one at 650 - 700 MB of WAV), will be 300 - 400MB. Do the math from that. It becomes a quality issue IMHO if you want to re-encode. If you care about quality, sure, re-rip. If you don't care, don't. To seek out an "audiophile" dap and not use it to its fullest extent seems a bit of a waste.

Hello and thanks for the reply FenderP. I will take those comments into consideration but let me ask you....have you by any chance heard any of Creative's players, specifically the "Jukebox" line? Like I said in my previous posts, I own the Jukebox 3 and would really like to know how it compares to the Kenwood player. Also you mentioned that the HD20GA7 has "nothing the odd echo thing you're talking about."....O.K. but what about certain DSP modes such as Concert Hall, Arena, Stadium, etc? Does it have those?


Quote:

Originally Posted by hwanmeister HD20GA7 has a 6-band EQ, plus a whole assortment of SQ choices.

Hi hwanmeister. Can you please go into detail about what the assortment of SQ choices are on the HD20GA7? Does it have DSP modes such as Concert Hall? If so, can the level of each one be adjusted to "more" or to "less"? Please let me know.