Simple and informal review: First impressions of the iAudio X5L 30 gig

[58impala]

Preface
pretty much im planning to do is just update this post throughout a couple of days to see how the iAudio X5L is out of the box. Since you guys have no review on this player it looks like, and this can very easily can be the new audiophile's player to have, since the Karma is no good. Then later on, do an update later on about X5L with much better headphones and final thoughts. Just so you know I'm a semi-audiophile/audiophile-in-training.

Getting it in the mail
update one

Yeah what sucks about this device that currently its only available through the internet, so its a do or die kind of thing. The refund is only for 10 days from where I brought it from (buydig.com), and it took 5 days to get to my house and Im guessing another 5 days to send it over there. So the refund policy is pretty unless.

DAMN THIS THING IS SMALL! Seriously. I get a huge box in the mail and there this small thing in it.

After fighting with the plastic all sides sealed container first thing I check is the joy stick used for navigation. It moves up, down, left and right. Kinda wished that it could move in a circle so navigation can be like the iPod wheel, but right now we are getting far ahead of ourselves.

Second thing I checked is the bottom end to see how the sub-pack/cradle/dock connects to it. Theres a rubber black protector for the port, but it looks like it would get lost VERY EASILY. I wished that it was connected to the player itself simliar to the USB port, but that could get tricky to produce.

Not much else to do right now except to let it charge, and install the programs to runs this thing. The reviews said that this thing doesnt need a driver so thats good. Not too much to say anything on the installs, except they were quick and easy, and it lets you choose what kind of files you want assosciated with iAudio's player.

 

[blessingx]

Keep us informed. BTW, most places tend to use dates from an RMA issuance for end of warranty, so you may have a few more days to test.

 

[58impala]

First Use
update two

yeay its done charging, and it took a while, but that excusable since its the X5L version (L meaning long battery life).

turn it on and iAudio takes me straight to a song and a couple of videos. the song was chessy one-step-up-from-promotional-jingle type song, but it had a far amount different elements in it; im assuming to its to kinda show of the 'good' sound of the X5L and bundle earphone combo, however I noticed the EQ and other jetEffects (thats what iAudio calls sound effects) have been automatically set for this. So the sound quality on this song of the cans probably not meet the same level of quality as some of my songs.

the videos was a bunch of different advertisements for Cowon's line of mp3 players, bits and pieces of that cheesy song. as far the video quality goes, well, you get want you pay for. im mean this is a device that giving you all the features of an ipod plus video, pictures, and text, in a smaller package, and for the same price. so something had to give, luckily (for me) it was the video.

sharpness was the issue that kinda bothers me. like imagine a slanted line, and what if that imaginary line looked like this:

(pretend the dots arent there)
______
.........|________________________________________ ________
.................................................. .....................................|________

(that might come out different than I expect after I post this, or after its gone through some copying and pasting)

thats what really killed the video quality, that jagged edge. still really watchable. it could have very easily used a better resolution screen to fix it, but might drive up costs and they dont want that.

time to transfer 18 gigs of music and 1 gig of movies.

7:15(ish)
transfer finished and I study some
and study
and study
and study
and study
and study
and study and study and study some more

and i look back at the computer, and the transfer is done and the current time is 7:50(ish). alot better than I expected, even if I didnt know the exact time length. its alot faster than my old piece of junk flash hard drive (damn you!!!!!)

time for music

so far i have listened to three different live shows (albums) on it

- Erykah Badu - Live (mp3)

pretty much the stock headphones are good at playing this (considering they're stock cans). the album trends to before more focus on mids and highs, but with a solid bass to it. even tho the soundstage/sense of musical enviroment (remember im still an audiophile in training so i dont know all the terms yet) is not where i would like it. also it kinda feels like the mics for the band werent perfectly balanced (and this is a commercially available album) like if the bass guitar and percussion were too low and highs and mids are fine, and it feels like the cans kinda leans towards the mids and highs. funny thing tho, Badu's sometimes schreechy voice (to some) never is schreechy or harsh at all. overall I can with stand this until I get some portable Grados or Eggos. (sellers of Head-Fi take note on that).

- The Roots - 06/26/05 live recording (FLAC)

AARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

maybe i was spoiled by the perfectly balanced EQ settings in Winamp and the bass dial on my old computer speakers, but this wasnt as good as I thought. I could hardly listen to it. I didnt even bother to finish the first track, (which is two percussionists, one on a strandard drum set, another on bongos, and has a rapper with for this song uses a almost whisper, an aggresive but laid back approach). but even messing with the EQ and presents its not worth while until until I get some portable Grados or Eggos. (sellers of Head-Fi take note on that, again).

- Soil & "Pimp" Sessions - Pimp Master; Suffocation; Summer Goddess (3 different albums, all mp3s)
the stock cans are almost prefect as perfect can get for stock cans. soundstage still sucks, and I forget that theres an acoustic bass player in there too, but this jazz band is much more focused on the firey duo of the sax and trumpet player with the occassional piano player. still not as my home computer simple set up, but its gonna look like im going to listen to alot of jazz until i upgrade. (sellers, hint, hint)

also good to note, that I can't hear any noise interference made by the hard drive or anything else, which is really wait......wait......wait...... ok while im listening to more highs focused music as I type this, and at the fadeout at the end of song there is a slight popcorn type sound, im not too sure, lemme get back to you on that.

there also a very very very small gap inbetween songs. i barely noticed it on the Badu album, and noticed it on some songs on the Soil & Pimp album. maybe the rockbox firmware thats in the making will make it truly gapless

i had one more idea. What if i play that The Roots recording through my computer speakers?

well it got way better, but that particular recording is very bass heavy and needs some fine EQ tuning. nowhere as good my PC system, but better with than the stock cans. I still need to master the EQ and the jetEffects on the X5L, since its extremely verstile and theres a learning curve to it, but I think can master it when I have more to when im at school all day with it.

navigation through the player has a slight learning curve to it. you gotta read the manual a little bit before you really get a good feel for it. its no where as close to the ipod's wheel, but its alot better than creative's zen touch's strip (1 straight line for those who never saw).

the joystick is alot more useful in navigating songs and albums than the zen touch strip. (I was going to buy the iRiver H10 [it has a strip too] until I used the Zen Touch.) and it turns out that the joystick can move in a circle. however it kinda feels like it doesn't want you to do that, so when moving navigating with it think of the directional pad on video game controllers. I also wished that the joystick had a rubber tip, for grip and just for a better feel against my thumb. I like the joystick. Its a little bit tiny, the tip of the joystick is just a little bit bigger than a larger mole thats probably on your body, and the inner circle around the joystick is about the size of a hole that is on one of your keys that you use to put the key on to a key ring or chain. the outer circle is about the size a loop in the cord of your telephone's handset or maybe the loop in the cord of your headphones. pretty much the joystick is really small, and Cowon probably made it that way to increase the sex appeal of this thing.

back to my least favorite aspect about this thing, video. for some reason it only recognises two video files outta of about 7 i put on there. one only plays the audio (a The Roots concert, yeah im obessed with these guys), the other was a really funny cartoon show, let say. that didnt even play at all. it will attempt to read it, and you can feel the hard drive spinning like a calm heart beat, but it cant read it (at other times you cant really feel it). hopefully there is a firmware update to fix this. also its good to note that to my knowledge the player only plays mpegs, im not sure of the file extensions of these movies, so I have some converting to do.

thats all I have to say right now, tomorrow Ill look for updates and mess around with thing some more, and have a field day with it Monday on FIU's campus.

until then
peace out

 

[DJ Mauler]

cool keep us informed, my buddy got one but he might let me "hang on to it" since i guess hes going back to iraq \... or going to get trained to go back i cant recall which.

 

[LFC_SL]

Hmmmm informative

Please do investigate the mic abilities, esp for lectures. I'd imagine it'd be fine for say interviews one-on-one

While its limited, I'd rather use my PSP for videos. Since the X5 is USBOTG, I could use X5 to store videos compatible with PSP, if I get it

 

[58impala]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL Hmmmm informative Please do investigate the mic abilities, esp for lectures. I'd imagine it'd be fine for say interviews one-on-one While its limited, I'd rather use my PSP for videos. Since the X5 is USBOTG, I could use X5 to store videos compatible with PSP, if I get it

I saw a post on that about which devices are compatible im 90% sure that PSP is. go check out the forums at iAudiophile.net

 

[LFC_SL]

^ Yeah it is, that is what I meant. Have you tested mic yet? Whats batt life like?

 

[DJ Mauler]

ya Does the L live up to its name... or what

 

[58impala]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL ^ Yeah it is, that is what I meant. Have you tested mic yet? Whats batt life like?

im probably to test the mic Monday during my class lectures, and battery life is looking pretty sweet. Its the "L" version so it has longer battery life, 35 hours it claims. im played with it from 8pm(ish) to 4am(ish) (yea time just flys for me) that about 8 hours and the battery guage says its on 90/80 % battery life, the little gauge is a typical little battery with the "juice" showing whats left, so its you kinda have to estimate it.

 

[LFC_SL]

Have you tried wallpaper function yet? While researching X5 for myself, I found 2 threads on forum of iaudiophile

 

[58impala]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL Have you tried wallpaper function yet? While researching X5 for myself, I found 2 threads on forum of iaudiophile

4

yeah, i saw those 1 one those threads and i have posted in it (s/n 58impala, duh!). right now im using this picture as my wallpaper. I dont ready have a problem with it at all. like the lettering in the song name/artist/album is not as bright as the orginal wallpaper (almost seems like the player puts some transperancy to it), and also there is a blue outline around the edge of the time elasped, so it kinda looks outta place. all the stuff at the bottom have a transperant-solid background for the kbps, eq, bbe, volume and the other goodies down there (so its probably the transperancy that makes the lettering not so bright).

to use it you have go through the pictures you have saved on it. then as you find one you like to put as a wallpaper, you press down on the joystick (equal to right click in PCs) and you select set as wallpaper.

 

[58impala]

Sudden Realizations and Other Small Things, New Temporary Earbuds, iAudiophile.net, pictures and MOVIES!
update three

well I already talked about the battery and wallpaper so no need to be discuss that too much. However I realized that the battery recharges when I have connected to the computer through usb. so thats nice to me that they made that possible, it would kinda help extend the battery life of it *that* much just through regular use of the thing.

ok what else? oh yeah rubber that little black rubber protector thing i was talking about? how it should be so easy to use? well I realized that I have been using the X5L without this thing in the whole time. I didnt lose it tho, I still have it, but I guess it shows how easy it is to lose.

also every time you turn up/down the volume, the screen turns on. I have seen this on other players too, but I just think its kinda stupid. it would just drain the battery some. give me back that old school volume dial on my old cd players please.

one very cool feature that it has is that it can customize certain buttons like the pause/play and rec. . like right now i chose to have it where i hold the rec button for a sec and it changes the EQ present. very nice.

Ok my music collection on my computer is malicously mantained. So thats why the thought of a folder/file navigation really appealed to me. However there is on some, but bothersome bug with this. some the folder names on my computer start with capital letters like ABC, and some dont like abc. the X5L first displays the folders and files with capital letters in that folder and then display the folders and files in lower case, like this

Alica keys - Songs in A minor
Bob Marley - Songs of Freedom
James Brown - Live at the Apollo Vol II
The Roots Live - Their live stuff
d'angelo - His live stuff
soil & pimp sessions - Pimp Master (btw I could never understand why choose that name)
the Roots - their studio albums

pretty much what to notice here is that the folder/files that start with capital letters get displayed first in line (in alphabetical order) and then the ones that start with lower case letters come second (in alphabetical order). I checked out its like this on the iAudiophile.net forums, and their FAQs said that its like that so you can have certain items on the top if you need too. personally i dont understand why not just use the bookmark feature, but its kinda subjective to your tastes. for those you are used to navigation through ID3 tags (like the iPod) there are programs that setup up folders for you based on those ID3 tags.

also remember how awful that The Roots recording sounded? well i forgot that this player as a MP Enhance feature that tries compensate for the lost music that mp3 conversion losses. really makes a difference depending on what your listening to. but that recording was in FLAC format so I guess the player was having a tough time compensating for something that was never lost. sounds alot better after listening to them with some new cans.

I got some temporary earbuds today that im going to use until i buy some new portable cans (<~~~~ sellers

). they are pretty much my lil bro's reject cans after he got some new ones for his creative zen touch, im not sure if they are the bundled in cans for the Zen Touch but they seem like it.

so pretty much its just showing me how versitale this player is. these cans are the exact opposite as the bundled in with the X5L. they seem to favor bass and percussion, and have a better soundstage. I still wanna upgrade since these lack in mid-highs and highs. until then im going to switch back and forth between these two.

uploaded my picture collection on to X5L. there are two ways to navigate through the pictures, one to start with the first pic and do a slide show type method where you use the track forward/backward to go from one to another. the other way is that folder/file method where you see all the files by their name, btw that capital letter issue is here too. you cant listen to music an look at pics at the same time

. also while i was at the iAudiophile.net forums somebody noticed that the iPod nano displays the album art while a song is playing, and got jealous and wondered why cant the X5 do this too? well me too.

I have album art in the folders of my music albums and some live shows, it would be nice if the X5 showed them.

so I go iAudiophile.net to find out how to do various, and find out various things. they have a nice indexed FAQ for finding anwsers.

i needed to find out how to convert movies into the right format for the X5L. pretty much everyone there like the iRiverter program (i know, odd name). I download and install it, and its a really simple straight forward program that anyone can learn to use. but I didn't like the results it gave me. everything was in black and white. i double check that it has the right device for the correct properties of the video files (you identity what device your converting movies for and it automatically configures the right properties for your device, like X5, H300, archos, etc.) and it does have the X5 option selected. so i just try the iAudio video converter instead.

this program aint as simple and straightforward as the first, theres a learning curve to this one. i messed around with it untill i got a good feel for it, and i got the job done. however i didnt have a problem with one file. the program couldnt read how long the video beforehand like it did for the others. and i when i wanted to convert it the program froze. i played the file on the computer to make sure it wasnt a streaming video file, and its not. but i noticed that the file extension is goes like this "xxxxxxxx.mpg.mpeg " so im assuming that this is confusing the program and changed to extension. however it still had the same problem. so i said f--- it.

but i got working movies now. im going to talk about four tho.

one was a video of different rappers on the game show the Weakest Link seen here http://www.dumpalink.com/media/1126427522 (btw this is hilarious, watch it now). another one of kanye west with his 16 piece string orchaseta + a DJ performing on MTVs React now Katrina aid show (sounds kinda odd but its pretty good). one full length one of Common and his 3 piece band in concert, and finally a movie based a very popular and very funny cartoon show on tv right now.

im not expecting to much for quality, all the files have been ripped from either tv or the internet into a compression format and then converted into another compression format so they can't be DVD quality.

but they are watchable, remember that slanted line reference from before? well **** that, forget all about it. but the video quality is kinda blocky and some edges are rough. also the colors in a gradient dont flow to well. like in that game show clip theres alot of blue. it supposed to be dark blue in one corner and fades to light blue at another point on the screen (kinda like on the older windows systems in the title bar it fades from light blue to dark blue on the top). but sometimes it doesnt fade to well and it looks kinda blocky. it hardly did that for the cartoon, which happened to be the same cartoon i had trouble with before.

also good to note that the video doesnt come outta sync with the audio. while watching the common video late in the video there is a shot where the percussionist is tapping on the cymbals. the sound of the cymbals is right on point with the video of the tapping. but the cartoon did look kinda dubbed at some points, but all cartoons are essentially dubbed.

the video and picture features are really good for people who are looking for somebody wanting to play videos on occassion.

btw im listening to some studio recordings as I type this and the X5 is making fall in love with studio albums even with crap earbuds. the little small elements in the OutKast - Stankonia cd are much more audible and ear lingering/teasing (for lack of a better word). This is suprising since im much more of a fan of live recordings, good job iAudio.

not much else to say except iAudiophile.net alot of useful info over there. even has a for sale forum for those looking to buy. and they should pay me for this shout out. however the layout isnt that pretty to look at, hopefully they're going to update that later on.

[edit] i forgot to say that in the react show there was a mtv logo with the react now logo next to it and a scrolling maque on where to donate stuff to. well the two logos we're very legible, but the scrolling marque isn't.

 

[samk64]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 58impala give me back that old school volume dial on my old cd players please.

those type of dials used potentiometers to control the volume. over time it lost accuracy (the cheap kind at least) and is probably why they were replaced by digital control.

im glad you're still enjoying it though!

 

[58impala]

Quote:

Originally Posted by samk64 over time it lost accuracy

ha! i always thought that was just me

 

[Azure]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 58impala Preface pretty much im planning to do is just update this post throughout a couple of days to see how the iAudio X5L is out of the box. Since you guys have no review on this player it looks like, and this can very easily can be the new audiophile's player to have, since the Karma is no good. Then later on, do an update later on about X5L with much better headphones and final thoughts. Just so you know I'm a semi-audiophile/audiophile-in-training.

What exactly is wrong with the Karma (I'm not too keen on portable mp3 players, so I'm just wondering; all I know is that it doesn't have a real line out)?