[Loque]

Hi all,

I am a veteran of Minidisc players and a big fan of decent sound quality. Eventually I decided to go over to lossless audio, and I bought a Cowon s9. It's a lovely player but I have just returned it due to the fact that it was woefully unreliable, and I didn't want to put up with it.

So basically I am looking for a new player. I'm not really sure what to go for so suggestions would be appreciated. I am looking to spend about £200-250 on it, but really have no idea what to go for. Sound quality is paramount, and it's pretty much the bottom line. I'd be coupling it with a pair of decent headphones as well of course, but I'm just not sure on the player.

It'd have to be something around 16GB+, and FLAC Compatibility is an absolute must. I don't mind going a bit old school, if there is something that I have to hunt around for on ebay to grab a hold of then so be it.

Thanks

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loque /img/forum/go_quote.gif It'd have to be something around 16GB+, and FLAC Compatibility is an absolute must. I don't mind going a bit old school, if there is something that I have to hunt around for on ebay to grab a hold of then so be it.

I started out with the same mandate, but rapidly settled for 320K vbr when I realised that -

1. you greatly limit your choices by insisting on native FLAC capability - Rockbox isnt the Swiss Army knife many would have you believe : check the supported players

2. if I thought Fang was ever going to make commercial quantities, I'd recommend the HiFiMan, but that doesnt look like happening

3. at 50, I find the audible differences between 320k and FLAC very small indeed.

End of the day, I dont see how you could go too far wrong with a Cowon S9, but I dont have your ears.

 

[dippyboy_87]

^ my opinion exactly.

 

[Loque]

One of the issues is that my library at the moment is FLAC. I like it, and other lossless formats in general. The only other alternative I presume is the iPod with Apple's lossless format.

I'm 19 and have a pretty decent set of ears, hence why I am after what seems to be the 'holy grail' of 'players.

I actually got an s9, but I returned it. The player really has to be handled with kid gloves when using a mac and PC together. It's a real shame because it had a beautiful feel to it and the audio quality was lovely.

But the thing got caught in loops, froze, needed a hard reset every week and I just couldn't deal with it. A real shame.

 

[estreeter]

Agree that the Cowons can be temperamental - a lot of it seems to be the luck of the draw and the firmware release that your player came with, but I thought they had nailed a lot of the more profound problems like the player completely freezing up - sorry to hear that you had such a poor experience.

 

[Loque]

It was a real shame, I loved the player, great interface, stunning sound, nice EQ etc.

Just such a shame of the issues I had with it, I'd love to have liked the player.

 

[bba1973]

If you end up needing to convert your library to another format, just get dBpoweramp. It works great and has plugins for almost any audio codec you can think of.

4th gen iPods sound pretty good, IMO (much better with an LOD and amp though). They can be found fairly cheap, spare parts are cheap and plentiful, and they're not too hard to work on. I'm sure you can do better, but if you don't mind a little work, you can get a really good deal. Oh yeah, Rockbox works on them.

Also consider a Sandisk Clip+ and a micro SD card. Mine sounds great unamped with my RE0's and it's compatible with FLAC. The Fuze is supposed to sound pretty good too.

 

[lamewing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loque /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hi all, I am a veteran of Minidisc players and a big fan of decent sound quality. Eventually I decided to go over to lossless audio, and I bought a Cowon s9. It's a lovely player but I have just returned it due to the fact that it was woefully unreliable, and I didn't want to put up with it. So basically I am looking for a new player. I'm not really sure what to go for so suggestions would be appreciated. I am looking to spend about £200-250 on it, but really have no idea what to go for. Sound quality is paramount, and it's pretty much the bottom line. I'd be coupling it with a pair of decent headphones as well of course, but I'm just not sure on the player. It'd have to be something around 16GB+, and FLAC Compatibility is an absolute must. I don't mind going a bit old school, if there is something that I have to hunt around for on ebay to grab a hold of then so be it. Thanks

I also used minidisc for about a decade before using iPods and Sony DAPs (and a few others, including Cowon). I also gave up on Cowon due to their temperamental nature.

A question...which S9 did you have? There have been many reports of issues with transferring large files and having the entire system lock up to the point a reset won't work. The only solution is to send it back to Cowon. This problem was very specific to the 32GB model and the 8/16GB models seem free of the problem. Was this one of your issues?

I understand the Mac/Cowon issue. My old A2 would NEVER disconnect correctly from any Macintosh even after I ejected the A2. Locked up a few times too.

I also am looking for a single DAP/PMP (well maybe two). I want to cut my collection down to just what I need to use and not what I want to horde...boy I have stories about my minidisc hording days.

FWIW, I have recently used the Zune HD, played with a Sony X1061, iPod Touch, and I own an iPhone. The Zune is a nice player and if you only want it as a media player, you may like it. Solid construction and good sound, plus it is easy to use. The Sony seemed nice and sounded good, but I only had it for an hour or so. The Touch is a very nice product with great integration with iTunes. That can be good or bad, either way.

I think I will end up buying with the NWZ-X1061 tomorrow and then selling off my 2 iPod Photos (30/60GB) as well as my silver Sony NWZ-A818 on ebay next week. I LOVE the ease of use of iTunes (and I use iTunes Japan to buy Jpop music), but I don't want a HDD-based player any longer; flash memory is the way to go from now on.

The Sony players now allow for drag/drop via OS or the Content Transfer software which is drag/drop from iTunes...which even transfers playlists.

Good luck.

 

[Loque]

Thanks for the replies chaps.

I am currently considering an AMP3. I'm not sure it has the storage for me, and it doesn't support lossless playback, but apparently it does sound good.

How big is the Clip's maximum storage capacity? Could I just lump a 32GB SDHC card in it and store everything on it in FLAC or would I need something else, is the interface going to the too cumbersome to handle that amount of data smoothly? I have most definitely heard good things about them.

The hifiman looks like a really nice player, but I can't afford that kind of money right now. £350+delivery and taxes in the UK is a little steep.

I'm not a massive fan of converting formats, but in a pinch I would use the aforementioned program which from my superficial research does look good to put things down to a 320K MP3 file.

Minidiscs are the way forward. I love the sound of a well recorded disc, and the are durable as anything. I've washed minidiscs before and they've come out working perfectly. I still have a deck at home and a player in my car, one of the biggest casualties of bad software, poor marketing and just Sony being pants. They're still pretty big in Japan though.

I owned an Iphone, it got nicked, which is part of the reason I don't want another one, and asides I wasn't too impressed with the sound quality on it by any means.

I did actually have the 16GB s9, it never locked to the point of having to be sent back, I just wanted a player that worked when I wanted to go out and pop it in, it didn't so it was in effect pretty damn useless to me. A real shame though as I've said. It liked to lock up and display things in Chinese characters, it was something to do with it not disconnecting properly, I did yank it out a few times and I wasn't too keen with having to disconnect it formally as I am damn lazy to be quite honest.

I don't think I'd buy another Cowon player though.

Itouch is nice, but what's the sound like? Good integration is far less important to me than sound quality, the only nice thing I could think about it is I would store my library in Apple Lossless and stick that on the touch. Don't get me wrong, itunes is a lovely piece of software for media management, and considering I am mac based it would make some sense. I'd have to consider something Imodded if I was going to go down that route I think though.

I have an old Sony 2GB Player that I use for my car as an aux input. It's a nice unit and I do have a bit of a soft spot for Sony Equipment, but their recent offerings, whilst getting better aren't what they used to be.

 

[estreeter]

My understanding is that a 32GB SD card will slot straight into the Fuze and I stole this from a review on the Clip+:

Of course, those are all features you can find in the first-generation Clip. The big news with the Clip+ is the addition of a MicroSD card slot, which is capable of accepting SDHC cards, currently available at up to 16GB. At press time, a 16GB card was about $40, which means you could conceivably get yourself a 24GB flash player for around $110. That's an absolutely incredible deal. The exception is when you use SlotRadio or SlotMusic cards, which are segregated from your library since they are both organized in a very particular way already.

 

[estreeter]

And for my fellow Australians, yet again it seems that 50 USD translates into almost a hundred on our shores:

SanDisk Sansa® Clip+ MP3 Player 4gb - 4GB flash - MP3 Player Outlet-Buy iRiver,Apple iPod & Creative Zen MP3 players

The 4GB Fuze is about the same price - same microSD slot - have to wonder if Aussies would be better off paying for a proven product with better video capability ?

 

[Loque]

The clip seems to be getting more tempting by the minute, by your standards I could get the 8GB model + 16GB SDHC car for £60, which by many accounts is a steal. I would admittedly however need to drop a similar amount for new headphones though. I am really tempted by this as it supports FLAC too.

The other alternative it seems is the AMP3. It works out at about £125 with an 16GB card. Considering it apparently has decent included headphones that would be all though.

The question is really which sounds better? I know the AMP doesn't support FLAC, but even so, with 320K MP3 what's the difference gonna be like. Anyone?

 

[headfever]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loque /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks for the replies chaps. I am currently considering an AMP3. I'm not sure it has the storage for me, and it doesn't support lossless playback, but apparently it does sound good. .

I have a AMP3 pro1, the sound quality is really as perfect as other owners report. Now AMP3 is my reference DAP. It does support lossless formats of WAV and FLac.

By the way, AMP3 can have the capability to reproduce the decent sound quality of 192kbps mp3 format. that means i can live with such a size files and get much bigger storage space.

There are rumors that AMP3 pro2 can compatible 16g enternal cards and have addressed the flaws of PRO1.

So, we can wait few days for what the users' comments on it. Craig from Whiplashaudio will release AMP3 pro2 tomorrow.

 

[estreeter]

With most players and phones, I would be very surprised if many of us could tell the difference between 320K VBR and FLAC - there will be exceptions (phones/people with golden ears and combinations of the two), but I think its a lot closer than many are prepared to admit. FLAC makes a lot of sense for archiving, but you are looking at about 10 MB per minute for each rip (5-6 minute songs seem to come out around the 50MB mark for me) - that shrinks dramatically with 320K VBR. It doesnt take long to burn through 32GB at that rate, particularly if you are inclined to copy entire albums to your player. All of this makes a good case for hard-drive based systems over Flash-based players, at least at this point in time.

 

[ulsanman]

I can second all that is said about the AMP3, I was one of the first buyers, direct from China before they were available in the US and I can vouch that it is now my only player , I can't really enjoy the others anymore due to the difference in sound quality. It is designed to be used with the given buds and to play 192 mp3s like cds and I can hear little difference. I have always been able to play flac on mine though others have experienced problems .