[Atticus]

Hello,
I wanted your opinion about these two players. I am mainly concerned with sound quality? Any opinions on how these two compare? I have heard an Iriver 895 and it sounded great. I would like to have something that supports Ogg and has around 1gb of storage. Will be using Er4p's with the new player.

Thank you and Merry Christmas,
Todd

 

[yaufei]

What about the iAudio U3? I heard it has got an excellent music playback and looking at the specs it plays video and FLAC too.

 

[Melik]

He said G3, not U3

 

[Chri5peed]

Why not get an I5? Is it too dear?

Its a lot smaller, got USB2.0, uses an AAA Battery. Got a newer version of the chip in the G3.

FLAC is almost useless in a 1GB player.

 

[sgrossklass]

U sure 'bout the newer chip in the I5? It must have come out at about the same time as the G3. Besides I don't see which chip that should be, the G3 must already be using an STMP3520 and the STMP3560 only differs in being able to recharge.
I can't find which chip the iFP89x uses. Hmm, the iRiver doesn't seem to be so great when you want to use it as a USB mass storage device (instead of with the proprietary software only), particularly when you actually want to use it for recording. The available recording bit rates shrink from 96..320 kbps to 96 kbps only with the UMS firmware, or so I'm reading in a review. (The G3 can be used as mass storage device straight out of the box and allows recording in up to 128 kbps, at least. Its mic apparently doesn't line up well with the holes in the case though, so the voice recordings come out rather weak and muffled. This is fixable with a dentist drill or somesuch.) Battery life seems to hover around the 25 hour mark vs. 30..40 hours for the G3.

BTW, the G3 is plenty small enough for me, a guy with lousy eyesight and average fine mechanics. Long battery life is appreciated, plus alkaline AAs aren't any more expensive than AAAs anyway.

 

[Chri5peed]

I'm not sure but I may have misintepreted it, it might have been the difference between the I4 & 5?

I read it on a COWON site, can't remember where...

AA VC AAAs was just the size issue, plus battery-life is less important as its no hardship to have a couple of spares knocking around.