[Chri5peed]

I've got it set on the Rock setting, but some albums sound pretty thin; lacking bass and power generally. I'm into Metal.

Odd, must be the production as some albums sound completely different, from the same band. All my mp3s are ripped with EAC/Lame btw. As you can see in my sig I'm using; Zen Touch/580&Smurf/SM3.

So would you recommend re-ripping the 'weak' albums in a higher setting or is their a custom EQ setting good for Metal?

Help.

 

[titaniumx3]

The zen touch is very odd because it sounds completely different depending on the headphone/earphone being used. With my sony d66 eggo it sounds very thin and bright; with my ER6i the mids are too congested with rolled off treble

, but hooked up to my hi-fi speakers it sounds better than any portable player I've heard. This is all without any EQ; the custom EQ is actually faulty on the earlier firmware versions.

You might want to try the latest firmware (2.11.01) because that seems to have fixed the firmware bugs and bass distortion, but its still not perfect. For example, the 12khz bar doesn't seem to do very much eventough its supposed to be +/- 12dB and the 100hz does very little to counter the zens anaemic bass. That said with the setting +6,0,0,+2 the D66s do sound fairly warm without sacrificing too much quality. Here are the various firmwares in order which can be found on the creative website,

1.00.06 ~ The original firmware, which has a few GUI issues but otherwise works fine. The custom EQ sounds the cleanest on this firmware, but sounds thin in the bass department and distorts if 100hz bar is put too high. The EQ presets sound different to the other firmware but with the EQ turned off, it sounds the same.

1.01.03 ~ Avoid at all costs! Fixes some issues but totally destroys the custom EQ and changes the sound for the worst.

2.10.05 ~ Adds windows "Play For Sure" MTP support meaning with windows-xp sp1/sp2 and WMP10 you can access the player without any additional drivers or software and you can also listen to subscribtion based music downloads on you zen. BUT....the EQ is still faulty with this firmware!

2.11.01 ~ Fixes the EQ bugs and some other issues.


FW 1.00.06 is not available on the creative website but can be downloaded here . Also note that when you update to FW 2.10.05 all your music is deleted and you can't revert back to earlier firmware. To update to FW 2.11.01 you need FW 2.10.05 first.

 

[Chri5peed]

Lol, I've got 03 on mine!

So, I put 05 in, it wipes everything, then I update it to 01 next and then put everything back on?

 

[Chri5peed]

I've updated the firmware, makes the touchpad better.

Can I not use Creative Mediasource to transfer files now? I can drag and drop them easy enough.

 

[titaniumx3]

I think you can, but you have to see if the new mediasource version supports the new firmware, since the filesystem on the zen has changed.

You can also use windows medial player, but I just prefer drag & dropping via windows explorer.

Anyways how do you find the sound with the new firmware? You should have given the original firmware (1.00.06) a try before switching to the latest version; you might have liked that.

 

[MrCookie989]

Bummer, I have had been searching for that original firmware for the last week and just 20 minutes ago I updated to the newest one

Oh well, Creative did fix up the EQ quite nicely (meaning it actually kinda works now). And its also nice to able to drag and drop finally. Although I use my custom EQ, sometimes I still prefer the sound that the Pop EQ setting gives me on my SR60s (it just slightly raises the bass, and the treble just a lil more). I found that the Rock setting adds a weird kind of echo to music, its fairly subtle, but I dont like it. You can hear a nice difference switching between Pop and EQ OFF I think, at least with the SR60s (good point titanium about the Zen sounding totally different with any pair of headphones, the difference between my Grados and my PX100s is night and day on the Zen). Now if only Creative would add the features that have been missing on Zen players since the Xtra/NBJ3!

 

[Chri5peed]

I 'think' its a lot better. Listening to an offending album now and it does sound better.
I'll have to give it a week to give it a good go through a lot more stuff.

I downloaded the new program, much improved.

Did I imagine that it transfers a bit faster now?

Seems harder to move things around now. Some albums are wrong, not when playing mind you. Can you use WMP to alter stuff on the player then?

edit - Does that mean it driverless now, i.e. recognised on all XP/WMP10 machines?
Thats good.

 

[MrCookie989]

I think the speed of transfers is actually improved, I just loaded about 30gigs of music back on my Zen in an hour and change, I was surprised that it was so quick considering it was that music music.

 

[Chri5peed]

Its not impossible at all if it actually is faster.

I can't find a way of editing, on the old MediaSource you could alter the album details and position of things.

I filled mine back up pretty quickly. Glad I took the time with Tag&Rename a while ago and ensured all the tags were right. Easy case of transferring, my mp3s aren't on my PC btw.

 

[Chri5peed]

Meh, I downloaded the newest version of MediaSource, but its not recognising my Zen.