My Review #2: The Cowan/iaudio D2

[james.miller]

Ok I've kept a few people waiting for this, i apologise lol but finally here it is. My review of cowan's latest effort, the 4gb cowan D2


The Specs

* MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, WAV, APE* , Moving Picture Playback, FM Radio Receiver and Recording, Voice Recording, Line-In Recording, USB Storage
* TXT (Text), JPEG (Image) File Viewer (Image Enlargement, Background Screen Designation)
* Built-in Flash Memory (2G/4G)
* USB 2.0 Interface
* 2.5 inch 16 million color 24bit TFT-LCD - QVGA (320x240) Touch Screen support.
* Long Playback Time : Music Up to 52 hours, Movie Up to 10hours continuous playback
(Based on company's self-test, the Music playing time may be shortened according to LCD backlight usages.)
* Multi language support
* Enhanced Integrated Navigator
* Play/Pause, Recording/Pause Next Song/Previous Song, Fast Forward/Rewind, Section Repeat Resume, Fade In, Auto Play Features Search Speed, Skip Speed Setup
* Various EQ and Sound Field Effects
- User-Adjustable 5-Band EQ
- Normal, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Classic, Vocal, User
- Supports BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, 3D Surround and Stereo Enhance
* Clock, Alarm, Pre-Scheduled Recording, Sleep Function, Power Saving Shut down.
* LCD Auto Off Time Adjustment, Brightness Adjustments
* Easy Firmware Upgrade
* Supports ID3V2, ID3V1, FileName
* Product Info. Display (Firmware version, Memory Capacity/Usage)
* Supports MAC OS (Data transfer only), Supports Linux v 2.2 or higher (Data transfer only)

Software
* JetShell (File transfer, MP3/WMA/WAV/AUDIO CD PLAY)
* JetAudio VX (Integrated multimedia player software, music/video conversion feature)

Playback Format
* MP3 : MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, ~320kbps, ~48khz, mono/stereo
* WMA : ~256kbps, ~48khz, mono/stereo
* OGG : ~Q10, ~44.1khz, mono/stereo
* FLAC : Compression Level 0 ~ 8, ~44.1khz, mono/stereo
* WAV : ~48khz, 16bit, mono/stereo
* APE* : TBD
* Video File up to 320x240(QVGA), 30fps
* JPG, TXT

Folder Limit
* 500 folders and 5,000 files

RADIO support
* FM RADIO : 76Mhz ~ 108Mhz, 87.5Mhz ~ 108Mhz
* WMA : 32~256kbps recording support

Display
* 2.5 inch 16 million color(24bit) TFT-LCD : QVGA (320x240) Touch Screen support.

Built-in memory
* 2GB, 4GB

External Memory
* (SD, MMC) Card Slot

PC interface
o USB 2.0 High Speed

File transfer speed
o Max. 35Mbps (Upload 40Mbps)


Power
o Built-in Rechargeable Lithium Polymer Battery


Playback time **
o Music : Max. 52 Hours Continuous Playback
o Movie : Max. 10 Hours Continuous Playback
o Charge time - About 3.5 hours by adapter, About 7 hours by USB
o SNR - 95dB (A-Weighted)
o Frequency Range - 20Hz~20KHz
o Max Output - 16 Ohm earphone : 37mW + 37mW
o Size - 78.0 X 55.4 X 16.6 mm (W x H x D)
o Weight - 91g (Include Lithium Polymer battery)

* APE will be supported by future firmware upgrade.
** Playback time is based on company's self-test, The music playing time may be shortened according to LCD backlight usages.

Some impressive specs, notable the power output (37mw) and the their claim of a 52 hour battery life. not only that but it has a touch screen the same size as a video ipod's (more on that in a bit) Impressive set of features for a unit so small.

 

[james.miller]

The Review



Packaging and what's in the box:




ok So in the stylish box comes the essentials,:

• The player
• Usb cable
• Standard set of rubbish headphones
• The charger
• A stylus (the triangular object)
• the manual.
• foam covers for the earphones

Not pictured there are the driver cd and the dummy sd card to stop muck getting in the play. not really worth taking a

photo lol

The player itself:

 

[james.miller]

 

[james.miller]

My first thought were on how small the player is. the screen is the same size as an ipod video's but the player itself isn't much bigger than the screen and barely thicker than a double 'A' battery. They have managed to pack some impressive features into a player of this size. It feels well put together and very strong. the cover for the ubs and multi port is plastic, not rubber, so it shouldn't warp and stick out like rubber covers tend to do. I'm getting the impression dropping it wouldn't put a dent in it, not that it'd like to try lol. the player's casing is all hard plastic and is fine for the job really. a nice metal case would have been a little more stylish, but at least its not a soft plastic that would easily scratch in it feels very solid in the hand the only niggle i have, is that (if you use it) the stylus has to be tied to the unit and it just hangs there - there's no slot to slide it in to when you're not using it.


Using the player

The player's touchscreen is very good indeed. menu's are large and easy to use meaning that most of the time you dont have to use the stylus at all. i have plenty of pics, but please excuse the finger prints. its just unavoidable when using touchscreens lol

from boot up which can take a few seconds or more (10-15 if youve just added media, but apparently they are looking in to speeding this up) you start with the main menu



Graphics are nice and big and labels are easy to read. you have access to all modes from here, audio, video, text, radio, recorder and of course the settings.

graphics and buttons in the various modes keep the same easy to use theme. in both the audio and video modes you can bring the browser up by tapping the bottom left of the screen twice, and browse your files by folder (yey) or by tags in the audio mode if you really want to. personally i cant stand having to make sure all the tags on all your files are perfect, so browse-by-folder is a welcomed feature. in audio mode album art is supported and has a decent sized place holder for the image.

scrolling backwards or forwards is as easy as holding down the 'button' on the left or right of the screen and searching, or tapping on the progress bar and skipping straight to a given point. skipping tracks is simple a double press on either side of the screen. It's all very easy to do and you soon get used to it. two of the hard buttons on the top of the player control the volume and the 3rd button in between them is the menu button which is used to quickly jump back to the menu screen for a mode and visa versa, again making navigation as easy as possible. everything is within a few clicks. One nice touch is the addition of dragging using the touch screen. by 'clicking' and dragging on the screen you can navigate backwards, forward, up and down in folders which on the whole works very well.

My photos aren't the best but the screen is bright and easy to use. it doesn't do so well in direct sunlight, but that's something anything with an lcd suffers from. its the same size and resolution as as a video ipods as i said, but can display 16 million colours not 64k which is pretty good for such a small player. certainly photos look very sharp and colourful on the lcd. At this point i havent tried to play a video so i cant comment on that yet, but ill update the review soon.

the radio works well enough. Sound quality is good and it lock on well, but no rds? that should really have been included but its not a huge problem.

the rest of the pictures of the ui can be found here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/james.miller700/cowan_d2/ui/


sound quality:

Out of the box its pretty flat and lifeless. and needs a good fiddling with the 'jet effects' setting to get a decent output from it. when you do this is one of the best players i've ever heard. its up there with the x5, and in many ways better than my rockboxed h10. It has an impressive level of dynamics and an ability to pick out sounds surpassing that of any of my other players. it has a decent top end that's detailed and clear, though it can be a little harsh at times. the bottom end is tight and snappy, though it needs some work. This is where it falls down against my h10. Its not as strong in the 20-40hz region and could be improved apon. as for loudness, well. it can drive very VERY loud but there are limitations....

My suggestion to cowan: Give us direct access to the amplifer and a proper parametric eq and this will improve the sound quality no end. as it stands at the moment the jet effects are a mess of settings that you need to fiddle with to get the right balance. too much on some and its over bright, on others it distorts even at low volumes and whatever settings you use,there is a silight problem with background hiss, evident because when you turn the volume up the miss rises with volume in steps and then will drop right back down to almost nothing. ie, the hiss on a volume of 36 is louder than it is on 37. That to me says straight away that the software side of it isn't optimised yet. Don't let this influence you too much though, these aren't problems that will bother the majority of people and the sound quality is still outstanding. I just know that there is room for improvement from cowan


Other stuff

the settings menu is pretty comprehensive. there are no less than 8 different audio settings you can play with in the 'jet effects', one of those being a 5 band equaliser, there's also bass settings, 3d surround, stereo enhance ect, and you can save your own presets on the unit.

you can set the 'boundary' of play to specify whether it'll play a track at a time, one folder or your entire collection. there are normal setting like repeat and shuffle also. In the display menu you can tell the player to display names by their filename or id3 tag, set scroll speeds, change the wallpaper, font colour ect..... Basically most things have an setting you can adjust in one way or another.

Memory card support: with the last update the unit is now compatible with SDHC cards, meaning 8gb cards at least are working now, bringing the totally up to 12gb if you have the 4gb version of the d2.

I've been looking up on forums and the general feeling is that the player isnt in a finished state. there is still a lot more of features they could add to this unit, and a few small niggles here and there, but its the same with any new player to be honest. apparently the next update will bring flash support to the table which should be interesting, but id rather they do a pukka job of the sound first before adding other features.

 

[james.miller]

As i always do, i tested the transfer speeds of the device using hdtach, and the result were pretty uninspiring:

a transfer rate of 6mb/sec to the card in the player and 4mb/sec to the player itself. that means your looking at roughly a second a track. if you have card reader, id suggest using that to transfer your larger music and films to as the transfer rate is much better at closer to 19mb/sec on the card that was bundles with my d2 the speed isnt really a problem for music, it just means it takes a while to put a large collection of files on there. Remember also, this is a UMS player. no software is needed to transfer files, it will just pop up as two removable drives in MY Computer - one for the player and one for the memory card.

how capable is the player?

a measured THD of 0.0049% and a frequency responce of 4hz - 21.2khz +/- 3db is very impressive to say the least.

 

[james.miller]

The verdict:

pros:

* touchscreen is very easy to use and the quality of the display is great
* battery life is fantastic (mine lasted ~45 hours on a full charge with full brightness and playing loud)
* sounds quality is very good though there is clear room for improvement, still one of the best daps around
* upgradable memory (currently up to 12mb total)
* compact and well built


cons:
* few minor niggles with the software
* sound can be improved further if they tried
* transfer speed is on the slow side, use the card in a reader whenever possible
* no rds radio
* no where to slot the stylus when not in use, it spoils the look somewhat.


now for a score..... im giving this a 92/100. improvements can be made but as it is it is a VERY good mp3 player.



more will be added to this review, dont worry. if you have suggestions ro any questions, let me know

 

[james.miller]

eh x5 still has the edge but to be fair, i wouldnt use either with no equaliser active lol


nice to see lots of replies guys!

 

[james.miller]

Great review mate...

Does look like a nice player though got to agree it needs a bit of spit and polish to be perfect, but certainly gives the Clix2 a run for its money...

Afraid Ive got a fair few questions (u seem to have covered the audio side )

lol thank you mate.

• Warranty length? What do you think of Cowon support in the future (fixing issues and adding new features) and how they react to the community?
  standard one year as far as i know. As for cowan their suppor their always been first rate and hopefully they'll listen to the users and sort the little problems out first
  
• What kind of adhoc playlists can it do?
  i dont currently know. i've never been one to use playlists, but i will find out tomorrow.
• I presume you mean 5000 files per folder right?
  apparently that's 5000 in total. Bit of a strange number, but in practice you will be hard pushed to fill it with 5000 well-encoded track. This has been increase to 6k with the latest firmware. again, an odd number
  
• How sensitive is the touchscreen and can you change this? Also do you recommend an overlay to protect it? Slightly worried when doing drag and drop or holding a button to fast forward it will damage the screen in someway...
  not overly sensitive, i would say it is just right to be honest. there's no option for adjustment but i dont feel it's needed. the screen does have a decent feel and i cant see you scratching it with your fingers at all, but a protective case isnt a bad idea
  
• Love the stylus and the fact it can be used as a stand - tis a shame it has no storage for it - though I might just use a PDA stylus as a replacement
  yes thats a bit of a pain. it's quite easy to use your fingers though, if that doesnt bother you.
  
• Impressed with the amount of codecs it supports though you didnt list much about the video codecs, especially whats required to transcode. In the past most video support has been on PMPs has been hit and miss...
  yeah i'll be updating this section in the next few days. the driver cd comes with an app to convert video and ill be testing this out very soon
  
• Unsure if you use this facility but how is it as a recorder? Just thinking of using it as a dictaphone really. Does FM recording only encoded in WMA? No MP3 or WAV support? Same goes for the other types of recording..
  recording from the mic is wma only at this time, you can set the quality in steps from 32kbps to 256kbps, same goes for the fm recording the mic quality in recording is actually very clear, ill upload a sample for you
  
  edit: **removed**. swaries in the background DOH
  
  .
• Also with picture/text viewing can you still listen to music? Any ideas if you can use the player to connect to a camera to download photos? Can these be viewed straight away (assuming not) I still dont understand why manus dont pick up on this, thinks its a perfect feature to have especially on holiday. There needs to be some more thought in how these players display pictures (limited zoom and pan would be great)...
  yeah, you can view pictures no problem while listening to music. it's not currently usb OTG (on the go) compatible so you cant download straight from a camera. to be honest if you could, it would take an absolute age with pictures being a couble of mb a time

Sorry for the numerous questions - hope you dont mind answering them - definitely on my shortlist...

p3ud0

dont mention it. review isnt quite finished yet, but i really expected more interest in the player

Also how does it rate overall to your previous players?

sound quality? easily the best. features? not as good as the istation i2, but far better executed. transfer speed is a little disappointing, but the only time it bothers you is when putting your music on there. I spend far more time listening to it that shifting files around! it's the most well-rounded player ive used, that included my rockboxed h10.

 

[james.miller]

Haha it hard for me not to compare it to the iRiver products, but thats a good thing...

Worried about the file limit in all honesty. I tend to use my players to fit other bits and pieces (work documents and so forth) and considering you can fit 12GB+ - 6000 files does seem on the tight side.

since you put it like that yeah, i can see why that would be an issue.


**********


looks like there has just been another firmware release. still a beta, but this makes the 3rd release since the player was launched. great support as always

hey guys!

D2 new firmware released in Korea!


- Support Notepad -you can write a letter-
- Support the advanced options for EQ setting
- Support the BMP viewer
- Stabilized Music library function
- Improved the character recognition
- Fixed the error of text bookmark
- Fixed the error of dictionary
- Stabilized other functions

EXCELLENT. they are listening after all. that might not be parametric, but adjustable bands is a step in the right direction.

 

[james.miller]

Why do I find that so funny . Wierd they choose WMA over the more generic MP3

[EDIT: Swearies in the background!!!]

ps3ud0

i cant believe you heard that i have layer cake playing in the background. my tv's quite too ill upload another one lol

 

[james.miller]

no, any questions carry on lol. it'll all get added to the review. ill make this as comprehensive as possible, as i do believe its the best £150 mp3 player you can buy right now.

 

[james.miller]

i couldnt use either player without messing with the eq. what earphones are you using out of interest?


the newest firmware has fixed or at least improved the distortion quite a bit also note that uploading the newest firmware deleted everything of the players internal memory. doh

 

[james.miller]

yeah the jet effects are similar here, its easy to see whats going on - they are increasing the perceived loudness of the bottom end by reducing the midrange, in a nut shell. i dont have bbe or mega bass enabled, but i am using the equaliser which is pretty safe.

with no effects or equaliser at all it'll drive cleanly up to the players maximum volue of 50. which is pretty loud lol. sounds quality seems largely the same but bass seems slightly improved when using the equaliser alone

 

[james.miller]

yeah at the moment they have a cap set at 320x240 which is a little frustrating if you have movies in a higher res, especially knowing the player is more than capable of playing them back as you still have to recode them for the time being. hopefully when the official 3.45 firmware is release that cap will have been removed

 

[james.miller]

thanks guys. there's been quite a few firmware updates since i wrote the review. there are still bugs in the software but they all virtually all silly problems with id3 tags and the database playback. i browse my mp3's by folder structure so i dont have any of those problems.

the later firmwares have a sort of semi-parametric equaliser - it has bands than you can adjust the center frequency on, and the 'width; of the bands. there isnt an adjustable band that centers in the bottom end (~30-60hz) yet which is what most of us are wanting.

Flash support has also been added. it pretty much fully supports clix2 games ( ) and a few other simple flash games.

As for the expandable memory, is it easy enough to transfer data between the card and internal flash memory? If so how fast is the transfer rate?

I was also looking at the Iaudio 7, for size and battery life, and the Iriver clix 2. Any experiences with these compared to the D2?

compared to a clix2, the d2 is a much better player. it lasts twice as long and the memory is upgradable. i've not heard aclix2 myself but apparently they arent on par in SQ either.

transfer of files between *** player and memory isn't bad. its not lightning fast though - you can read from the internal memory at around 4-5mb/sec if i remember. the fastest way to get music on the player is to put the card in a card reader

One question about movies, do you have to resize movies down to 320x240 or does it do this automatically?

at the moment, yes. it's one of the features most requested to 'fix'

 

[james.miller]

what dont you like about the d2 and the way it operates?

 

[james.miller]

not really :/


start it up > "music" your in the player.tap the screen, hit "browser" > "music list" and your in the music list. scroll up/down through the list, double tap to open the folder you want and tap the mp3 you want and it starts playing.

when your playing music "settings" > "jet effects" and your in the jet effects menu.


battery life is a strange one - more is always better. it funny, peopel look at the battery life of a D2 and say "well you dont need that much anyway". as if its a reason not to buy a d2. somebody on these boards used that as a reason to defend his ipod. as if it is too much? i like the face that i can take it away for days and never charge it. before the d2 came along, peopel were complaining about battery life

 

[james.miller]

Nice feature list, but that "now playing" screen looks like crap.

thats the only thing you can say about it?

hi.....I am more leaning towards the D2 now rather the Clix2, wondering how you are finding it with the latest firmware. Does it have gapless playback yet & has the video coversion been fixed yet?

well, the newer firmwares improved in a number of areas. they also introduced flash support, compatible with clixII games, a paint-type program and a calculator (both useless lol). gapless im sure was there but the resolution limit on the video support was still there i think

 

[james.miller]

It's important to me, I watched the video review and it just seemed like an awful thing to have to use every day, and the now playing screen manages to sum it all up in one picture. It's designed by engineers / programmers, not designers.

your loss then. its function over form. its a piece of cake to use and tells you just about everything you need to know. if you want an ipod, buy an ipod

 

[james.miller]

erm, no not with the players software. although of course you can do it when its plugged in to the pc