My Review #2: The Cowan/iaudio D2

[james.miller]

kainz have you tried replygaining your music?

when look through the installer sources on my iphone, i saw that one of the featured packages (oddly called Kate for some reason) had an equaliser for the ipod in there......is this the fix the iphone and itouch need i wonder.... its only a 3 band eq, but its a start. im trying it now.

 

[james.miller]

I've had enough of the plod tbh, and my touch was jailbroken until I foolishly upgraded to 1.1.4. I can't be bothered to downgrade tbh. I lost it when I replaced two of my favourite Aerosmith MP3's with AAC equivalents, the AAC version felt like it was recorded at some utterly laughable bitrate.

If its an EQ I just can't see how it'll help as I've always put it down to the hardware on the touch/phone, especially given it's thickness. The moment I saw these devices I did want one but questioned the sound quality - and that was ages before I purchased my touch.

its the eq, trust me lol. ipods have all done the same thing. turn the eq off and there is no problem at all - it comes very close to my xonar d2's output. turn it on and it turns in to a bag of distortion. if you replaygain the files down low enough, this distortion disappears. its the way apple implement their eqalizer. Their eq's boost the treble and bass but dont cut back the gain by an equal amount. you end up with a signal thats clipping and distorted even before it's amplified. its a major failing of every apple player out there, but the difference is the touch and iphone are an open platform and it CAN be fixed by a 3rd party.

as it is right now, the less eq you use on these, the less it becomes a problem.


anyway, the sony is the best of the lot save the samsung p2, but i havent listened to one yet.

I nearly bought this but got the Sony NWZ-A818 instead, haven't regretted my purchase. Bought some Sennheiser CX300b. They compliment each other very well

wait you bought a sony, which comes with the very good ex85's, and then replaced them with the inferior cx300s?

 

[james.miller]

comes down to taste really, ps3ud0. for me, its normally mega bass on 1 and the last (highest frequency) slider up one notch. i found it doesnt really need more than that unless im in a bass head mood. other sound settings like clear stereo dont really do much at all

Chronictank from those, the samsung easy. its £100 cheaper. the 829 is just TOO expensive. id rather have an 818 for £90 and drop 8gb of memory and blutooth support than spend that much on a 829.

 

[james.miller]

It also seems that Samsung tend to release more firmware updates with additional/upgraded features so it could become a more featured player over time...

http://www.engadget.com/tag/yp-p2/

Im sure the 828 is much cheaper than £229 - the 829 is 16Gb, but the 828 is 8Gb...

ps3ud0

from what i remember. the 828 is virtually the same price, because it comes with bt headphones while the 829 does not.

edit: what am i talking about. no, the 8gb is around £160 and comes with headphones. the 829 is around the £200 mark and does not come with bluetooth headphones. making it an expensive player for sure. i still wouldnt pay nearly double for an 828 with BT headphones over an 818 though.

 

[james.miller]

sory forgot to add the cowan

Sureless tha lack of lossless audio on the samsung would put you off it though?
Or has that been ammended?

I do have a smasung mobile tho, so being a gadget junkey the option to pair them may just be the seller ><
Video wise the cowan looks better in terms of screen

argh

nope, dont use lossless on my mp3 players. if i were to go all the way and use an amplifier and a £250 pair of headphones then i'd probably go for an ipod classic and use the line out in which case i would be using lossless. but for normal listening no, i cant tell the difference between a decent 192k lame mp3 and lossless on a portable setup on all but a select few tracks. i dont use video on an mp3 player either, so i cant really help you there....well, it is pretty good on my iphone lol

 

[james.miller]

i found writing to the internal memory of my old 4gb to be pretty slow, as my review showed. so much so i tended not to use it at all and just stick to the memory card as writing to it was just too much of a chore when i could stick the card in a reader and write almost literally 5 times quicker. it may or may not be a deciding factor for anybody interested in a D2.

perhaps the 16gb d2 is near release and thats why the 8gb's are drying up. im hoping they fix the low impedance issues on the 16gb but i doubt they will