Converting on Cowon

[artichoke]

Pardon my amature ignorance everyone but please correct me if i'm wrong.

One of the Q5's strong points is the number codecs right? Apparently they have more codecs than any other company out their built in. This means that I can download on to my Q5 and never worry about using a program to convert correct?

How does Q5 compare to the Archos? Is there a lot of converting required due to the codec issue?


PS: I HATE IPOD!!!

[StanRex]

Recent archos products have shitty sound. And when I say shitty, I really mean it (I sold my 604 to buy a d2)

[mikey]

I have the 504 and dont think its sh*tty, but this is a very subjective topic, I have not had to convert any files to play on it

[eoniverse]

I had the 504 also. I'd say closer to shitty than great audio. My Creative units I have and an older Archos av340 I had sound much better than the 504.

Then there is a 'freezing issue' from the buggy percentage of 504 units out there. Go to cnet and read the lower rated user reviews on the 504. I had the same issue and I'm starting to think it plague's 10% - 15% of the 504 run based on neg reviews at various sites. Archos admitted they have no fix for sound or freezing. At archosfans there are posts that seem to show units are being returned from rma unrepaired or with the same issue they went in with. [cursing] Admittedly this is a small percentage of units - but I didn't feel like playing 'buy and return' until I found one that didn't shut down esp given the sound quality.

No one knows how the Q5 compares to the current Archos line or if they do.... they haven't shared it anywhere. No unit will be fool proof importing codecs - including the Cowon line. Archos did handle everything I through at it well but not well enough for me to ignore it's sound and shut down issues.

If the Creative W line had a better output than the 262K colors I'd have tried that but codecs are def limited on that product and Creative is very unresponsive to firmware updates. I've heard that banding is an issue when outputted to TV and grey scale/ blues are 'off' due to limited colors. So I'm waiting to see how the new Cowon products will compare with the Gen5 Archos.... but I'll probably end up with Cowon after the 504 experience.