So anyone have the i7 yet?

[addz]

Anyone? I noticed its for sale on advancedmp3players for £149.99 (8gb model), would you say this is a fair price. I may just have to buy it.

Does it have Id3 tag browsing? cant make that clear from the korean website. So anyway, any user short reviews? opinions? The most important thing i guess would be how is the sound?

The D2 is 37/37mW while the i7 is 26/26mw, big difference.

[GSV3MiaC]

With most reasonable phones your ears will self destruct before you even get to 26mw per ear. The only time I ever get close to that is trying to drive an 'aux in' in the car (which is most definitely NOT 16 Ohm).

[Mauwzer]

I've had one since Friday, and TBH so far I'm underwhelmed.

I previously owned an iRiver S10 2GB, which had great SQ & clarity, but I got rid of it due to the awful battery life (approx 3.5 hours per charge).

A few things I've noticed so far:

Advantages:

It's 8GB, flash memory, so the tracks start quickly.

The battery life is awesome, I've been playing with it all weekend, and using it in my car for the 6 hours of driving I did over the weekend, playing videos, leaving the screen on 'always' setting, and it's still showing 50% battery from it's first charge.

It's tiny! Much smaller than I imagined, although it is a lot bigger than my last DAP.

It has 2 'hot key' buttons you can assign to carry out various shortcuts, although you have a limited choice of options to assign them to.

It has a 'play speed' function, where you can pitch tunes up by about +50% or pitch down by about -20%. Great for those old dance tunes that are just too slow!

The 'resume' function resumes from right where you left off, and you can also set 'bookmarks' that can be saved so you could always jump to the middle of a track, or mix, just by choosing the shortcut in the bookmark folder.

There's a shortcut to turn the screen on & off at will by flicking the on/off button quickly (whereas holding it for 1 sec will turn it off/on).

the factory EQs are almost completely user definable - so you can actually adjust the factory 'rock, pop, jazz, dance' etc settings so that every time you choose say 'jazz' it's your own preference not someone elses.
There are also 10 custom user definable EQ settings, so you can have 10 favourite types, but you can only call 1 from memory at any one time on the EQ rotation by choosing 'user'. To select the others you have to go into settings and change 'user' to pref1, pref2, etc up to pref10.

Disadvantages:

I compared the iAudio 7 to my friends iPod (newest one) using both devices plugged into the aux of a hi-fi - and the iPod was louder & more powerful with each track that we played. *edit* This could have been because I had not properly set up the EQ on the iAudio and the volume was around +35 & I don't know what volume the iPod was at.

I'm not convinced about the EQs. The bass sounds quite muddy and it took me a long time adjusting the other factory EQs before they sounded nearer to how I think they should sound.

When having the volume above +35 the bass distorts on anything more than +2 steps on the EQ, whereas the iRiver would happily go up to +39 before distorting. *edit* this isn't necessarily a problem unless you have all the other settings such as BBE, mpenhance, mach bass etc turned on.

After using the iAudio for the first 5 mins(!!!!) it got stuck in an infinite loop where the 'swing touch' control was constantly scrolling through the folder list at 100mph and nothing would stop it - no buttons worked, you couldn't turn it off etc. I had to press the reset button to fix it.
On day 2 it got stuck in an infinite loop whereby it was playing the first second of a track then skipping to the next, ad infinitum. Again, nothing worked apart from the reset button.

You can't delete files from the device on the fly, only by plugging it into a PC and deleting from the folder using the PC. Very annoying when you're testing out new albums and want to get rid of the tunes you don't like when you're away from the PC. The iRiver S10 could delete files on the fly.

It seemed to take a lot longer to put mp3s onto the device than it did with my iRiver S10. To put on 8GB of music took almost an hour.

The player isn't gapless. There is a noticable gap of about 1/4 sec between tracks, making it infuriating when listening to DJ mixes.

[Martinp]

Uhm, it sounds like your unit is broken. I really can't imagine an iPod being louder than the i7 to be honest. I have compared the iAudio M3 and X5 to various iPods and the Cowon players kicked the iPods to hell and back.

[Who Am I?]

yeah, there's no way an iPod can overcome a Cowon DAP.

[Rockin_amigo14]

except in sales and market share, but who pays attention to such things, right? =P

[Mauwzer]

OK, maybe I was exaggerating when I said the iPod was 'a lot' louder than the iAudio, but it was noticeably louder. This might have been due to me turning th iAudio down to about +34 to stop it distorting, but there was a difference. I can't remember the details now, but I remember being disappointed every time I plugged my iAudio in(!)

Anyway, hopefully I've conquered the distortion problems now... After paying closer attention to the stock EQ settings, it looks like Cowon were pushing the factory EQs too high as they were mostly in the +75% region, so no surprise most settings were causing bass distortion at the highest volume levels.
The good news is that the factory EQs are almost completely user definable - so you can actually adjust the factory 'rock, pop, jazz, dance' etc settings so that every time you choose say 'jazz' it's your own preference not someone elses.
There are also 10 custom user definable EQ settings, so you can have 10 favourite types, but you can only call 1 from memory at any one time on the EQ rotation by choosing 'user'. To select the others you have to go into settings and change 'user' to pref1, pref2, etc up to pref10.

I have added some more pro's & con's that I have noticed tonight.

[Mauwzer]

A few more points added.

[mosso2000]

Ordered mine today from advancemp3players as it is written "in stock" but it did not get delivered even if it is stated same day delivery on the website ans I placed my order in the morning... Are they running short on stock??? The status is picking meaning they are "checking stock status and packing"...

[MrNetwork]

Thanks Mauwzer for the revew. I went to advancedmp3player and the iRiver Clix 2 caught my attention, too. A little more expensive though.

[jppaynesr]

RE: Mauzer

# On day 2 it got stuck in an infinite loop whereby it was playing the first second of a track then skipping to the next, ad infinitum. Again, nothing worked apart from the reset button.

This has also happened to me. What I did to fix it was moisten the pad (I liked it - yuck!) . That sopped the repeating long enough to turn it off. why? Because I had left it in my car for a short while and it was COLD, so I though perhaps it was ESD related. In cold weather your body can have a large static charge which would affect this type control mechanism. Moisture will dissipate the ESD effect.

Are there any other reports of this "infinite loop".

# You can't delete files from the device on the fly, only by plugging it into a PC and deleting from the folder using the PC. Very annoying when you're testing out new albums and want to get rid of the tunes you don't like when you're away from the PC. The iRiver S10 could delete files on the fly.

Umm, on mine you can delete on the fly, hold the pause for a few seconds and a menu pops up. Don't try it while driving however :).

[stryd_one]

I've had the "infinite loop" (it's not really, it's a stuck button) and an upgrade to 1.15 and reduced sensitivity made it go away. If I turn the sensitivity back up, and either I or the player are particularly warm (IE, large difference in temperature between me and button), I can reproduce the problem.

@jpp: Next time, lick your finger and touch the button... or just give it time for the temperature to level out ... You'll look a bit weird licking your MP3 player. :)

[jppaynesr]

It happened again last night. While trying to make a selection it started scrolling rapidly. This time I could not stop it nor turn it off. I pressed the reset button which stopped the looping. I did not lose any data by doing that.

My firmware is 1.13. Can anyone definitively state that an upgrade solves this issue? I already have the sensitivity all the way down.

Honestly I'm about ready to buy an iPod or Zune. The screen on this is too small, the controls are too sensitive, and it doesn't play mp4's.

[omega6666]

...and it doesn't play mp4's.
First time complaint about it having too few available formats [laugh]

[jppaynesr]

Omega6666

Sorry, I don't understand what your comment means.

[mantis99]

I almost bought the i7, but the numerous complaints turned me away. Instead I got the sony nwz-a818 which is great (supports aac too). Nice screen, small size, battery life and tactile-controls and it isn't an ipod :D.

[GSV3MiaC]

Brought to you by those nice people who installed rootkits on your PC without asking you, and are even now out potting whales in the Southern Ocean? I'll stick with my i7 - the only complaint I have is no playlists, and poor .ogg tag support (non existent if you want to use 'msuic' mode, which I don't).

[stryd_one]

Sony are whaling?

Look, I'm as anti-whaling and anti-sony (for consumer gear, their pro gear is nice) as any self respecting intelligent human being... But I don't think they have a lot to do with one another.

There are plenty of good reasons to diss sony, let's stick with those.... Rootkits, DRM... etc etc

[GSV3MiaC]

They're Japanese owned. Since I don't buy anything from the Japanese government directly (who issue these 'experimental' whaling licenses), best I can do is punish their industries and let them know why.

Actually I'm more radical; my proposal is that Japan should be allowed open season on all whales, as long as everyone's submarines are allowed open season on Japanese whaling vessels.