Mauwzer
07-12-2007, 15:48
I took some pics last night if anyone's interested, Plus I've listed my pros & cons from the other thread with updates to keep things neat as I've now installed firmware 1.12 which has fixed a couple of things [yes]
Advantages:
It's 8GB, flash memory, so the tracks start quickly.
The battery life is awesome, I've been playing with it all week, 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, etc. I have used it in my car on vol +35 for an hour & a half each day this week and it's still got 2 bars on the battery indicator!
It's tiny! Much smaller than I imagined, and the fact there's no corporate branding on the front of the unit makes it look classy.
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.
As of Firmware 1.12 it has the ability to delete files on the fly. This is even better than the iRiver, as you can delete the file you are playing. With the iRiver you had to stop the track, then navigate back to the directory it was in and select delete from there. Although for some reason it can't delete the directory the files were in.
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. Machbass sounds especially poor and just distorts at high volumes
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.
*FIXED as of Firmware 1.12 - see advantages!* 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.
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9930/newy013smpj7.jpg
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/5471/newy016smjv5.jpg
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/5599/newy007smqg8.jpg
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9981/newy024smrk0.jpg
Advantages:
It's 8GB, flash memory, so the tracks start quickly.
The battery life is awesome, I've been playing with it all week, 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, etc. I have used it in my car on vol +35 for an hour & a half each day this week and it's still got 2 bars on the battery indicator!
It's tiny! Much smaller than I imagined, and the fact there's no corporate branding on the front of the unit makes it look classy.
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.
As of Firmware 1.12 it has the ability to delete files on the fly. This is even better than the iRiver, as you can delete the file you are playing. With the iRiver you had to stop the track, then navigate back to the directory it was in and select delete from there. Although for some reason it can't delete the directory the files were in.
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. Machbass sounds especially poor and just distorts at high volumes
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.
*FIXED as of Firmware 1.12 - see advantages!* 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.
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9930/newy013smpj7.jpg
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/5471/newy016smjv5.jpg
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/5599/newy007smqg8.jpg
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9981/newy024smrk0.jpg