View Full Version : iAudio X5 Review comments, questions and thoughts
Please feel free to share your constructive comments, questions and thoughts on the first in-depth english review of the iAudio X5. I will read all your posts, but I might not be able to reply to all of them. I hope you understand that.
Thanks a lot,
eXity
AceTheFace
05-20-2005, 06:58
Where is it? Since a few days I got big problems with iaudiophile.net. Only Forum seems to work.
Greets,
Ace
Yes, i have the same problem AceTheFace... Exity can you give us a direct link to your review, may be it'll work better ? Tks
http://www.iaudiophile.net/content.php?review.24
It goes really slow, loading a new page takes ages.
Roscoe Outlaw
05-20-2005, 07:29
its slow as hell! thanx anyways!
AceTheFace
05-20-2005, 07:31
after ten minutes waiting for the first side, now I'm waiting for the second one. Till now, it's written really good *g*
Uh, sorry about that. About 1 Million people want to read the review and theu are killing our servers. We never expected that much server load.
LOL
cool i am one of em :D
AceTheFace
05-20-2005, 08:37
You should mirror it ;)
Wow the servers getting hammered! Maybe ill be able to read the review in a few hours...
amazing how many people are interested in the device..
Thanks for the great review. just one quick question, and i apologise if you have already answered it cos if you have i am being very blind and cant see it. anyway when playing m3u playlists, does it display all the songs in the play list, so you can see whihc song is coming up next or say in a couple of songs time when playing a song on the playlist, and when you turn off the player in the middle of a play list, will it remember where you are and resume in from where it left off?
thanks again for the great review
bradavon
05-20-2005, 18:47
Thanks a lot eXity. I have a few questions please:
1. "For the playlists to work, they need to be located in the “playlist” directory on the player itself. Only m3u files are allowed in this directory and no audio files!"
Does this mean it won't load M3U files if they're in the same directory as the music files? I ask as it will be a nightmare to edit them all to have the path where the actual music files are.
2. "My first test was conducted with a playlist filled with 90% 128 kbps mp3s and 10% 192 kbps mp3s (all constant bitrate). The X5 played a little longer than fifteen hours. My second test was conducted with a playlist filled with 192 kbps VBR ogg files ripped by jetAudio. The playback time was pretty well spot on thirteen hours."
Does this mean WMAs at 96Kbps being a lower bit-rate would go over the 15 hours? If so how long would you guess?
3. "Converted videos are roughly 1.9 MB per minute."
Can this be adjusted? As that would mean roughly a 2 hour film is a whopping 240Mb. That's far more than it should be for such a small resolution.
4. What formats of video can be dragged into JetAudio?
Thanks in advance.
TangoCore
05-20-2005, 19:40
When you talk about the case, you don't mention if the case has screen protector or not
It has one (I was posted in another forum I believe).
but could you make a picture of the backsite of the case?
thanks, it's a great review, and at this time, the server isn't overloaded, the pages loaded in a few seconds (with an cable connection).
thanks saviour eXity for your holy review!
________
L66 ENGINE (http://www.chevy-wiki.com/wiki/GM_L66_engine)
240MB for 2 hours sounds right, a so so quality 2 hour film is about 700MB+
1.Does this mean it won't load M3U files if they're in the same directory as the music files? I ask as it will be a nightmare to edit them all to have the path where the actual music files are.
No, the path does not have to be adjusted.
2. Does this mean WMAs at 96Kbps being a lower bit-rate would go over the 15 hours? If so how long would you guess?
I guess that they would play for around 16 hours too or a little longer. I can't tell you though seeing that I don't have any 96 kbps wma files.
3. Can this be adjusted? As that would mean roughly a 2 hour film is a whopping 240Mb. That's far more than it should be for such a small resolution.
No, this can not be adjusted.
4. What formats of video can be dragged into JetAudio?
Pretty well every video file that will play in jetAudio (nearly everything) will also convert.
puttingdog
05-21-2005, 02:16
I got the X5 today and did the AB test with M3 almost a whole day
(Damx, my ear sores. My headphone setup, Ety ER-4S and Grado RS-1; AMP: Porta Corda MKII)
And I got a few comments here:
1. X5 sounds more balanced than the M3, however, I kind of loved the shrilled high of the M3. They just give more lives to the classical genres. To me, M3 is more musical than the X5 ( maybe not as balanced ). X5 is somewhat like IPODs with more mids and cut off some highs. One thing better is that the EQs on X5 are more usable, not like IPODs, you'll have to go thru the MP3gain process in order to make use of the EQ settings.
2. X5 is somewhat slow to navigate thru the menus compare to the M3. It's not unbearable, you'll just have to get used to it after long owned the M3.
3. I really have to give a praise to the video playback function. It's rather fast to convert the video files on the desktop and than transfer it to the X5. I know the screen is not as big, I found it's rather useful to use it as a video player before you go to bed :D
korinengell
05-21-2005, 03:00
Did you encounter any bugs eXity? I figure you've tested pretty much every feature so far. Any problems yet? A couple of people have mentioned some problems on the 2.04 version of the firmware, although if you don't quite have a production version then you may not encounter the same problems anyway. What version of the firmware are you using and how do you tell? Just wondering how common the problems are but if you say the OS is pretty stable I take that as a fairly good sign.
Should I upgrade to 2.04 or wait for a US release? I've been contimplating on that for a while. Maybe if I upgrade to Korean firmware the possibilty to play DRM files are taken away like the users of the iRivers.
I encountered minimal completely uncritical bugs, but they are all mentioned in the review. Most of them have to do with the time display or bitrate display of ogg files. Also the USB-Host function needs a little tweaking but thats it.
I am using version 2.04 and yes, you can freely upgrade to the Korean version of the firmware. It doesn't matter.
Darkroom
05-21-2005, 07:43
Does this mean WMAs at 96Kbps being a lower bit-rate would go over the 15 hours? If so how long would you guess?
WMA requires more processing than MP3. I don't know exactly how much, but I suspect any gain on battery life you get by lower bitrate is lost in processing.
bradavon
05-21-2005, 09:58
Thanks eXity.
"No, the path does not have to be adjusted."
Sorry but if all the M3Us are in one folder how does the X5 know where to find the actual music file if it's in some obscure folder hidden away deeply?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks Darkroom. They're smaller so still better.
Darkroom
05-21-2005, 10:50
Sorry but if all the M3Us are in one folder how does the X5 know where to find the actual music file if it's in some obscure folder hidden away deeply?
I don't think you can drag these files directly to the m3u folder, but instead you'd need to drag them to Winamp playlist, and save them from winamp. This may or may not be a drag (pun not intended), depending on how your files are organized.
One suggestion would be to have your albums all in separate folders, with files names starting with trrack #. that way you won't be depending on a playlist to play through an album with the correct track order.
This is a good idea regardless, as it makes youur music collection easier to manage as it grows.
I have one question: Can u use a song 2x in playlists?
If this could be possible you could it make like this:
Music/Albums/Name of Album - Name of Interprete/album1.m3u AND (additionally) Music/Genres/Name of genre/punkrock.m3u
And the songs of the "album1.m3u" would be included into the "punkrock.m3u"!
could this be possible or would I have to copy the songs 2x on the x5???
Darkroom
05-21-2005, 11:21
That should be no problem, the playlists are very flexible. You can even have one track appear several times in the same playlists (If, for some reason you would want that)
You can download winamp (it's a free media player) to your computer, and see for yourself how the playlists work. The playlists in winamp are EXACTLY the same as the palylists in X5, and they work exactly the same way in your computer as they will in you X5 (except that you can only edit them in your computer).
You will probably be creating your X5 playlists with winamp, anyway.
Hi eXity - great review.
One question though, how was the speed for uploading of pictures? Can you fill up a memory card and see how long it takes to transfer onto the device?
Thanks,
aab
bradavon
05-21-2005, 12:40
Personally I use notepad or let Audiograbber do it for me.
Maxo as long as the path is correct (if the MP3 is in a different directory) it doesn't matter where the MP3 file is.
One suggestion would be to have your albums all in separate folders, with files names starting with trrack #. that way you won't be depending on a playlist to play through an album with the correct track order.
This is a good idea regardless, as it makes youur music collection easier to manage as it grows.
Thanks I do already but I like having playlists also.
p.s - Sorry I'm confused what Winamp has got to do with the X5 playing M3U files???
Darkroom
05-21-2005, 12:50
p.s - Sorry I'm confused what Winamp has got to do with the X5 playing M3U files???
Winamp uses m3u playlists, and has a very good playlist editor, where you can simply drag and drop media files to the playlist editor, move single files or groups of files around by dragging with your mouse, randomize playlists, and of course load and save playlists.
Other than editing the playlists, it's got nothing to do with X5.
Speed between X5 and comp. is 16mb/s.
What is the speed using USB OTG with a camera/card reader with USB 2.0?
PS. Great review :)
Caravaggio
05-22-2005, 02:47
I just have a quick question about the FW upgrades. Does every new FW include the fixes from the previous upgrades, or do you have to flash each one individually? I'm guessing the former but just want to be sure.
You only have to grab the newest firmware.
I'll have to check the USB-OTG transfer speeds. Couldn't tell you right now.
bradavon
05-22-2005, 10:06
Yes the newest firmware contains all the previous firmware upgrades.
Does the Korean 2.04 firmware work in International players?
Darkroom
05-22-2005, 10:31
I've heard lots of ppl upgrading to Korean with no problems.
BlackFlag79
05-22-2005, 13:35
I upgraded my X5 to the Korean 2.04 the day I got it (Thursday) and it works flawlessly.
So if I upgrade to korean 2.04 and theres like an american 2.04 or (I don't know why) American 2.03. Could I just use that?
bradavon
05-23-2005, 15:24
Personally I'd always go with the local firmware unless the international one has something big over the local one UNLESS the version numbers differ wildly.
To answer your question I'd say yes.
You can use whatever firmware you want. The korean version has english on it so theres no reason you can't use that.
Advice (don't know if it's already posted):
I was so stupid to go to the main menu--> settings--> general--> load default--> ok.
Al my settings were set to "normal", including language(korean). after a few minutes searching I found the menu again (with the words language and english) and set it back to english.
________
X hamster (http://www.fucktube.com/)
I have one question: Can u use a song 2x in playlists?
If this could be possible you could it make like this:
Music/Albums/Name of Album - Name of Interprete/album1.m3u AND (additionally) Music/Genres/Name of genre/punkrock.m3u
And the songs of the "album1.m3u" would be included into the "punkrock.m3u"!
could this be possible or would I have to copy the songs 2x on the x5???
No, unfortunately not since it appears as if it is not possible to store playlists in folders. Quite a basic feature really and in my opinion ruins the whole usage of playlists on the X5.
Although it is possible to create "playlists" by copying your songs to a folder, a really slow and a waste of space but the only way. Thats the biggest complaint I got about the X5 and I will have a hard time accepting it if cowon won't fix it in a future firmware release.
Ability to save and reorganize the dynamic playlist (really shouldn't be any problem at all).
And the ability to organize your playlists in folders.
Should in my concern be the biggest concern of iaudio to fix. I would even consider scrapping the ability to view pictures (since it's sooo slow) for those features.
Also, I'm not a fan of album art but I've read that many do here. Technically the X5 should be able to view album art as a background image, since you can swap the background (between the standard one, a single color and a user specified one (and since you can't go in picture mode and still have music you must already have specified one)) while playing there shouldn't be that difficult to view the album art as a background - since the resolution is so small anyway.
bradavon
05-24-2005, 15:24
Thanks Luuk. That is definitely worth knowing.
Do you own a Korean version? If not that's a little worrying. The default language being Korean.
No, mine is european. So that is a little bit worrying. but when you systematically work through all the menu's you will find the words language and english between ( ). but it takes some time.
________
HERBALAIRE REVIEW (http://herbalairevaporizer.com/)
I have one question: Can u use a song 2x in playlists?
If this could be possible you could it make like this:
Music/Albums/Name of Album - Name of Interprete/album1.m3u AND (additionally) Music/Genres/Name of genre/punkrock.m3u
And the songs of the "album1.m3u" would be included into the "punkrock.m3u"!
could this be possible or would I have to copy the songs 2x on the x5???
No, unfortunately not since it appears as if it is not possible to store playlists in folders. Quite a basic feature really and in my opinion ruins the whole usage of playlists on the X5.
Well If you use relative paths in the m3u's themselves you CAN list the same files in multiple playlists, no problem. But the question is, even if all playlists have to be in the playlist folder, can there be subfolders of the playlist folder and will it find and let you navigate and use them?
If so, someone should write a small utility to automatically generate a web of playlists as Maxo suggests from a directory tree of audio files by drawing from their id3 tags. This would be the way we could implement a full tag-based interface on the player. (Just the nested tree of playlists in multiple configurations.)
bradavon
05-24-2005, 18:37
But the question is, even if all playlists have to be in the playlist folder, can there be subfolders of the playlist folder and will it find and let you navigate and use them?
I've been wondering the same. If you dump an M3U file in the playlist folder how is it going to know where the actual MP3 file is?
another thing to mention is how to stop a video while it's playing. I thought it did not stand in the review.
Push the play-pause button, and then pus the joystick to the right.
________
CHRYSLER LH ENGINE (http://www.dodge-wiki.com/wiki/Chrysler_LH_engine)
People, the playlist thing isn't that complicated. You just put in _RELATIVE_ paths.
Contents of a "Galt's Speech.m3u" in my \PLAYLISTS\ directory on the player.
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (14 of 61)].mp3
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (15 of 61)].mp3
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (16 of 61)].mp3
...
mintcheerios
05-25-2005, 05:47
Great review, amazing attention to detail and very unbiased.
another thing to mention is how to stop a video while it's playing. I thought it did not stand in the review.
Push the play-pause button, and then push the joystick to the right.
Huh? What do you mean stop a video file? You can pause it and then jump to the next file. That is what you have just described.
bradavon
05-25-2005, 10:33
People, the playlist thing isn't that complicated. You just put in _RELATIVE_ paths.
Contents of a "Galt's Speech.m3u" in my \PLAYLISTS\ directory on the player.
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (14 of 61)].mp3
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (15 of 61)].mp3
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (16 of 61)].mp3
...
Are you sure? As I asked eXity if you need to edit your playlists and he said no. By doing this I'd have to.
Why on earth don't they work if you open them the music directory?
I doubt I'll bother then. Relative paths are a mess and best avoided if you can!
nope, I really mean stop and not pause or go to next video.
when you push the playbutton and the the joystick to the right you will find out that it's not going to skip to another movie but you will see the mainscreen with the movie you just have stopped. also you see a square and that is the (I think) universal sign for stop on audioplayers.
________
Oregon Dispensaries (http://oregon.dispensaries.org/)
oh eXity(or anyone else who knows the answer), when you have files with many characters such as
blues_brothers_and_friends_etc._etc.; it takes a lot of time before you see the title of the song, is there a way to fasten that up?
thanks
________
HONDA EV PLUS SPECIFICATIONS (http://www.honda-wiki.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus)
People, the playlist thing isn't that complicated. You just put in _RELATIVE_ paths.
Contents of a "Galt's Speech.m3u" in my \PLAYLISTS\ directory on the player.
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (14 of 61)].mp3
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (15 of 61)].mp3
\MUSIC\Ayn Rand\_Atlas Shrugged\AR - AS [disc 4 (16 of 61)].mp3
...
Are you sure? As I asked eXity if you need to edit your playlists and he said no. By doing this I'd have to.
Why on earth don't they work if you open them the music directory?
I doubt I'll bother then. Relative paths are a mess and best avoided if you can!
Yes I'm sure, and I think it rocks exactly the way it is (minus the lack of support for sub-folders in the \PLAYLIST\ folder which I'm thinking they'll address in firmware soon).
To get complete listings of all the av files on your player with relative paths for use in playlists, just open a command prompt (start->run->"cmd") and do:
I: (or whatever letter your iAudio is)
chkdsk /v | find /i "\movie\" | sort > \playlist\allmovie.txt
chkdsk /v | find /i "\music\" | sort > \playlist\allmusic.txt
Now you can copy/paste blocks out of them and into other text files for different playlists and save them w/ the .m3u extension. Note: These two files can't be used as they are (not even if we named them .m3u) b/c they include the directories as entries as well as the files.
-----
As a batch file for the squeamish (save as "avlists.bat" anywhere on the player -- has to be on the same drive):
@echo off
chkdsk /v | find /i "\movie\" | sort > \playlist\allmovie.txt
chkdsk /v | find /i "\music\" | sort > \playlist\allmusic.txt
I have one question: Can u use a song 2x in playlists?
If this could be possible you could it make like this:
Music/Albums/Name of Album - Name of Interprete/album1.m3u AND (additionally) Music/Genres/Name of genre/punkrock.m3u
And the songs of the "album1.m3u" would be included into the "punkrock.m3u"!
could this be possible or would I have to copy the songs 2x on the x5???
No, unfortunately not since it appears as if it is not possible to store playlists in folders. Quite a basic feature really and in my opinion ruins the whole usage of playlists on the X5.
Well If you use relative paths in the m3u's themselves you CAN list the same files in multiple playlists, no problem. But the question is, even if all playlists have to be in the playlist folder, can there be subfolders of the playlist folder and will it find and let you navigate and use them?
If so, someone should write a small utility to automatically generate a web of playlists as Maxo suggests from a directory tree of audio files by drawing from their id3 tags. This would be the way we could implement a full tag-based interface on the player. (Just the nested tree of playlists in multiple configurations.)
(edit, didn't answer to the question about having the same song 2x in playlists, accidentially quoted that too)
Well, thats exaclty what I meant with that you can't store playlists in folders (and as said, playlists won't show up anywhere else than in the playlist folder).
You can't have subfolders in the playlist folder (or you can, but they won't show up).
I have also been on that track to make an application that makes playlists like an id3 database.
And it almost seems as if cowon has made it as difficult as possible to do this. Because the effort of making this should be extremely simple, even feels like they have worked at making it not work.
I have a general playlist question - JetAudio, the software that comes with the x5, makes .pls playlist files - but the x5 support use of those types of files, right? So in order to create a playlist that will work on the x5, I have to install another program to create the playlists (like WinAmp) - correct?
Seems sideways to include software that your player does not support? Am I right or completely off base? Bueller?
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