flazok
06-08-2010, 15:33
After one day of use, there's a lot I like about the J3 and only a couple of things I don't. I got a 32 GB J3 from JetMall, and that transaction went perfectly.
One of my big concerns was USB transfer speed. The J3 doesn't disappoint there, maintaining a pretty consistent 7.1 to 7.4 MB/s (56.8 - 59.2 mbits/sec) whether the player is empty or nearly full. This is after formatting the J3 with the SD Formatter 3.0 beta (aka version 2.9.0.5). I didn't try any transfers before using SD Formatter, because I wanted to limit the risk of bricking the player.
The sound quality (to me) is basically out of this world. I'm a fussy audiophile, and I've never heard anything like the J3 through the Atrio M5 earbuds. Ordinarily I don't want to hear sound colorations, but turning all the effects (BBE, MachBass, 3D Surround, Stereo Enhance) up to max sounds great to me, colorized in a possibly cartoonish but highly engaging way. I'll probably eventually get tired of crazy new details popping out of the mix from every angle, but for now it's fun. I spontaneously got tears of joy in my eyes when I first heard how present and distinct the bass reproduction is.
After a whole lot of new music has just been added the startup takes maybe 10 seconds, but once the new music is indexed, the next startup time is less than 2 seconds, significantly better than my previous player, a Sandisk m250. Powering off also takes less than 2 seconds. It looks like the firmware here is 2.03. That's the number listed under Version in system information.
I'm using Linux, and so far there have been no problems with transferring. The most music I have transferred at once was a little over 5 GB. I use foobar2000 to copy the files from the computer to the J3 so that I can select exactly the tracks I want. I read a post that suggested bricking was more likely to happen with drag and drop as opposed to copy and paste. We shall see...
The player is full at 30.5 GB, which translates to about 32.7 billion bytes. That's 4493 songs in this case. If a 32GB microSD card fits, that means although almost 9000 songs could fit in memory, the 8000 song limitation will not allow them all to be played.
Before buying, I was happy to see that if album art is in a folder with music, the J3 will display it, but it turns out so far I'm keeping all my music in one large folder. I was able to add album art to the individual tracks in my approximately 12000 track collection fairly quickly and easily using a Linux utility called Covertagger. Album art displays beautifully on the J3.
Wishlist: My previous player starts playing music where it left off as soon as it is powered on. The J3 (at least as far as I know so far) requires that I hit the Music icon and then hit the play button. This is less than convenient for the car. Hopefully a different UCI addresses this.
Also, some of the fonts in the user interface are nearly microscopic. I'm in my late 40s, and my eyes are starting to fade, so I'm hoping either the user font option will allow me to make the now playing song and artist larger, or that another UCI might do that, too.
So, overall the J3 is nearly perfect out of the box, the player I have been waiting since 2005 to buy. I don't do video at all, so there's nothing I can say about that.
Enjoy!
One of my big concerns was USB transfer speed. The J3 doesn't disappoint there, maintaining a pretty consistent 7.1 to 7.4 MB/s (56.8 - 59.2 mbits/sec) whether the player is empty or nearly full. This is after formatting the J3 with the SD Formatter 3.0 beta (aka version 2.9.0.5). I didn't try any transfers before using SD Formatter, because I wanted to limit the risk of bricking the player.
The sound quality (to me) is basically out of this world. I'm a fussy audiophile, and I've never heard anything like the J3 through the Atrio M5 earbuds. Ordinarily I don't want to hear sound colorations, but turning all the effects (BBE, MachBass, 3D Surround, Stereo Enhance) up to max sounds great to me, colorized in a possibly cartoonish but highly engaging way. I'll probably eventually get tired of crazy new details popping out of the mix from every angle, but for now it's fun. I spontaneously got tears of joy in my eyes when I first heard how present and distinct the bass reproduction is.
After a whole lot of new music has just been added the startup takes maybe 10 seconds, but once the new music is indexed, the next startup time is less than 2 seconds, significantly better than my previous player, a Sandisk m250. Powering off also takes less than 2 seconds. It looks like the firmware here is 2.03. That's the number listed under Version in system information.
I'm using Linux, and so far there have been no problems with transferring. The most music I have transferred at once was a little over 5 GB. I use foobar2000 to copy the files from the computer to the J3 so that I can select exactly the tracks I want. I read a post that suggested bricking was more likely to happen with drag and drop as opposed to copy and paste. We shall see...
The player is full at 30.5 GB, which translates to about 32.7 billion bytes. That's 4493 songs in this case. If a 32GB microSD card fits, that means although almost 9000 songs could fit in memory, the 8000 song limitation will not allow them all to be played.
Before buying, I was happy to see that if album art is in a folder with music, the J3 will display it, but it turns out so far I'm keeping all my music in one large folder. I was able to add album art to the individual tracks in my approximately 12000 track collection fairly quickly and easily using a Linux utility called Covertagger. Album art displays beautifully on the J3.
Wishlist: My previous player starts playing music where it left off as soon as it is powered on. The J3 (at least as far as I know so far) requires that I hit the Music icon and then hit the play button. This is less than convenient for the car. Hopefully a different UCI addresses this.
Also, some of the fonts in the user interface are nearly microscopic. I'm in my late 40s, and my eyes are starting to fade, so I'm hoping either the user font option will allow me to make the now playing song and artist larger, or that another UCI might do that, too.
So, overall the J3 is nearly perfect out of the box, the player I have been waiting since 2005 to buy. I don't do video at all, so there's nothing I can say about that.
Enjoy!