February 2, 2012

Sony SA-NS500 Review

While we may be a little partial here at ABI to some great sounding headphones paired with a clean sounding DAP on the go, there are surely those times when you just want to share your tunes with everyone around you. Those of us that don’t venture into the iOS world have a little harder time pairing up to a speaker dock, but there are still some choices out there. This is when the Sony SA-NS500 portable speaker comes into play. A portable speaker rated up to 8 hours of operation without being plugged in, 4 tweeters spreading 360 degree sound, and an upward firing woofer packaged in a….dare we say eye catching design, is sure to land on our radar. To top it off, the NS500 is DLNA compatible, Airplay compatible, and is set up for Sony’s Party Streaming feature to spread music around your house in different rooms wirelessly. How does this intriguing package stack up to the dime a dozen companion speakers out there? You’re going to have to read on to find out. Continue reading…

January 30, 2012

Sticks with clips: Sony announces the B170 series of players


Besides sporting a more edgy case design, the B170 series looks very much like the B160 series Sony released last year (which itself looked exactly like the two year old B150 series, sans the clip on the back). The three-line LCD display on the new one looks even tinier than before – or maybe that’s just because it isn’t hidden behind a ‘seamless’ glossy plastic cover as on its ancestors.

There’s nothing new or exciting as far as the B170′s specs go – it’s the exact same as all the other B-series players before it. It plays MP3 and WMA, sports the usual bass booster and ‘Zap’ (intro scan) button, and is rated at about 18 hours of playback time. A three minute quick charge should give 90 minutes of playback time, and a full recharge only takes 70 minutes. A USB plug is hidden under the B170′s cap, so one doesn’t need to bring an extra cable for file transfers or charging. I assume MTP is the transfer protocol of choice here, as with all other Sony players, but usually they can be easily changed to MSC transfer mode, if one wishes to do so.

The B170 comes in 2 and 4 GB varieties – without expansion slot, of course. Its retail price hasn’t been announced yet, but I guess it won’t cost an arm and a leg.

[Sony press release via Engadget - thanks to Peaceful1 for the tip.]

January 29, 2012

Yurbuds Ironman Endure Pro – Dry Mic Review

Not long ago, I got my hands on some sport focused earbuds from the team over at Yurbuds. Designed for athletes, by athletes. The idea behind the Yurbuds team is to give users headphones that won’t fall out under the most grueling conditions. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed in the performance of the headphones, not being able to get a comfortable and stable fit. The sound quality wasn’t up to par either, but clearly the idea behind the brand is focused on the fit and comfort. I was hoping round two would bring some much needed improvements to the lineup, as I truly liked the focus from the Yurbuds team to provide active individuals with another choice in the under developed world of quality active headphones.

Well, recently Yurbuds contacted me to review their newest addition to the lineup, the Endure Pros. The new design adds an over the ear stabilization loop as well as a 3 button mic and remote to control your media. They sound like welcome improvements, but can they topple the Sennheiser MX 85′s from the active headphone throne? Let’s read on to find out… Continue reading…

January 24, 2012

Cowon released the D3… no wait, this time it’s called the Z2

About a year after their first foray into Android fields, Cowon released the Z2 Plenue in Korea – indirectly admitting the earlier D3 being a beta product… one that customers paid dear money for.

The Z2 is basically the exact same product as the D3 with a few hardware flaws ironed out. The Z2′s 1GHz Telechips Cortex-A8 processor isn’t quite as outdated as the D3′s 750Mhz ARM11 (although it’s still far from what’s usually built into Android devices nowadays), and it has 512MB Ram, which is quite a bit more useful than the D3′s paltry 170MB (usually 60MB free). Gone is also Cowon’s proprietary 32-pin port – the Z2 sports standard MicroUSB and MicroHDMI ports. While this is generally a great update, it might however mean the Z2 doesn’t do S/PDIF-out anymore, as found on the D3′s proprietary port.

The Z2′s screen is a 3.7″ 800 x 480 AMOLED one, just like the D3′s – let’s hope Cowon used one with a real RGB subpixel matrix this time, not an inferior Pentile one. I also hope they got hardware-accelerated video contrast ratio right this time – I’m still hoping for a fix for this glaring bug in the D3… Still available on the Z2 is one of the D3′s best features over almost all other Android devices out there – plenty of tactile buttons, making usability on the go quite a lot easier than touchscreen-only controls. Battery life on the Z2 still isn’t great – 22 hours for music, 8-9 hours for video. Let’s hope those synthetic benchmark numbers are somewhat close to real-life performance.

Continue reading…

January 21, 2012

FiiO E17 “Alpen” is out, the E7′s big brother

A few years after FiiO introduced their unique, feature-packed E7 portable headphone amplifier and USB sound card, they revamped the concept, resulting in the freshly hatched E17.

A lot of tech is packed into the fancy brushed metal housing with the familiar two-color OLED display. Inputs and outputs certainly are on the more versatile side of things: two parallel 3.5mm headphone outputs, an S/PDIF input (presumably both optical and coaxial), a line input, FiiO’s proprietary 18-pin port (working with their L7 dock and E9 desktop amp), and of course a standard USB input. The E17 supports 24/96 over USB and 24/192 over S/PDIF, so audiophile dogs and bats won’t complain about lacking treble.

Several sound adjustments can be done in the E17′s firmware: bass, treble, gain level, and – sometimes miracles do happen – pan/balance. It seems FiiO did read our E7 review, and the included rant about audio balance missing on almost all portable devices nowadays. I, for one, am very grateful that they added this basic – yet for some people very important – feature.

The E17 should go for about $150, which definitely is a fair price, considering all the included features and the nifty metal housing.

[FiiO.com.cn]

January 10, 2012

Sony’s Android Z Walkman is heading to the US of A and E of U

Sony’s Android-driven Z series Walkman which we talked about earlier is finally ready for launch in the western world.

Some hardware and software specs sure are a bit of a letdown – no MKV or subtitle support for video, no FLAC/Vorbis for audio, only 20 hours audio and 5 hours video battery life, no SD slot, no camera, no GPS, almost no tactile buttons, and so on.

On the other hand, the 1 GHz dual-core Tegra 2 in the X series should be beefy enough for demanding apps, and the included official Android Market makes sure you get said apps as easily as possible onto the device. All is fine on the connectivity front as well, from Wi-Fi B/G/N over Bluetooth 2.1+EDR (A2DP, AVRCP, OPP) to HDMI-out. The Z series sports Sony’s usual S-Master amp and tons of sound enhancements and EQ presets. Let’s hope those are global settings, like on the Cowon D3, so any 3rd party app can access them as well.

Considering Sony’s competition in the Android non-phone market, ranging from various inexpensive Archos devices to Samsung Galaxy Players, the price of the Z sure isn’t the biggest bargain, with the 8 GB model going for $250, the 16 GB one for $280, and the 32 GB bigwig for $330. Remember: no SD slot available.

On a side note, I wonder how that “Eurphoric” typo managed to sneak into Sony’s official press image on the right… I would recommend MP3Tag for future press shots.

[Sony press release (with full specs sheet) via Engadget]

January 3, 2012

iBasso DX100 Android audio player announced

There have been more than a handful of so-called “high end” audio players released by Chinese manufacturers, and they all have a few things in common: horrible user interface and usability, pathetic internal storage size, no support for audio features like gapless playback, Replaygain, playlists, and so on. Not to mention, the claim that those devices sound any “better” than the next quality brand player has yet to be proven.

Leaving the subjective sound quality debate out of the picture, iBasso, well known manufacturer of portable headphone amps, seems to show other “audiophile” brands how it could be done better when it comes to designing a portable player. While still sporting an immense brick form factor like its Hifiman, Colorfly, and HiSound peers, iBasso realized that user interfaces cobbled together by some hacker kids in their spare time are worthless – so they did the smart thing and put Android on their DX100. This should hopefully enable the usage of Rockbox, Poweramp, Player Pro, or other quality software for audio playback. It is not known at the moment if the DX100 will sport Wi-Fi or other connectivity.

Internal storage apparently goes up to a whopping 64GB, and a MicroSD slot is available as well. Here’s where the question about the price of the DX100 should come up. Good question, I know as much as you do – just that it probably will be a bit more than what a Sansa Clip goes for. Continue reading…

December 13, 2011

Custom Kernel and ROM available for the European Galaxy S Wifi 4.0

Forum member SteveS cooked up a custom kernel and ROM for the European version of the Galaxy S Wifi 4.0. Note that this won’t work on the American or Korean version of the Galaxy (yet), nor on the Galaxy S Wifi 5.0.

Besides gaining root/superuser access to the device and various interface tweaks, this ROM includes the Voodoo sound patch, effectively fixing Samsung’s botched audio output. Voodoo fixes the amplification gain for less background hiss and louder output, and – similar to Cowon players – adds a hardware parametric EQ and a hardware 3D spatialization effect for the Wolfson audio CODEC as well.

Kernel changelog

  • Based on Original XXKPQ Kernel
  • Added Voodoo sound patches
  • Can work with XXKPN and XXKPQ stock Samsung ROM.
  • To use Voodoo sound you need to install Voodoo Control or Voodoo Control Plus

ROM changelog

  • Contains the latest STeVE’s Kernel 1.0: you don’t need to flash separately
  • Based on original XXKPQ Samsung stock ROM
  • Contains root and superuser permissions
  • Tweaked theme: Honeycomb status bar icons, transparent notification pane, ICS windows effects
  • CRT screen off animation
  • If you start from a XXKPN or XXKPQ you can skip wipe to keep your existing applications and settings

Check Steve’s forum thread for discussion and download links.

December 8, 2011

Happy 10th birthday, Rockbox – also, release 3.10 is out

Everybody’s favorite audio player replacement firmware, Rockbox, turned ten years old. On December 7th 2001 the first mail in the Rockbox mailing list was posted. Initially only supporting the Archos Jukebox behemoth, it went uphill from there on. Today Rockbox supports approximately 75 different targets, as well as running as an application on Android, Maemo, and perhaps iOS in the near future.

Well timed with this significant anniversary, a new stable version, 3.10, has been released. While this release doesn’t support any new targets, there are several feature additions, improvements, and bug fixes. Read the 3.10 release notes for more details and installation instructions.

Congratulations, Rockbox team – here’s to (at least) ten more years!

[Via Daniel "Bagder" Stenberg's Blog]

December 3, 2011

R7: Cowon, what were you thinking?

Cowon Korea just announced the R7, a “Full HD Super PMP”, which is more of a 7″ tablet without connectivity. At 800×480 pixel it sports quite low resolution for that screen size, but – as far as I can interpret the Korean specs sheet – it should have excellent battery life: 65 hours for audio, 10 for video. As is usually the case with Cowon, the R7 supports every audio and video format known to man (including MKV, TS, 3GP, APE, Musepack, Wavpack, True Audio), and of course 1080p playback as well. Judging by the specs, it seems this one doesn’t support BBE sound enhancements for videos, only for audio – like the V5 and O2 before it. It comes in respectable sizes up to 64GB, sports a MicroSDHC slot, and an HDMI output.

Here’s the real zinger, however: it runs on Windows CE 6.0. This is not a joke. While the rest of the planet strives to implement WP 7 Mango (as far as Microsoft’s mobile OS goes), Android, or iOS, Cowon took a step back to the good old days of CE 6, as already found in their rather underwhelming V5 PMP of last year. Actually, the R7 is just a V5 with a bigger screen (at the same resolution).

It is even more bewildering, considering Cowon already have an Android device on the market with the D3, offering a more modern,  more widely used, and arguably better operating system than on the R7. I definitely would have expected them to release an Android tablet, not a WinCE one. Then again, the R7 has no Wi-Fi connectivity, so it might not matter after all. Either way, consider me once again baffled about Cowon’s decisions. Once again it seems like the advancements in portable device design seen in the last few years went past Cowon.

[Cowon Korea product page via iAudiophile]