May 13, 2012

Hifiman HM-901 makes your wallet and ears bleed (with joy, presumably)

In our forums we had some heated discussions about Hifiman’s prior ‘flagship’ portable audio player, the HM-801. For around $800 you got a gigantic brick with less than 8 hours battery life, based on a Chinese Rockchip SOC and an ancient PCM1704 DAC that was implemented with improper filtering, resulting in rolled off treble response. Besides inverting the signal phase it had very high output impedance and couldn’t drive multi-armature IEMs properly.

Now that the HM-801 is discontinued, Hifiman announced its successor, the HM-901. This new one sports a new user interface and revamped controls, which can be tried here, in an online Flash demo: http://www.hifiman.com/uidemo/

The HM-801 was a case study of how not to design an interface, time will tell if the new one is easier to operate. In my opinion, Hifiman should just have done the smart thing and put Rockbox on their players – a port for the HM-801 is already available, so I’m a bit bewildered why they didn’t take advantage of that and still cooked their own UI/firmware from scratch. With Rockbox the player would even play gapless audio, among other things – ‘as the artist intended’.

Some questions remaining are:

  • Will the HM-901 cost less than a kilobuck? [UPDATE: price appears to be closer to $1250, according to some rumors.]
  • Will its battery life be measured in minutes, or hours?
  • Will it have low enough output impedance to drive multi-armature IEMs properly?
  • Will it sound ‘better’ than the next average quality player, or will it have rolled off treble, like the HM-801? Or rather, will anybody make out any audible difference at all, considering almost all digital sources available are transparent and linear to human ears?

[Thanks to 3602 for the tip]

May 4, 2012

Samsung brings back the Pebble, is now an MP3 player that syncs with a smartphone

Remember Samsung’s Pebble MP3 player? In what is a surprising move to say the least, Samsung brought back the design and the name yesterday during its Galaxy S III smartphone announcement. The new S Pebble is classified as an accessory to the S III, and is essentially a 4GB screenless MP3 player that has the ability to sync directly with the S III as well as a computer. The controls are a mix between switches to control power and shuffle, and touch buttons on the front of the player (yeah, touch buttons…ugh). The tiny player is said to do 17 hours on a single charge, and sync via the 3.5mm port.

You may be asking why on Earth anyone would want such a device, or perhaps you’re already angry because Samsung has essentially taken a feature that exists on devices with USB host (assuming the MSC-enabled player you plug into it doesn’t try to charge off it) and made it a proprietary accessory. The idea of this device is that people who do activities where a 4.8-inch smartphone is unsuited – like running – can leave their phone at home and bring the S Pebble instead. There aren’t any features like pedometers or other sports related sensors in the thing though, it’s just an music player. With Samsung releasing a new Music Hub service with cloud syncing and iTunes Match-like  functionality, it makes some sort of sense that they’re enabling the player to be synced directly from a phone that has all of this, instead of assuming that all music comes from a computer.

As long as they keep the price low I don’t see any problem with leaving this device unhated for now, but I fear that this is going to be another overpriced official accessory like all accessories Samsung and other first parties have ever released. If that’s the case, I have a feeling that I’m going to be struck with a sudden and uncontrollable need to bring my Galaxy  S II, USB host cable, and Sansa Clip+ around with me and politely inform people that Samsung didn’t just invent the wheel.

[Engadget]

April 15, 2012

Cowon Z2 might finally reach Western shores

There’s been quite some uncertainty and doubt regarding the international release date of the Plenue Z2, the successor to the D3, and Cowon’s second experiment with Google’s Android operating system. We’ve ranted about it as early as January.

This time it sure took Cowon a lot longer than usually to release a device outside of Korea, but it seems they’re almost there. According to Engadget, an “early May” release date should be possible. Apparently, the 16GB version of the Z2 will only come in white and will go for around $280, the 32GB version will only come in black and go for a slightly painful $320.

Those prices are quite a bit higher than, say, same-sized iPod Touch variants, and a lot more expensive than Samsung’s various Galaxy Players. But if you want BBE sound enhancements, many more tactile buttons than average Android devices offer, and a shnazzy S-AMOLED screen (hopefully a non-Pentile one), then you really don’t have a lot of alternatives. At least the Z2 should be snappy enough to be usable as an all-around Android device, contrary to its severely slow and laggy ancestor, the D3.

[via Engadget - thanks to Nathan for the tip]

April 11, 2012

Rockbox 3.11 is released

Four months after version 3.10 Rockbox released a new stable one, 3.11.

Highlights of this version are USB support for the Sansa Clip+, Clip v2, and Fuze v2, as well as ‘stable’ status for the Sansa c200 v2 and MPIO HD300.

Many interface- and theme-related features made it into this release as well. Customization of the main menu list items, editable shortcuts in the main menu, 32 bit alpha transparency for icons and theme/WPS images. On the audio side of things, downmixing multichannel FLAC files to stereo is now supported.

Read the full changelog here: Rockbox 3.11 release notes – or download it right away: Rockbox 3.11 download

Update: Rockbox 3.11.2 maintenance release is out – this fixes some bugs with Sansa radio tuner chips and a boot freeze issue with the M:Robe 100.

March 14, 2012

User review: V-Moda M80 headphones

Forum member Jörgemeister took the time to write up a nice in-depth review of the near-full-sized closed-back V-Moda M80 headphones.

Hollywood-based V-Moda are known for usually taking a bit of a style-over-substance approach to headphone design, but with the M80 they obviously got the sound aspect right as well – next to the flashy design with changeable ear pad covers and removable cables.

While one of their first products, the V-Moda Vibe (which I reviewed ages ago – back when I was young, stupid, and slightly less caustic in my posts) sounded nice for the median quality available back in the days, they certainly had bad build quality and durability issues. With the M80 however it seems that V-Moda tackled that problem as well, delivering a well built and flexible phone with quality materials.

Sounds interesting? Check out Jörgemeister’s full V-Moda M80 review in the forums.

March 8, 2012

B100 confirms: iriver releases interesting devices as well

While the E40 posted below isn’t anything overly exciting, iriver shows with the B100 that they still have some tricks up their sleeve.

Noticeable is the rather unusual 3:2 aspect ratio of the 480 x 320 pixel 3.1 inch capacitive TFT touch screen – it’s smack in the middle between the usual 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and it reminds of the higher end Palm PDAs of yore. That screen makes perfect sense on the B100, since it’s one of the very few (non-Android) portable media players that supports useful ebook formats – ePub and PDF, not just the usual plain text files.

While the B100 doesn’t play HD movies or sports an HDMI output, it still supports a lot of useful video formats in standard definition – MKV, MP4, and even MPEG Transport Streams are a few of those, next to the usual variety of AVI, WMV, and the like.

On the audio side of things we find iriver’s usual SRS sound enhancements (when will they switch to the far superior BBE bundle… nudge, nudge, wink, wink), an EQ with lots of presets, and FLAC, APE, and Ogg Vorbis playback, next to the MP3 and WMA standards. MP4/M4A/AAC support appears to be missing on the B100, though. It is unclear if the B100 sports gapless playback.

Other features are the usual FM radio, voice and radio recorder, image viewer, and a cheesy user interface that seems to come straight from the Cowon design department, sporting slogans like “romantic”, “lonely”, “relax”, and the like. One thing I’m missing on the B100 are tactile buttons. There’s only two of them, to change volume (and a “home” button on the front, which hopefully can act as a play/pause button). I wish the B100 at least had as many buttons as the Cowon S9 or J3 – that would make it a lot more practical to use on the go.

The B100 comes in puny sizes of 4 and 8 GB – but expandable via MicroSDHC cards up to 32 GB. Synthetic battery benchmarks claim a life of 36 hours for audio and 8.5 hours for video – not bad, if that turns out to be close to real life usage.

So far the B100 isn’t officially released in Europe or America, but I’ve seen it pop up in shady and not-so-shady import outlets and flea markets going for $120 to $240.

[iriver Global - thanks to TDS101!!!!!!!! for the tip]

March 5, 2012

E40 confirms: iriver is still alive

Remember those guys that in 2003 brought us the innovative H100 series player with optical S/PDIF output, and two years later the sturdy H300 “Soviet iPod” (as CNET called it) with changeable cover designs?

Yeah, they didn’t make many waves lately. They quietly released a lot of players, but they mostly went under the radar. The new E40 shows that they still stubbornly hold on to touch interfaces without tactile feedback, and the 220 x 176 pixel screen is right at home in a top quality player from 2005. Same goes for the supported video formats, which are MPEG1 and the proprietary/elusive/dead SMV container.

On the positive side, battery life on the E40 appears to be very good – 51 hours for audio playback is claimed. It also uses a standard MiniUSB port – not quite the MicroUSB port one would expect nowadays, but everything is better than some proprietary plug. Transfer protocol of choice is MSC, which is great as well. Next to iriver’s usual SRS sound tweaks, the E40 sports an equalizer with lots of presets, FM radio, recording (radio and voice), and an image viewer which is about as useful as a video player on the tiny low-res screen.

That being said, the price is right for what you get – the 4GB version goes for about $50 and the 8GB one for $70. No, it doesn’t have an SD slot.

[iriver Global - thanks to Splashback for the tip]

February 28, 2012

Samsung’s new Galaxy Player differs by either 0.2 or 0.8 inches from its ancestors

It’s called the Galaxy Player S Wifi 4.2, so its name should be a dead giveaway that it’s slightly larger than the 4.0 and slightly smaller than the 5.0. Also, it’s white/grey-ish instead of black.

Other than that, there really aren’t any big differences to spot between the various models. They all have the same 800 x 480 resolution (in an IPS variety on the 4.2, contrary to Samsung’s usual AMOLED screens), same 1 GHz processor speed, same Android 2.3 operating system, same codec support, same connectivity options, and so on. The new 4.2 still seems to lack HDMI output – an issue users have criticized as one of the biggest shortcomings of the 4.0 and 5.0, and a major drawback of an otherwise nicely specced PMP.

The 4.2 comes with 8 or 16 GB of internal memory, and of course a MicroSD slot to add some more. Its battery holds 1500 mAh, so let the speculations about its run time begin. No release date or street price have been announced yet.

Oh yeah, before I forget it – the 4.2 comes preloaded with some random game. This seems to be a big enough deal to mention it in the specs sheet of the press release.

[Samsung press release via Engadget]

February 21, 2012

Got root? The Cowon Z2 already does.

As usual with Android devices, it was only a matter of time until someone gained root access to the Cowon Z2. This time however it happened before the Z2 actually hit the market outside of Korea.

iAudiophile forum member Gungr spent some hours figuring out how to open up the Z2, so you don’t have to. So far it’s a bit of a lengthy procedure, involving setting up the Java and Android SDKs, editing info files, and some more in-depth wizardry. I’m sure a neatly packed, easy to install, rooted ROM update will follow shortly.

I don’t think I have to count the advantages of having root access on an Android device: official Android market access, ad blocking, backing up or deleting superfluous system apps, over/underclocking the CPU, and so on.

So, if you’re the lucky owner of an imported Z2, run, don’t walk over to iAudiophile and check out the instructions on how to make the most of your Z2.

[iAudiophile Cowon Z2 root access hack by Gungr]

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…