Cowon just dropped two of its new players in time for the holidays here in the US. The iAudio 9 or sometimes called the i9 is the next generation i7 but this time it looks like the buttons are much more accessible. The i7 was a great sounding player (review) with some great output but it was hindered by a horrible UI with cramped touch controls.

From the photos it looks like it could be more comfortable even though the swing touch controls are still present. At Journal de Geek there are a few other photos of the UI in action sized up against the Cowon s9. You can also check out the full pitch and specs on the official Cowon i9 landing page.

The player is available in white, silver, black, and red with capacities of 8GB and 16GB. Right now only the black 16GB is available on Jettmall for $170 and should roll out to Amazon shortly. Oh, yeah and the E2… available for $65 for the 4GB screenless player with style.

We are definitely excited to see some more products roll out from Cowon as the other brands have been rolling out and announcing their players for the holidays. The Cowon iAudio 9, or more commonly referred to as the Cowon i9, is the successor to the Cowon i6 and the flash version of the i6, the i7. I believe that the number 8 was skipped due to an eastern superstition. So we move right along to the new Cowon i9.

Not everything is known about this player, but from the splash page on Cowon's Korean site the player has all the great features of the Cowon family like killer support for all kinds of audio codecs and it looks like it is adding some nice support for video files too: AVI, WMV, XViD, and ASF. It also states that it supports TV-Out, which could possibly mean video playback without conversion. Additionally, it will add a built-in speaker in a tiny package (42mm x 95mm x 8.9 mm). This could make a lot of Cowon fans happy for a more compact version of the S9 they have been carrying around.

[Cowon via Journal du Geek]

The only thing known about the Cowon E2 is the picture you see above. Judging from it, the E2 will be small and most likely not have a screen. If the weird hiroglyphics on top has something to do with anything it might mean it uses various blinking lights to tell you what it wants, kinda like the Samsung S2 and R2D2.

If I'm to venture a guess, I'd say this will be a stick player that will be something in between a third generation iPod shuffle and the old Cowon T2. It's hard to judge the size of the thing from the picture, but it looks an awfully lot like a pendant, which is possible if it's the size of the iPod shuffle. No matter what, it's nice to see Cowon updating their somewhat forgotten stick player players, as epic players such as the Sansa Clip killer Cowon U2 has long been forgotten by the MP3 player community. I'll keep an extra good eye on this one for when Cowon releases some actual specs.

I must say the ceramic white Cowon S9 looks really nice especially against the contrasting deep black screen. What also looks to be different is the finish on the back of the player. The titanium and chrome have a rubbery matte finish where as this appears to be a white glossy finish. It’s a nice change up from all the traditionally black players. Even though I have a Noreve case on my titanium S9 I would have gone with the white if it were available at the time I got mine. Its only available in Korea at the moment but we should see it appear stateside soon. Be sure to read the S9 review if you are in the market for a new player.

[Product Page via Pocketables]

You know we're big fans of taking a look at the chips, circuit boards, and inner workings of our cherished mp3 players- so we love to see that interest has spread to our forum members as well. Trikon000 did us the honor of posting a guide to the Cowon S9 tear down with lots of pics.

I’ve taken my S9 apart as well so I will mention that it's not for the faint hearted. It’s not an easy disassembly and it will void you warranty. So unless your S9 is broken / out of warranty or you have done this before, I recommend just checking out these cool pics in the S9 forum.

Since my first gen Rockboxed Sansa Clip died, I ordered an IDE to CF adapter for my X5L after I read the Rockbox CF Mod Wiki page.

Installation was pretty straightforward, I only had to cut/saw the plastic bit off one side of the adapter's IDE connector to fit. I also had to shorten the master/slave jumper so it doesn't poke the PCB and battery, use a slimmer jumper bridge, and electrical tape on the backside (see red dots in the photos).

Speed with a 300x Lexar CF is blazing, bootup is almost instantly. Too bad there's no affordable 300x 32GB card available, so I have to see which 16 or 32Gb card is fast enough to be useful in the X5. I'm leaning towards a Kingston Elite Pro 133x (should be faster than 133x in reality), or a Hama HighSpeed Pro (should have similar speeds as the twice as expensive SanDisk Extreme III). On another note, the X5 is now also quite a bit lighter than with the 1.8" HDD inside.

Click over to the mod thread for more pics.

Browsing around the forums I see a few people purchasing screen protectors for their MP3 players that have glass screens. Some might say better safe than sorry but these screens are much more durable than one would think. Below I put a few of these glass screen players though some rather harsh scratch tests, well beyond what the vast majority of users might experience.

Sure we have plenty of complaints about Cowon O2 mainly dealing with the user interface, but in the end is still a respectable PMP with the signature warm sound typical to Cowon.

The O2 is too big to fit in your pocket which makes it a good candidate for a protective case since its likely to tossed into a bag or carried by itself. If you have read any of our case reviews you know that we are fans of the Noreve cases. This one is no different. Check out the pics below with some thoughts on the fit.

An updated version of the D2 was just released a few weeks ago and dubbed the D2+. Many of us where a bit puzzled as to the minimal changes made through out the firmware. Changes were made in the firmware adding BBE+ enhancement and new GUI with the psychical design being the biggest noticeable change. Though now we know that most of the internal components have remained unchanged thanks to a few industrious and enthusiastic D2 owners.

It turns out that the D2+ firmware can be brute forced onto the D2 with a tool developed by the Rockbox crew, TCCTool- originally used to load firmware on bricked Telechip based devices. The steps to do this can be found in the D2 forums- Martin has even updated his popular More Mono theme to the D2+ firmware.

Updating the design, giving it a firmware refresh, and calling it a D2+ is a great idea, but leaving old D2 users behind in the firmware refresh is another story. The Zune has already set the precedent for this when they still continue to update 2+ year old hardware with the same firmware as on the newest Zunes. So D2 fans become quite envious of the Zune and a bit abandoned Cowon. With that said, it would be honorable of them to go ahead and give the long time D2 owners the D2+ firmware upgrade without having to hack it. Hacks might cause an increase in support too.

Below are a few photos of the D2 running the D2+ firmware as well as RMAA proof showing that changing the firmware has also changed the sound signature from BBE to BBE+.

Update: Cowon contacted us to warn that there is risk in bricking (damaging/rendering it useless) your D2 by doing this. So in my words, do this at your own risk.