Things I hate about the O2

[emorphien]

Revmike, I loaded some FLACs on to the device and heard the same tick with them.

[CrowdAds]

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by emorphien

Revmike, I loaded some FLACs on to the device and heard the same tick with them.

Same here (including MPC, APE, OGG, ...).

[emorphien]

For those that haven't heard the tick, it may depend on your headphones. I didn't really notice it with some of mine.

[revmike]

The headphones I use are v-modas and the motorola bluetooth ht820's, all my music files are AAC, not a tick or click at anytime.

[Yosh70]

I have just FLAC's on mine, with cheap Walmart A4 and UE Super 4 headphones, never heard any ticks.

[Volan]

Hey, I'm back and I see you got your O2 as well.

After a few weeks of using my O2 I have come up with a short list of problems:

UI is laggy and freezes every so often which prompts a shut down of my player.

I can't stand the small icon's on the bottom of the screen! There in the worst place! Once someone makes a decent skin for this, I'm skinning it right away. Overall the UI sucks!

Video's I have no problem with! Plays almost all of my movies fine and I'm very happy with its video capabilities. My .mkv files however do not work at all. I start them up and it loads, freezes, and shuts down.

I really have no use for a SD card yet as I have the 32GB model so by the time I use that I hope to god they will have updated the player enough to integrate the files on that into the main library. Music playing is great! Sound quality is fantastic!

I have the volume around 30-35 with my Koss Porta-Pro headphones which are not sound canceling. Bringing up the volume does not distort the sound at all. I heard the ticks inbetween music files, but I don't really notice them nor care for them. There barely noticable and the pause between songs is something I like.


Overall, Great Music/Video Player
Horrible UI/Firmware/Software

Cowon ruined this player with its lack of programing. I think the majority of there staff is concentrating on the S9 . . . . .

[UnbreakableCode]

Originally Posted by dfkt

Does it work or does it have issues? Those are mutually exclusive...

yep tested out x264 avc rip scene release

chris_brown_ft_keri_hilson-superhuman-dvdrip-x264-2008-indica.mkv

Format : Matroska
File size : 46.7 MiB
PlayTime : 3mn 42s

Codec : AVC
Codec/Family : AVC
Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec profile : Main@L5.1
PlayTime : 3mn 42s
Bit rate : 1516 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 240 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 2.667
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
Writing library : x264 - core 57 svn-709C
Language : English

Audio #0
Codec : MPEG-1 Audio layer 3
Codec profile : Joint stereo
Bit rate mode : VBR
Bit rate : 177 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Writing library : LAME3.97
Encoding settings : VBR (mtrh)

plays flawless :P and sounds great

and for divx ill stay true to my for performance

here are settings for divx

Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format/Family : RIFF
File size : 187 MiB
PlayTime : 4mn 10s
Bit rate : 6263 Kbps
StreamSize : 146 MiB

Video #0
Codec : DivX 5
Codec/Family : MPEG-4V
Codec settings, Packet bitst : No
Codec settings, BVOP : Yes
Codec settings, QPel : No
Codec settings, GMC : 0
Codec settings, Matrix : Default
PlayTime : 4mn 11s
Bit rate : 5703 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 19.180 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
StreamSize : 31.5 MiB

Audio #0
Codec : MPEG-1 Audio layer 3
Codec profile : Joint stereo
PlayTime : 4mn 10s
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate : 320 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
StreamSize : 9.57 MiB
Writing library : Xing (new)

i hope that helps .. any questions on needing help with gettting the vids to work perfect on it dfkt .. let me know

also

lets hope cowon fixes ui and alot what you mentioned in your hate towards the device...

also for the love of god apple got it so does everybody else ..Play list support definaly and auto catagory favorites is not cutting it :/

[davidw89]

Get the S9 buddy!!

[Tario70]

davidw89,

I'd love to have S9 GUI on the O2 because I could never get an S9 for 2 simple reasons.

1. The screen for me, is just a bit too small (again, this is me, you may differ).
2. The lack of expandable Memory. 32GB isn't enough, my Music Collection by itself is 30.5 GB (And Growing).

Those 2 things kill the S9 for me instantaneously. I used to have a Zen Vision W before it died, & could care less how sexy a machine is, because I prefer functional over sexy in my electronics (though I realize you can have both). If they revamp the O2 with a similar GUI & fix it's problems it will be my future player, until that time I'm left without a portable video/audio player. Let me tell you, it sucks.

~Tario70

[bdroc]

about the people who can't get video out to work...i just ordered mine so im not sure, but you guys keep saying something about borrowing a cable or using different cables...from every review ive seen, you have to buy the 10 dollar cable from jetaudio in order for it to work, not one made for sony. i know usb->composite should be the same, but everyone that says they purchased the cable from jetaudio or amazon (jetaudio's store) has no problem with video out. you may have tried that, but im just sayin.

its also too bad there isnt an inbetween for the s9 and the o2. use o2's video quality and SD cards with the amoled screen and nice ui of the s9 and you have a pretty damn good player. however, im willing to upgrade from the archos 605 to the cowon, if it even is an upgrade. i just hope the lower resolution screen isnt HORRIBLE compared to the 800x480 screen of my old archos 605...if i dont like it...ill just return it.

[mysticstryk]

I want this but cant stand the lack of ID3.

I would get the S9 but I don't think 32gb is enough for me.

Right now I use a Zune 80 so all my music is WMA lossless which takes up tons of space. Whenever I finally choose between the O2 and the S9 I am going to re-rip all of my CD's to FLAC. How much space will FLAC take up? I'll get the S9 if it can hold everything, if not, then I'll have to go with the O2 (possibly the Archos 5, but not a big fan of HDD players).

[Yosh70]

Flac = usually 20-30MB per song

[dfkt]

Updated the list in the first post with the few fixes I found in the meantime.

[samueljesusfreak]

Originally Posted by mysticstryk

I want this but cant stand the lack of ID3.

I would get the S9 but I don't think 32gb is enough for me.

Right now I use a Zune 80 so all my music is WMA lossless which takes up tons of space. Whenever I finally choose between the O2 and the S9 I am going to re-rip all of my CD's to FLAC. How much space will FLAC take up? I'll get the S9 if it can hold everything, if not, then I'll have to go with the O2 (possibly the Archos 5, but not a big fan of HDD players).

If you use mediamonkey, you can probably convert your wma lossless to FLAC directly without having to rip CDs again. That way you can probably preserve all your tagging work and Album covers. I'm not 100% sure if Mediamonkey supports WMA lossless. I know it has no problem with WMA.

[barryem]

I have a Cowon D2, an Archos 504, an Archos 404, a Creative Zen, a Creative Zen Vision:M and Creative Zen Vision:W. I use these mostly for watching videos, except for the Zen which I also use for audiobooks. Anyway, I have some basis for comparison.

I'm very glad to sacrifice SD integration to get file browsing instead of ID3 browsing. That lets me navigate the same way I do on my computer. I've been using computers since long before subdirectories were invented and I'm used to that. Well, okay, since not long after subdirectories were invented but I didn't hear about them till later.

Anyway I very much prefer folder and file browsing. That makes sense to me. That's true whether I'm listening to music or watching videos or listening to audiobooks or listening to old time radio shows. See, the thing with ID3 browsing is that it's okay for music, not as good as folder browsing but okay, and it's really really bad for everything else. Folders, on the other hand, work just fine for everything. Even better, they work the same way for everything.

An example: if I listen to classical music (which is what I listen to) which is the artist? The musician if it's a solo? What if it's a duet? Or a soloist with an orchestra? Of course the correct answer is the composer and while the ID3 v2 standard does provide for a Composer tag, no player supports it. Sometimes, as in the case of a vocalist, the singer is most important. Oh woe is me! Life with ID3 is so difficult!

The solution: folder browsing. Arrange it any way I like. Arrange it both ways if I like; some files by composer; some by album; some by vocalist; some in more than one way if I'm willing to duplicate. It's all up to me.

The navigation features in the O2 are odd and take some getting used to. They also show a lot of thought and imagination and I'm glad they did it the way they did.

I'm not ready to say it's my favorite player yet. It's still too new to me. I probably would have said my Zen Vision:W was my favorite till now but this one just might take it's place.

For those of you who might wonder why I have so many players it's because I'm addicted. I'm retired and, even though I'm always broke I don't have much in the way of expenses so I can save up and buy things like this now and then.

By the way, until I read the ABI review of the O2 I was disappointed in it. I didn't know about the resume being in the recent files thing. That turned it around completely for me. Thank you for that.

Barry