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[Quadrophenic]

I am in the proccess of trying to figure out what kind of HDD player I want to buy, and have recently been incredibly impressed with what I have read about the iRiver iHP120 model...but I have some questions. So, anyone who uses an iRiver iHP1xx model (since from what I can tell the differences between 120 and 140 are basically only storage space) could clear some stuff up for me (fart), it would be greatly appreciated:

1. Gapless playback…from what I can tell currently in between tracks there is a small pause. I can see where this would be annoying when listening to albums where a track seamlessly flows into the next….how bad/annoying is this?

2. The shuffle feature doesn’t shuffle sucks. Is this as piss poor as I have read? Or is it blown out of proporation? I heard that if you randomly select a track and then hit shuffle you should have no problems with the shuffle function repeating the same tracks.

3. File names and track identification…I am not certain on this…from one person I was told that the only identification you get for tracks is by looking at the file name, but someone else told me that the iRiver displays the ID3 tags. What I am thinking is that since the iRiver is basically just an external harddrive and all music is arranged in folders and so on like they would be on my computer. The player’s user interface is basically Windows Explorer. Once you select and play a track, then the ID3 info displays while the track is playing. Is this right?

4. How good is the built in mic? Would I be able to record lectures easily, or would I need an external mic for that?

5. Any pictures comparing the iRiver iHP120 with an iPod? Even if they are just renders to give a sense of size comparison would be great. Thanks

Also....anyone know whats up with the Creative Zen Touch? Are these things even out? Any professional reviews available? And whats the deal with the Zen Touch being a slightly reworked Dell DJ, which means its a harddrive failing wonder machine?

 

[The Faceless Master]

1. it's not really annoying, then again, i'm used to the slight pause happening from years of many PC based players having it...

2. never used shuffle

3. yes, it has ID3 support

4. external mic

5. first hit on google images man...

 

[Mason]

That is a really old picture. The Zen and iPod have gone through massive changes and look a lot different in their current versions. I would imagine the iRiver has too.

 

[Mejilan]

VERY old images.

 

[fart]

I am in the proccess of trying to figure out what kind of HDD player I want to buy, and have recently been incredibly impressed with what I have read about the iRiver iHP120 model...but I have some questions. So, anyone who uses an iRiver iHP1xx model (since from what I can tell the differences between 120 and 140 are basically only storage space) could clear some stuff up for me (fart), it would be greatly appreciated:

1. Gapless playback…from what I can tell currently in between tracks there is a small pause. I can see where this would be annoying when listening to albums where a track seamlessly flows into the next….how bad/annoying is this?

2. The shuffle feature doesn’t shuffle sucks. Is this as piss poor as I have read? Or is it blown out of proporation? I heard that if you randomly select a track and then hit shuffle you should have no problems with the shuffle function repeating the same tracks.

3. File names and track identification…I am not certain on this…from one person I was told that the only identification you get for tracks is by looking at the file name, but someone else told me that the iRiver displays the ID3 tags. What I am thinking is that since the iRiver is basically just an external harddrive and all music is arranged in folders and so on like they would be on my computer. The player’s user interface is basically Windows Explorer. Once you select and play a track, then the ID3 info displays while the track is playing. Is this right?

4. How good is the built in mic? Would I be able to record lectures easily, or would I need an external mic for that?

5. Any pictures comparing the iRiver iHP120 with an iPod? Even if they are just renders to give a sense of size comparison would be great. Thanks

Also....anyone know whats up with the Creative Zen Touch? Are these things even out? Any professional reviews available? And whats the deal with the Zen Touch being a slightly reworked Dell DJ, which means its a harddrive failing wonder machine?

1. lack of gapless playback doesn't bother me at all. supposedly it will be in the next firmware update though (don't hold your breath yada yada). the gap isn't particularly long or anything, so it's pretty much OK.

2. the shuffle basically doesn't shuffle. if you want random playback of tracks on your iriver (for the moment) you'll have to use a playlist randomizer and upload a bunch of random playlists to your player. this is basically the only way to get shuffle. what happens is the shuffle feature uses a pseudorandom generator seed that NEVER CHANGES, so your shuffles will never really shuffle given the same starting conditions you'll get the exact same order. if you like shuffle, it could definitely piss you off. i hate shuffle, personally.

i think this is scheduled to be fixed but i can't remember

3. there are two browse modes - tag database mode where you can discriminate based on the ID3 fields, and directory view mode where you look at the player contents as a file system tree. the directory view mode doesn't display tag information, just the file name. the database view shows the tag information (but not the filename? can't remember. don't actually use it myself). when you start playing the file the player will cycle through displaying whatever information it can - tag if available, filename otherwise.

note that using tag database mode is a little weird. you have to use a PC to build the tag database (there are some great utilities for this, even though the iriver software is shit) and then the player loads this DB up when it boots. if you have a HUGE tag database it can slow your boot time by quite a bit.

4. the internal mic is perfect for recording lectures. you'll hear the HD spin up on the recording, but it really isn't a big deal for lectures.

5. the person to ask is austonia on head-fi. his site is dapreview.com or something like that. he has an iriver and a g3 ipod and god knows what else. he probably ordered a g4 and mini as well. crazy guy

 

[Coen]

That picture looks crap indeed. 120 model still looks like that, 140 is all black and looks a bit better, imho. But still, design-wise they get stomped on by iPod and Zen.

1. There's a small gap, but it's not different from winamp. You could consider ripping an album in one file, if it bugs you that much. But I guess you'd be missing out on the ID3-tag support.

2. Shuffle works perfectly fine, once you know how to use it. You can shuffle your entire library or the current folder, or if you wish, a sub-folder from your main folder. (for instance, if you happen to have maps like 'pop', 'hip-hop' 'alternative' etc, and you have all kinds of albums in those folders, you can shuffle all the songs from that genre-folder.) You can even let it shuffle all first songs of your folders. Just know that it's a bitch figuring out how this works. I usually just stick to shuffle my current folder or my entire liberary, cause I haven't really figured out how it works.

EDIT: What Fart says is true, it's no true shuffle.

3. There's ID3-tag support

4. I have a 140 myself and I was quiet surprised by the internal mic. It can be a tad to sensitive and you can forget about filtering out enviromental noise, like the high-end external mics do, but all in all it's not bad and you can easily tape lectures with it. It records in WAV, stereo only and it's a little space-consuming, but I asume you'll be able to convert that once you've found your way to a PC.

 

[fart]

you can record to mp3 (any reasonable bitrate no vbr) or to wav. the files are stereo (joint stereo for the mp3 compressed ones) but you only have one pickup on the mic so the audio is mono (durr)

 

[Quadrophenic]

thanks for the responses everyone!

the iRiver definately sounds like the player I am going to buy. Amazon has the player for about $290 (aparranently they used to have a 50 gift certificate with it during July. doh!), I'll probably order it in a week or two unless some kind of sale pops up.