About 12-13 years ago I made the rather annoying decision to encode my music in OGG Vorbis format. I say annoying as it has ended up being an awkward choice. I made the choice before I was even using Linux, I’m not sure what prompted it, but it might have been a PC Plus article, better Audio for smaller size.
All my music sat on my PC. Which was fine until about 2003 (possibly.. it’s all rather vague) when flash players first came on the scene. I’d always been reluctant to buy anything with moving parts (Creative Zen was about £400 back then) which was going to exist in my jacket pocket. I had a CD walkman.. it drove me nuts skipping like a drunk boxer.
So I started looking for a OGG player. And that’s where the realisation I may have taken “the road less travelled” dawned on me. Eventually I found one though. An iRiver iFP500, 256MB, Built in FM Radio. It cost me around £100 or there abouts. It was great, with a crazy 40Hrs battery life on two AAA’s and 256MBcapacity. But I outgrew it (2005), especially when LugRadio came along with it’s whopping 20-40MB files ! So I searched again. And after another long and annoying search found a 2GB Samsung YP-U1. It was perfect, again somehow costing me about the same.
All went well till I was out walking the dog a few months back. He saw a dog he took an instant dislike too. I had the player in my hand while changing track. It got caught up in the leash, I was too busy trying to play referee that I didn’t notice the impending doom. Player ripped from hand, falls to ground, my foot went through the player. Fail. (I feel like adding “it only had one day to retirement” Lethal Weapon style, but in reality I’d have kept using it till the flash couldn’t handle any more writes!).
So step forth the Cowan iAudio 7, thanks to Mr. Sweet’s recommendation in an episode of LugRadio I went about short cutting my previous anguish and finding a replacement. Again I somehow managed to find it around the 100 mark, €99 this time. Fantastic.
- Small
- 8GB storage
- USB Mass Storage mode (Also can switch to MTP via in-built menu)
- Works on Linux perfectly (ie. can firmware upgrade it without needing software)
- Plays Flac, Vorbis and Wav aswell as all the usual freedom hating formats (MP3, WMA, ASF, JPG, MPG Video)
- It’s got a diagonal touchpad for fast scrolling and while a *bit* sensitive, it’s really not bad and makes fast forwarding through long audio less of a chore
- Has ridiculously long battery life (50-60Hrs)
- And some other things like Lyrics, Colour Screen, Fancy EQ settings..
It also rather importantly sounds great. Well done Cowan! So if you don’t “hate the freedom” I strongly suggest one 🙂
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Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 18:59
Mesanna
Cool! I have the same player 🙂
Cowon players may be a little bit pricier, but they are renown for better audio quality, and that’s well worth a little extra money. Plus, as you say, they’ll handle every file you can throw at them.
About the sensitivity, if you go into the settings and turn it to Low, that works fine (default is Medium). DO NOT set it to High! I tried that and I swear the dam thing would jump all over the place when my finger merely hovered over it, and it was really hard to get back into the menu again to reset it!
Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 0:14
Félim
It is indeed a great player. I actually have it on Low and still find it a bit on the sensitive side. Maybe they need “Walking the dog at high speed” mode 🙂 Yeah I can imagine it being a little bit of fun trying to get it set to something other than high after making that mistake !
Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 14:24
Adam Sweet
Hey Félim
I love you man, I need a new Ogg player (I broke my iAudio X5’s connector so I can’t recharge it or connect it to a PC) and this looks like it fits all my criteria perfectly 🙂
I’ve already mailed you about this before it occurred to me that I could leave you a comment. So, with you giving me credit for pointing you at Cowon iAudios, I’m paying it back for pointing me at this player
Thanks bwana.
Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 14:41
Félim
Alright Adam,
Honestly, not one complaint with this player. It’s a beauty… ok that slider bar is a bit picky, but it wouldn’t stop me buying it again given the chance ! I guess your commision cheque will be in the post right ? 😉 If only eh ?
You saved me from unbelievable gutted-ness, so pints a plenty at LRL !
Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 3:54
Adam Sweet's Blog » Blog Archive » Portable Ogg Player Required
[…] while, with various vain attempts at glueing it back together making it worse until I came across this post by my evil twin Felim Whiteley about the iAudio 7. After asking a few suspicious questions I […]