EPTCOWON J3 & MP3 Player Thread - Page 3
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Navane
Netherlands2763 Posts
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gulati
United States2241 Posts
On January 08 2011 07:43 Navane wrote: This op is just advertising. And he has flawed arguments. He claims Signal to noise ratio to be of utmost importance, yet his device has 95 compared to 93 of the ipod. The rest is just cosmetics (wtf does an audiophile care about the display?) SnR is the most important factor for me. So yes, that is why the COWON wins. And if you closely read, Apple does not release it's SnR. That is what end-users have tested. It could very well be even lower, we have no clue. So, with that said, I don't understand what you are trying to critique. (And by the way, 86dB SnR being the "standard" on motherboards, versus 124dB SnR on my Asus Xonar Essence STX yields a 64x clearer signal. You are trying to make a linear comparison out of sound properties that you do not understand. 95dB vs 93dB is gigantic for an audiophile). Anyway, no. I do not work for COWON, and I don't care who makes the product. I am telling you that from my experience this is the best MP3 player money can buy. That is it. P.S. This is an expensive purchase. Audiophiles don't mind having a beautiful looking device also. So kudos to COWON for making a nice product. If you want an ugly product that has as good sound specifications as this, then feel free to win over the audiophile world. You will have a tough time finding a product that satisfies those variables, and will cause an audiophile to empty their pockets for it (unless it is WAY better in terms of audio). | ||
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Chef
10810 Posts
To use anythingbutipod and head-fi.org in the same sentence is also laughable. They're totally different communities. AnythingButIpod actually has some competent users... namely DFKT. At hydrogenaudio.org every is basically DFKT x2 (in terms of audio understanding). Head-fi is just a cesspool of consumerism, shills, and people who don't know what they're talking about but feel the need to write huge essays none the less. Cowon isn't more or less expensive than any other player on the market, really. So I don't know where that point comes from. Clip+ is the cheapest solid device you can get, but of course it has no video support. | ||
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writer22816
United States5775 Posts
On January 08 2011 07:43 Navane wrote: This op is just advertising. And he has flawed arguments. He claims Signal to noise ratio to be of utmost importance, yet his device has 95 compared to 93 of the ipod. The rest is just cosmetics (wtf does an audiophile care about the display?) Uhh maybe this wasn't clear in his post, but battery life and expandable memory are also two massive advantages over the ipod. I would take those over wifi and some cute touchscreen games any day. | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
On January 08 2011 07:53 gulati wrote: SnR is the most important factor for me. So yes, that is why the COWON wins. And if you closely read, Apple does not release it's SnR. That is what end-users have tested. It could very well be even lower, we have no clue. So, with that said, I don't understand what you are trying to critique. (And by the way, 86dB SnR being the "standard" on motherboards, versus 124dB SnR on my Asus Xonar Essence STX yields a 64x clearer signal. You are trying to make a linear comparison out of sound properties that you do not understand. 95dB vs 93dB is gigantic for an audiophile). Anyway, no. I do not work for COWON, and I don't care who makes the product. I am telling you that from my experience this is the best MP3 player money can buy. That is it. P.S. This is an expensive purchase. Audiophiles don't mind having a beautiful looking device also. So kudos to COWON for making a nice product. If you want an ugly product that has as good sound specifications as this, then feel free to win over the audiophile world. You will have a tough time finding a product that satisfies those variables, and will cause an audiophile to empty their pockets for it (unless it is WAY better in terms of audio). 124 dB vs. 86 dB is a 38 dB difference, which would be a ratio of 10^(38/10) = 6310. Where does 64x come from? In any case, just comparing SNR between two devices gives you a very incomplete picture of the audio performance difference, especially when the SNR is sufficiently high. If you're listening at a signal level that peaks at 90 dB SPL (fairly loud) and the baseline noise level is 100 dB under that, the noise would be literally below the threshold of human detectability: 0 dB SPL. Having a noise level 110 dB under the 90 dB SPL would also give you another value below 0 dB SPL, so who cares? RMAA isn't a perfect audio benchmarking suite by any means, but at least it will give you real-world measurements including more parameters such as the frequency response, harmonic and intermodulation distortion, etc. See some results for the J3 vs. other players here: Cowon J3, Sansa Clip+, Sony A845, Samsung YP-R0 with 16 ohm load iPhone, Sansa Clip, Cowon D2, iRiver H340 with 16 ohm load http://rmaa.elektrokrishna.com/ [edit: My link got blown up lol, visit the site for real and see the comparisons. It deserves the real traffic.] 16 ohms is a very common earbud/earphones/IEM impedance. I'm sure some audiophiles would use an external amp and not drive those directly with the internal headphone amplifier, but these results are what they are. They're measuring the whole DAC -> amp signal chain. The J3 actually has a bit of a bass rolloff with low-impedance loads, probably because of having a small DC blocking capacitor on the output. That produces the highpass effect you see. As for the SNR, distortion, etc. go see for yourself. The J3 does pretty well. But actually, so does the $25-50 Sansa Clip+. Who would've thunk. | ||
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T0fuuu
Australia2275 Posts
Actually saying anything is audiophile quality is silly. You could feel all elite with a pair of 500 dollar headphones and a xonar but go to any audiophile meet and there will be setups that just shit over anything you could imagine (or afford). | ||
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diehilde
Germany1596 Posts
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Fenrax
United States5018 Posts
- she is a complete tech noob so it has to function as easy as possible, the easier the better - no Video function, it would only confuse her  - high quality, a long battery duration and many Gigabytes memory are more important than the price | ||
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PeZuY
935 Posts
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Azera
3800 Posts
On January 31 2012 16:53 PeZuY wrote: I am buying J3 32GB hopefully as soon as possible, now I am just browsing different shops allover eu that can deliver to finland. Any good and cheap suggestions? ^^ Thanks Have you considered using Amazon? | ||
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ETisME
12894 Posts
Since I just bought a new earphone, theJVC HA-FXT90 limited gold edition, do you think it is worth getting this mp3 player or should I get a portable amp instead? | ||
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HuggyBear
Australia377 Posts
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/sansa-clip-measured.html If you want a REALLY excellent mp3 player, then I agree that the Cowon J3 is a really good player unless you have a habit of drunk bashing your devices. Cowon makes a lot of good sounding players. The reason the J3 becomes the best of the bunch is they didn't botch up the GUI compared to all their other PMPs | ||
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Minzy
Australia387 Posts
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PeZuY
935 Posts
What I've seen amazon are not cheapest. If I could order one player and delivered from US it would be fine but unfortunately it feels impossible to buy anything from states since either they cannot deliver it or shipping costs are way too ridiculous. My best prize so far is white version of the player 199 pounds+18,99 delivery from U.K. which is roughly 250,06 € at the current state. http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/MP3_Players.1/Cowon_iAudio.15/COWONJ3-32GB-/Cowon_J3_32GB_MP3_Player.4380.html but I just want to see if I can squeeze few more pennies out of it : ) | ||
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HuggyBear
Australia377 Posts
On January 31 2012 17:14 Minzy wrote: afaik no-one else has made a 120gig+ mp3 player, so i have an iPod. That's because JB Hi-fi/Dick Smith only sells iPods lol  http://www.minidisc.com.au/cowon-x7-media-player-160gb-p-2051.html | ||
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nerium
Philippines512 Posts
 Ipod Video 5th gen (rockboxed) > Lineout > Dedicated Amp > headphones/IEM Works like a gem. | ||
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phanto
Sweden708 Posts
*is the quality good enough *cheaper = better there you go, 3 step to best purchase. I use the sansaclip mentioned above. it's great. small as hell too, and very convenient for jogging. | ||
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phosphorylation
United States2935 Posts
1)battery life.. Let me tell you a simple story to illustrate this. I went on a camping trip, with the mp3 blasting on the entire 4-hr drive. I foolishly forgot to turn the thing off and hiked 15 miles into the wild to camp. I came back two nights later expecting my player to be out of batteries but it was still going.. In fact, I even got to enjoy music on the drive back. 2) Ease of file transfer, lack of bs software. I've owned ipods and zune in the past, but I absolutely loathed their proprietary software programs which were very fiddly (esp. the zune) and these were required to upload music to the player. It also fucked with the file directory; the only way I could access the music was through the playlists/albums that they reorganized for me. With the cowon, all you do is drag and drop (no middling software) and it preserves the file directory. You can still browse playlists but I can just as well choose to browse the player like a pc. What's more, it plays basically every audio format (even apple lossless) so there's no hassle of converting audio files. Well the good audio quality and beautiful screen are also nice to have, I guess. | ||
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writer22816
United States5775 Posts
On January 31 2012 18:03 phosphorylation wrote: Above all, i enjoy these two aspects about cowon products over the others: 1)battery life.. Let me tell you a simple story to illustrate this. I went on a camping trip, with the mp3 blasting on the entire 4-hr drive. I foolishly forgot to turn the thing off and hiked 15 miles into the wild to camp. I came back two nights later expecting my player to be out of batteries but it was still going.. In fact, I even got to enjoy music on the drive back. 2) Ease of file transfer, lack of bs software. I've owned ipods and zune in the past, but I absolutely loathed their proprietary software programs which were very fiddly (esp. the zune) and these were required to upload music to the player. It also fucked with the file directory; the only way I could access the music was through the playlists/albums that they reorganized for me. With the cowon, all you do is drag and drop (no middling software) and it preserves the file directory. You can still browse playlists but I can just as well choose to browse the player like a pc. What's more, it plays basically every audio format (even apple lossless) so there's no hassle of converting audio files. Well the good audio quality and beautiful screen are also nice to have, I guess. I agree, but I find it hard to pay the asking price of $200 for a dedicated audio player. I'd rather have a single device i.e. smartphone. edit: reading my post a year ago it's astonishing how much my opinions have changed over one year....-_- | ||
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phosphorylation
United States2935 Posts
I don't own a smartphone so having a nice multimedia player + normal phone really makes sense. (I also tend to drop my phone a lot so having a sturdy, oldschool flip phone is not actually a terrible thing) I do miss not having wifi/3G sometimes, but I can live without it. Oh and you can grab them for sub-200 used. | ||
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