marsilians
Well-Known Member
I just picked up this player about 2 weeks ago and use it mainly for outdoor activities. You can read a lot of reviews on this by googling. So I wont go there. I will just lay out what I think about the player and the sound quality.
iPods are notoriously bad for sound reproduction in my opinion. So I have been using other players from Creative, Sony and now Sandisk players.
This player has probably one of the best playback qualities so far. The closest one being Cowon D2. I have paired this with a Sennheiser PX100 and listen to it in noisy environment - outside and in gym.
I have also added an 8 GB micro SD card for a total of 16GB capacity.
I use it primarily for music though it supports video (I cant stand to watch video on such players), radio (excellent AM/FM quality), audio recorder (a plus for me when I want to record something off the radio such as an announcement or song info).
The firmware upload was very easy and the latest one supports ogg and flac formats seamlessly.
I have loaded classic rock, electric blues and psychedelic songs (my exercise genres) in flac and ogg format songs, all ripped in stereo mode from CDs and DVD-A's with best quality via media monkey. The onboard DAC has stood well and its definitely non fatiguing.
I have also tried to listen to some jazz, blues and fusion music off of CDs and ripped flacs via my BitHead amp (HeadRoom Total BitHead @ HeadRoom) and through my AKG 501 headphones and the sound was surprisingly decent. (the bitheads are warm amps and pair very well with the Xonar Essence audio card). I have also use the amp/player in my car mp3 player (connected via USB) and the sound quality is quite good.
The biggest pain in the neck was having Vista recognize this device. There are no. of posts around Vista having issues with this. I had initial issues and did the following steps to get around:
1. Set the Fuze to be recognized as an MTP device in settings.
2. Upgraded the latest firmware on the Fuze
3. Upgraded to the latest update for media player.
Steps 1, 2 still did not recognize but after step 3 its been pretty smooth for transferring music via MediaMonkey. media player also recognizes it now but I dont use it due to limited qualities and sub par ripping features/capabilities.
All in all I am happy with the buy.
iPods are notoriously bad for sound reproduction in my opinion. So I have been using other players from Creative, Sony and now Sandisk players.
This player has probably one of the best playback qualities so far. The closest one being Cowon D2. I have paired this with a Sennheiser PX100 and listen to it in noisy environment - outside and in gym.
I have also added an 8 GB micro SD card for a total of 16GB capacity.
I use it primarily for music though it supports video (I cant stand to watch video on such players), radio (excellent AM/FM quality), audio recorder (a plus for me when I want to record something off the radio such as an announcement or song info).
The firmware upload was very easy and the latest one supports ogg and flac formats seamlessly.
I have loaded classic rock, electric blues and psychedelic songs (my exercise genres) in flac and ogg format songs, all ripped in stereo mode from CDs and DVD-A's with best quality via media monkey. The onboard DAC has stood well and its definitely non fatiguing.
I have also tried to listen to some jazz, blues and fusion music off of CDs and ripped flacs via my BitHead amp (HeadRoom Total BitHead @ HeadRoom) and through my AKG 501 headphones and the sound was surprisingly decent. (the bitheads are warm amps and pair very well with the Xonar Essence audio card). I have also use the amp/player in my car mp3 player (connected via USB) and the sound quality is quite good.
The biggest pain in the neck was having Vista recognize this device. There are no. of posts around Vista having issues with this. I had initial issues and did the following steps to get around:
1. Set the Fuze to be recognized as an MTP device in settings.
2. Upgraded the latest firmware on the Fuze
3. Upgraded to the latest update for media player.
Steps 1, 2 still did not recognize but after step 3 its been pretty smooth for transferring music via MediaMonkey. media player also recognizes it now but I dont use it due to limited qualities and sub par ripping features/capabilities.
All in all I am happy with the buy.