Cowon X7 becoming reality after years of speculation?

[aeramil]

CBR is mp3 320, which means it has a target bitrate of 320 kilobits for each second of audio.

Technically this is generally better than v0 VBR, which has a target bitrate of 245. Not that a difference is obvious or even evident, but CBR should overall be higher quality.

VBR can supply more bits to complex music passages and save bits on simpler ones, while CBR encodes every frame at the same bitrate, meaning VBR is more efficient when considering file size.

[rickysio]

Or just use MP3HD.

[Mauro]

No hard-drive please, what century are we living in? Flash all the way.

[kasrhp]

Originally Posted by Mauro

No hard-drive please, what century are we living in? Flash all the way.

Except you can get insanely higher storage space in an HDD than a flash drive. How much is a 64GB iTouch going for? Compare that price to the 250GB iPod classic and you can see why HDD is still being used. Just sayin'

[Mauro]

I appreciate the hard-drive advantage although I am getting tired of being extra careful of the format every time I move. I have seen quite a few people toss their Daps because the drives inside have died.

[rickysio]

Then don't get them, but there's also no need to put the tech down.

[The DarkSide]

I agree - the HDD is far from dead, and not everyone want's to go jogging w/their high capacity players,............that's what the smaller flash based DAP's are for.

This is gonna be da' bomb!!!

[EddieE]

Very interested. A high capacity Cowon would be fantastic. The only thing really missing from current Cowon players is a lack of line out. As the X5 had it, I hope that the X7 will too.

[dfkt]

Well, the line-out on the X5 was crap (and so is the one on the Sony A845)... it would be a nice feature when done right, but so far amping any headphone-outs showed no detrimental effect for me yet.

[fabarati]

My X5 is still rocking, after 5 years. Of course, I did do a CF mod last summer, but everything else is still the same.

[EddieE]

Originally Posted by dfkt

Well, the line-out on the X5 was crap (and so is the one on the Sony A845)... it would be a nice feature when done right, but so far amping any headphone-outs showed no detrimental effect for me yet.

Yeah I saw a past thread with your graphs for the X5 line out; looked pretty shoddy.

Also good to hear that you don't find any detrimental effects of amping a hp out. It's one of those things I've never been able to test for myself so wasn't sure what difference it made in practice.

Would still like line-out if just for the principle of the matter

A high capacity modern Cowon is a great prospect (just please let them use the team that does their DAP UIs and not their PMP UIs handle the interface!!!) - a lot of my friends I try to turn on to players besides Ipods respond that they go with ipods because of the capacity issue... there's really no argument you can make against that.

[IanD]

Originally Posted by kasrhp

Except you can get insanely higher storage space in an HDD than a flash drive. How much is a 64GB iTouch going for? Compare that price to the 250GB iPod classic and you can see why HDD is still being used. Just sayin'

+1

I'd jump at a HD DAP - tide me over until SDXC becomes the norm.

Well, assuming they didn't ruin it by cramming in unwanted PMP features .

[DragonBottles]

Gosh yes!!! Make it real, Cowon! I'd buy it, no question!

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by IanD

Well, assuming they didn't ruin it by cramming in unwanted PMP features .

If it's really going to be an Android device, they sure are going to make it a jack-of-all-trades. Well, at least with a GPS in your audio player you would know exactly where you listened to your music.

[IanD]

Originally Posted by dfkt

If it's really going to be an Android device, they sure are going to make it a jack-of-all-trades. Well, at least with a GPS in your audio player you would know exactly where you listened to your music.

Can't help but feel you're right about this .

Rhetorical question: Is there really no market for a high-capacity dedicated music player these days?

[dfkt]

On the one hand, hard disks really suck for portable use, yet there's no way around when you want +120GB - on the other, Apple still sells their iPod Classic. I don't know if they make profit off it, or simply don't want to kill it off for the handful(?) of loyal fans of huge storage. But that would be illogical for a big corporation, so there sure are enough people out there buying it. Makes me wonder why even Microsoft killed off their Zune HDD players, and why Cowon/iriver/Sony etc haven't made HDD players in years. I don't know the answer.

[kasrhp]

Originally Posted by dfkt

On the one hand, hard disks really suck for portable use, yet there's no way around when you want +120GB - on the other, Apple still sells their iPod Classic. I don't know if they make profit off it, or simply don't want to kill it off for the handful(?) of loyal fans of huge storage. But that would be illogical for a big corporation, so there sure are enough people out there buying it. Makes me wonder why even Microsoft killed off their Zune HDD players, and why Cowon/iriver/Sony etc haven't made HDD players in years. I don't know the answer.

I would have to say (without any evidence) that most people tend to have smaller music libraries. Mainly because they dont use high quality formats. I believe 128kbps is still by far the most widely used mp3 format. It takes a lot of songs to hit up 32GB let alone anything bigger. Throw in the fact that the younger generation is very youtube friendly, and not as interested in ripping their movies to their hard drive. They seem to be more interested in the cat that can play the piano than a good flick. Throw in the mass texting and they don't have as much time to watch a full length movie.

But, I hope Cowon does this. I need to swap my HDD iPod for something better, but there really isn't much of a selection out there.

[DragonBottles]

If I was to have any iPod it would be the classic due to its massive storage, I really need a player with massive space. I have a 92GB music collection, and my 32GB Samsung P3 just isn't cutting it anymore.

[The DarkSide]

Any other news on this, or possibly when it might be released???

[rickysio]

Originally Posted by kasrhp

I would have to say (without any evidence) that most people tend to have smaller music libraries. Mainly because they dont use high quality formats. I believe 128kbps is still by far the most widely used mp3 format. It takes a lot of songs to hit up 32GB let alone anything bigger. Throw in the fact that the younger generation is very youtube friendly, and not as interested in ripping their movies to their hard drive. They seem to be more interested in the cat that can play the piano than a good flick. Throw in the mass texting and they don't have as much time to watch a full length movie.

But, I hope Cowon does this. I need to swap my HDD iPod for something better, but there really isn't much of a selection out there.

I have to say that most of them can't tell a difference between 20kbps music and 320kbps music. One song I got from my friend was a WTF inducing 20kbps, and he tells me it sounds good.