Martin Plappert wrote:> Well, it functions like any other Digital Audio Player [and has] ... > no option for removable media. 40 GB of space ... I personally find > that quite adequate.Thank you, Martin. I wasn't knocking the capacity; it's just that I've seen posts on other lists from people who would like to be able to play removable media and not need to load files from CDR or DVD-/+R first onto a computer's hard disk and then onto a portable player, and so far no FLAC player can do that.
> Apparently it plays only from its own on-board RAM, and you have to > pre-load files on it before you hit the road or head for the bus stop or > the train station, I gather? It doesn't play from removable media?Well, it functions like any other Digital Audio Player. Take the iPod, the iRiver iHp 120 and the Rio Karma to name just a few. These players all have integrated 20 or 40 GB 1.8 inch drives and no option for removable media. 40 GB of space would even with FLAC and an average CD length of 60 minutes give you enough room for something like 130 CDs. If you take a lossy codec such as OGG @ 192 kbps VBR this number jumps to a massive 440 CDs. I personally find that quite adequate.
Hello again, well the first beta Firmware has now been released to the public and it is very stable and completely unlike a Microsoft Betas ;-) FLAC is officially supported in compression levels 0, 1 and 2 but other levels usually work fine. I only had one problem with a FLAC level 8 file stopping because the processor ( 140 Mhz Motorola/Freescale ColdFire SCF5249 ) could not keep up wit the load any more. The player didn't actually crash though which is a good thing. Menu scrolling does become noticeably slower on FLAC files compressed in level 8. Here is a link to the beta Firmware release: http://eng.iaudio.com/zeroboard/zboard.php?id=C08&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&bmenu=c&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&bmenu=c&desc=asc&no=126&bmenu=c Thanks for reading - yours, Martin (eXity)