iriver T60 2 GB MP3 Player (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)When I was looking for a portable music player (pmp), I had several criteria in mind that made finding a decent player extremely difficult:

1) Most importantly, it needed to have high sound quality.Mostly what I mean by this is high quality signal processing and a high (>/= 90db) signal to noise ratio.I say this from experience, not as a snob: I tried a Phillips and the sound on acoustic guitar recordings produced noticeable distortion and artifacts around each picked note.On another player w/higher specs, the same exact file was clean.So the specs (if they are accurate) DO really matter if you care at all about sound quality. I'm a plug 'n' play person, and never use any EQ settings (parametric, presets, fancy "SRS WOW" or any of that).It should sound the way the musicians wanted it to sound without any fiddling with those things.

I listen to all sorts of music: underground rap, indypop, folk, acoustic, bluegrass, progressive metal, jazz, classical, etc.So far they all sound good on this.

2) I changed from Windows to Ubuntu Linux (it's free! and also amazingly good!) on my laptop, and wanted something that supported the open (free) Ogg Vorbis format, which is vastly superior to both VBR mp3 and wma in sound quality.And I wanted to support open vs closed standards.Unfortunately, Ogg (and its lossless counterpart FLAC) don't yet have as much hardware support as the closed wma and mp3 formats.

3) I wanted a flash-drive, not a portable mass storage library.I rip my cds to FLAC, encode to Ogg Q6 (~192kbps), and archive the FLAC albums on an external hard drive in case I need to re-encode something.Besides, pmp's with hard drives have too many moving parts and wouldn't last long with the way I abuse hardware.

4) Needed to run off of a standard AAA or AA battery for future-proofing and convenience:standard batteries are everywhere, and can simply be replaced with another fully charged one when they are drained, rather than having to find a wall plug and waiting for a recharge.Plus, when they die, you can be assured that more are easy to buy, rather than hunting for a rare, expensive proprietary battery pack that might be discontinued.I use 4 AAA NiMH rechargeables, and between them I get plenty of battery life in a package that's still not very bulky or heavy when compared to a CD player.And it's super-cheap.

5) Decent microphone to record voice notes, memos, song ideas, and conversations.

6) I learn a lot of songs by ear, so it's really nice to have an AB function that is easily accessible.A lot of casual listeners consider it a bell and whistle ("who would want to listen to part of a song over and over?")Well, anyone who wants to truly learn the song (music and/or lyrics) inside and out.

Other than that, I can honestly say I don't care much about other "features" such as color screens and graphics, FM radio, etc.

Verdict:

1) Amazing sound quality without any fiddling.I haven't even touched any of the EQ and effects settings it has, and probably never will.Some audible hiss, but I have yet to find any player from anywhere at any price that didn't have some, and during playback (which is crystal clear -- no distortion!!) it isn't noticeable.The volume on this sucker goes very loud -- with noise cancelling earbuds (try the $30 ones from Creative -- amazing sound for the $$!) I don't have the volume above 7 - 8 most of the time.When I plug into an external system, I crank it up to 20.

2) iRiver says it supports Ogg Vorbis up to Q10 (highest quality).I haven't tested that, but it plays Q6 well enough. Playback isn't gapless, however, which is annoying on some albums.It also plays mp3s well, and they sound decent.

3) It's flash.I considered the 4 gb model, and sometimes which I would've gotten it instead.But in the end I think 20-30 albums at high quality is enough.

4) It runs well off rechargeable AAA's.I haven't yet measured the actual battery life it gets.Some annoying points that others may have mentioned:a) It drains battery during USB transfers, which is completely unnecessary. b) There is a "battery selection" option to toggle between alkaline and rechargeable so you get an accurate readout.However, the toggle is reversed, and you need to set it to alkaline to get an accurate rechargeable readout, and vice-versa.Weird.

5) Microphone recordings are very clear and of high quality.It does a good job of picking up voice and acoustic instruments, and has a well-tempered balance betweenclose and distant sound sources.It records to mp3 format, which saves space and allows you to choose 3 different quality settings.Good enough for my purposes.

6) The player has a button *dedicated* to AB functions.Like this player was made for musicians.How cool is that?Other players hide it under a couple layers of menus, which can get annoying.Some other musician friendly features:"study mode" lets you use the track forward/back buttons to jump to 3, 10, 30, etc second intervals within a song, making rewind easy without risking a jump back to the beginning.Dedicated ff/rw buttons would be better, but this is nice.There is also a "playback speed" function, but it doesn't work on my player.Too bad, so sad.

Other notes:

a) The joystick is slightly annoying.I don't generally have a problem with it, but you have to use both hands in order to do what you want to do with it.Wish it were just push buttons, though.
b) Like I said above, it drains power during USB transfers.WTF?

At least a couple of these issues could be fixed by a firmware update, but the current version is 1.03 and was released in May 2007. iRiver responds to e-mails for support, but sometimes doesn't answer the question I asked.

As I don't care about the funky shape or other issues like that, four changes would make this the perfect pmp in my opinion:
1) Get rid of the joystick
2) Redesign to run off USB power.Relocate USB plug or get rid of need for a USB cord and have the player plug directly in to the computer like any other flash storage drive.
3) Update the firmware to resolve the stupid software issues:Nonfunctional playback speed option, reversed alkaline - rechargeable setting.
4) (not as important) a dedicated, gain-adjusted line-out jack.But there's only so much surface area on a Toblerone...

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Product Description:
Built in Flash memory for skip-free playback - Prism Style MP3 player based on iriver ifp100 series - Jog Button Navigation System - CSTN 65,000 color LCD with colorful GUI - Plays up to 19 hours with a AAA-size battery - Supports music file such as MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG Q10 - FM radio and FM recording reservation - Voice Recording - Image viewer** - Alarm with real-time clock - USB 2.0, Ultra Fast Data Transfer - Firmware Upgradable