iRiver iHP
I just got the iRiver iHP digital audio player. I got tired of listening to electronic interference from my PC and having access to just a few measly songs. (”I can hear the opcode pipelining through my processor!”) I also looked at Apple iPod and Rio Karma. The iPod is small, well-designed, and aesthetic. But it doesn’t play Ogg Vorbis, the format I used to encode my CD collection.
Both the Karma and iRiver play multiple codecs, including mp3, wav, Ogg and WMA (in case I should ever turn to the darkside), and they have features beyond iPod. While the iPod battery lasts for 8 hours, these players last 16 hours. Karma has not only USB 2, but also ethernet for fast transfers. It also has a feature that no other player has: gapless play — it lets you play albums without adding pause between tracks.
In the end, I picked the iRiver because of its technical features and its nice form factor and appearance (it’s almost the same size and weight as iPod). Features over the other players include built-in FM tuner, recording, optical line in/out, and remote with LCD screen. Over USB 2, the player looks like a storage device, and building the ID3 database can be done under Linux. No player is perfect, and there is room for improvement. You can’t create playlists on the fly, but instead you create them from winamp/xmms. The interface could confuse new users, with buttons invoking different operations by context. The firmware is upgradeable, so hopefully iRiver will release gapless play and some other improvements in a future revision. For now, I am a very happy user.
April 1st, 2004 at 8:52 pm
Glad you like your new MP3 (err … Ogg) player!
Ounce for ounce, ain’t nutin’ around that can beat the iPod. What program do you use to manage the songs on the iRiver. iPod = iTunes = Smiling Users.
One thing I’ve always wondered … what do you need a FM tuner for if you’ve got 20GB of music?!?! If you really want, you can put MP3s (or Oggs!) of repetitious commercials and stupid Morning Show banter on your iPod (or iRiver).
Plus, owning an iPod allows you to snub your nose at just about everyone else’s MP3 player. It comes at no charge … It’s included in the price.
April 1st, 2004 at 8:54 pm
That last sentence was supposed to be funny … but it reads completely unfunny. Sometimes you got it and most times you don’t.
April 1st, 2004 at 10:34 pm
Where should I begin? Ounce per ounce, the iHP and iPod are nearly identical (5.64 vs 5.6). The iHP has some advanced features, while the iPod has some fatal flaws.
I’m afraid beauty may be skin deep with iPod. It only plays WAV and MP3, so you’re stuck with iTunes. Using a lithium ion battery means iPod only runs for 6 hours. Audiophiles have rated the sound quality as low compared to other players. Is iPod an audio player or a PDA? Why would I want to play games or schedule appointments with it? I was using one at the Apple store and I kept accidentily “pushing” buttons on it by brushing over them.
The iHP is multi-codec and will work with any online music service. It uses a lithium polymer battery that lasts 16 hours. Sound quality is excellent and includes many EQ options like SRS and TruBass without distortion. The only better sounding players are the Rio Karma and some non-harddrive players. You get a bunch of nice accessories with it that you’d have to purchase separately for iPod. The leather case still lets me use buttons instead of covering them.
I do listen to the FM radio for variety and the reception is very good. It also has analog and digital-optical input and outputs so I can use it for high-end playing or recording with my stereo equipment. I used the built-in microphone and it sounds amazing, perfect for recording live music. The iPod requires a separate microphone accessory which doesn’t record at CD-level quality.
There are no required drivers or software to run iHP. It looks like a USB storage device and can browse directories and read ID3 tags from your audio files. You have the option of building a database from the ID3 tags so you can search by artist, album, title, genre, etc. The iPod may have some advantages here, especially with dynamic playlists. Maybe I don’t know what I’m missing, but I don’t even use playlists or the ID3 database. I’d be interested to hear how iTunes enhances my music listening.
The iHP may not have supermodel-looks like iPod, but with its black, shiny, scratch-resistant casing, blue-backlit LCD, and matching remote, it’s pretty sharp. Besides, I’ve heard that white ear buds can get you mugged.
April 2nd, 2004 at 8:50 am
I was wrong about the iHP working with online music services. Apparently it lacks the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software and an agreement with the online music providers. (sigh) They upgraded the firmware for the iFP series to use DRM, so they will probably do the same with iHP. Obviously, I don’t subscribe to such a service. It doesn’t help that I run Linux, and Windows Media Player is required. I’ve heard a simple way around the DRM is to burn the music to CD, then rip it and encode it.
I’ve been using a nifty program called streamripper that lets me save mp3 streams. It uses the meta data in the stream to rip individual mp3 files and save the id3 information to them. Hey, it’s like recording the radio, which is protected under the Home Recording Act, right?
April 5th, 2004 at 9:15 pm
Actually, the fine folks over at Stereophile gave the iPod high marks on music quality (among other things).
http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/934/
The caveat is that they recommend storing your music as AIFF files which, of course, are uncompressed and therefore rather large in size.
I think I’ll wait till that .5-terabyte iPod comes out before I do that!
Also as far as sound quality, it definitely depends upon your own ear. Me, personally, I’m not that much of an audiophile. I love music, don’t get me wrong there (My iPod is permanently attached to my hand) … but as far as being able to tell the difference between great sounding equipment and good sounding equipment, I ain’t that good.
Also, you still can’t convince me that an FM-tuner is needed on an MP3 player. Now if you’re talking about an AM-tuner so you can flip over and listen to Rush Limbaugh for 3 hours … that’s a different story! What about an XM-Radio tuner … HMMM … that might be worth it!
August 27th, 2004 at 10:43 am
I’ve been looking at getting an iHP. Do you still have the same feelings about it after a few months of use Eric?
August 27th, 2004 at 9:48 pm
I’ve gotten a lot of use out of my iHP and I still love it. I’ve found that I only copy music to it that I’m interested in currently listening to. Then, I wipe out those files and copy new ones. I thought I’d be archiving a big portion of my collection on this device, but that doesn’t turn out to be useful. Maybe this sounds silly because it’s obvious to other people. But I really didn’t need 20 gigs of storage. Maybe there’s a comparable 1-gig solid state player out with an even smaller profile that would interest me now. The features I get the most benefit from are the OGG support, uneeded drivers, battery life, and the EQ options. Even though it still lacks gapless playback (which is hard on a techno listener), I still think it’s the best player for me.
August 30th, 2004 at 4:13 pm
Well, I went out and picked one up this weekend. A couple weeks ago I picked up the iRiver iFP-890 256MB flash player which I was initially attracted too because I wanted the ability to be active while using it and not have to worry about the potential for skipping as might be possible with an HD based player. Keep in mind this is the first MP3 player I’ve purchased.
My first thought was what do I need more than 60 songs on the player for? Thats a good several hours of music and when I get sick of it, I can just create a new play list and copy it over. Well, annoyance #1 as I found was that the player will not show up as a removeable drive and requires some iRiver software to load music onto it. The thought of having to reload the player weekly through a clunky proprietary interface drove me to the iHP.
So now that I’ve exchanged the iFP-890 for the iHP-120 I agree that I can’t see myself coming close to the 20GB anytime soon, but I’d rather have the free space than not. It seems easier (and less costly) to fill it up than to replace it when its full. Then again, I’ll probably want a newer, cooler one before I ever fill this one up…