From: Rocker <rocker_at_shaw.ca>
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:18:20 -0700

Yall wrote:>> The only problem I have is a noticeable noise mine makes
during quiet
>> passages and between songs.
>
> I don't here any of this on my E280. That's strange.
> Sound is crystal clear without any background noise.

What kind of headphones are you using?

I am using "KOSS - The Plug" and have this background noise very
clearly. It is not a big problem when listening to music while sitting
in a train, because there are enough other natural noises around. But in
a quiet surrounding it is very annoying IMHO. I think about buying a
higher impedance headphone or do hope that rockbox does get usable on a
cowon D2 in some weeks. I guess that this player has much better
hardware (but is three times more expensive).
**It's really dependant on the type of phones your using. I have multiple
sets. impedance is a factor. Driver efficiency also makes a difference.
Example, My ER4P's sound great and are very efficient. Conversely, My QC
II's need a lot of juice and I need to use a headphone amp in order to drive
them with any volume. The E200 just doesn't have the power for loud and
clear listening with high quality arouned the ear cans. Get yourself a nice
headphone amp off of EBay and you will be very satisfied with the
player...rocker


Besides this background noise issue the e280 is a really great player.
It is very cheap (108 EUR for the 8GB+radio version). It is small and
seems robust. The original firmware is a crap. It is missing a file
browser and ogg support. But driven by rockbox it is very recommendable.

One other drawback: The USB support in rockbox is not yet working. You
have to boot the original firmware (by holding the left-key while
booting) for being able to load music files onto the player. This means
you have to wait 1 or 2 minutes because the original firmware does block
the GUI while it does update the mp3-tag database if it is the first
time you restart the original firmware after having loaded new music.

The missing USB-support is a problem, too, when using high capacity
cards. The original firmware can only handle normal micro-SD cards (if I
am right up to 2GB). The newer micro-SDHC (currently up to 8GB) can be
used under rockbox. But because rockbox cannot load music on it, you
have to use a card-reader to store music onto the card. Not a big
problem, but it would be great if the rockbox USB-support would come one
day.

Ciao,
Arno
Received on 2008-02-02