iAUDIO I7-16RD 16GB Portable Multimedia Player Red

This definitely isn't true audiophile quality, it probably is thought to be for various reasons. I think most people refer to the sound as being audiophile-like, because everything out there for a portable flash/hd based player sounds like a$$ "for the most part" (this being much better than competing Creative, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Sandisk products available). But mostly, people do not understand (how high the ceiling goes) or live in that audiophile realm ($1500-$100,000+ receivers, speakers and such). I have owned 2 prior iRiver models and 2 other iAudio's (I have also used other peoples Ipods, Nanos, Creative, Samsung and Sandisk products for trial over the last 5 years). This model is definitely an improvement in sound quality over the previous Cowon U3 4gb I owned. And closer to, if not surpassing the quality of my 895 iRiver and the 512mb model before that. I own some HD580 and HD600 Sennheiser's and they sound listenable, but there is definitely a lack of punch, depth to the soundstage, but thats ok, because thats about as good as it gets for now with portables and I personally need something for the gym. It's a great player once you get used to the sensitivity controls and menus, which is expected. I definitely wish Cowon would add true playlist support, so people can create multiple playlists at home on their pc and store them in a player folder for playback later on the portable. The iAudio 7 8gb is probably the best model currently as it doesn't seem to suffer from the transfer speed problems of the 16gb model, and surpassing 4,000 files would be quite hard with 8gb. As long you are willing to swap files around occasionally (if opting away from the 16gb model), it's a better value until Cowon irons out some kinks and players get even bigger. (Amazon wouldn't let me post my response comment due to some guideline I couldn't figure out, so I am just posting my comment as a review, enjoy)

I bought this product based on all the rave reviews about the sound quality all over the web (since you can't just go down to your local Best Buy and listen to one - they're only available over the internet, and I think in brick-and-mortar stores in LA and NYC). Everyone talks about how the iAudio7 sounds great, wonderful, "audiophile quality sound", etc., etc.

Let me preface this by saying that I am an audiophile - I love listening to music and I am extremely particular about the way my music sounds. I love listening to CDs through my Grado 325i headphones at home.

I didn't think the iAudio7 lived up to all the hype the first few days I used it - thus the two stars in my rating. In fact, I thought it sounded terrible and couldn't understand how anyone could think it sounded good.

Turns out, the headphone jack is a little weird - sort of. I've plugged into this thing numerous times over the past few days and the headphone plug never went all the way into the headphone jack. I always pushed it in until I felt significant resistance, then stopped pushing for fear of breaking it (I can be the proverbial bull in a china shop sometimes - "careful" is not one my strong traits). I thought it odd that that headphone plug never went fully into the jack on the player, but thought it was just a bad design. Well, today, I vowed to listen to it one more time before sending it back for a refund, and accidentally pushed the headphone plug all the way into the jack. What a difference that made in sound!

Now I would say the Cowon sounds pretty good for the price. I won't make any claims that it has "audiophile-quality" sound - that's quite a stretch, but I actually think it sounds pretty decent using the "Normal" EQ setting (i.e., set flat). I'm listening to files in FLAC format (lossless compression) and they sound pretty good. This will be plenty good for work and travel. I still like my home system much better, but it cost a lot more than the iAudio7.

One thing they don't tell you before buying it is that it only holds 4,000 files or 2,000 folders. This is true of both the 8GB and 16GB models. If you're using FLAC format for your music files, you won't have to worry about this. At about 4MB/minute of playing time, a 3 minute FLAC-format recording will use up 12MB of memory in the player. But if for some reason you had, say, 4000 files that were 2MB each, that would use up only 8GB of the 16GB of available memory and even though you would still have 8GB of free memory on your player, you won't be able to use it because you hit the 4000 file limit. I don't know likely it is that anyone will run into these limits, but it is possible.

The other thing that still bugs me is the user-interface. The first couple of days it drove me batty and I wanted to throw the thing across the room - I could not get it to do anything that I wanted it to do and it made me so angry. I consulted the documentation provided on the CD, but it wasn't very helpful. The user-interface is touch sensitive, and when I say "sensitive", I'm not kidding! It is -extremely- touch sensitive; it's easy to accidentally brush against some control on the screen and have it do something unwanted. Until you get used to it, it may drive you nuts. Once you get everything set the way you want it, you can move a "hold" switch that locks out further changes until you move the switch back again. Very helpful feature!

I use mine set "flat" - all the tone controls and adjustments turned off. But if you listen to mp3s or you prefer your sound different than I like mine, it has a lot of options for changing the sound. There's an equalizer along with a handful of presets (rock, pop, etc), there's an mp3 adjustment that seems to do something to open up the sound - it can make the recording sound more open and airy, a bass boost, and a few other settings. So if you like to tweak the sound, you can have lots of fun with these settings.

The only real limitations I've noticed with all the tone settings set "flat" are that it doesn't have as much bass as my home system (it has plenty of bass, just not as much as my home system), and it can't give you as much detail and separation of instruments as a good home system. I also find it lacks "punch" on many recordings. But the lack of "punch" I didn't really notice until I listened to an old live CD ("Waiting for Columbus") by the band "Little Feat" on my home system and I thought it sounded GREAT! So I ripped it to FLAC (lossless) format and put it on my IAudio7, anxious to listen to it at work. I plugged in at work and it was just plan missing the punch", the "excitement", "life", "realism" of my home system. Maybe if I hadn't listed to the CD first I'd have appreciated it better.

I was listening to Kim Wilson's "Tigerman" CD, and there's a song on it called "Reel Eleven Take One" (I'm pretty sure that's the track), and it starts right off with harmonica and other instruments. I was listening to it at work the other day and thought, "this is a weird recording. I absolutely cannot sort out the instruments in the first 20 seconds of this track". I listened to it a couple of times, and just couldn't identity the several instruments - it was just kind of a "wall of sound". I went home and listened to the CD on my home system and it was clear right away what instruments I was listening to. On that basis, I cannot agree with those who say the IAudio7 is "audiophile quality". It is very good on almost everything, but audiophile it is not. I don't think you're going to find portable audiophile quality equipment. If you're satisfied with pretty good sound for the money, then you should be happy with the IAudio7.

I would now give the iAudio7 a three or four star rating, but I can't edit the number of stars in my review for some reason so it will still show two stars when I would really give it four stars.

You can not do any better in terms of sound (Thats why we buy these things, right!) The ease of use can not be touched by anything else and of course it is drag-and-drop so you do not depend on i-tunes,
Windows Media Player etc.. I also want to mention the 5 band EQ and the sound inhance features because with them the sound gets even better. The only room for improvement I will mention is the over-sensitivity of the controls on the front of the player. This is true on my A6 and the two A7's I own. However, if you want the best sound around take a listen! I do not think you will be disappointed.

I have used several iAudio products in the past and I believe they are superior to most other MP3 players on the market. The I7 feels especially solidly built. I have to agree with the previous reviewer that the interface may not be as intuitive as e.g. the iPod's, but once you've gotten used to it you'll be happy you did get used to it since everything else about this player will leave the competition in the dust! Sound quality is exquisite! Especially if you pair this player with an aftermarket earphone like the 'Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro'. Yeah, right! you say.. This unit is even costlier than the player itself, but if you manage to make some sacrifices to come up with the dough to pair these units together you'll be so greatly rewarded that you will thank yourself a long time for making them! The unit supports several compression standards like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which should be used to compress your CD collection if you wish to experience the player's full potential. The radio reception is, like for most units like this, nothing to write home about - you need to be in close range of your preferred FM station's antenna to receive an acceptable signal for the unit's FM receiver. To sum my review up - if it's sound quality you're shopping for and not an excessively promoted to-brag-about brand - look nowhere else!

Very happy with the interface. Some may find it hard to get used to because the controls are very sensitive but I like the quick response. Audio quality is excellent. The one problem with the iAudio is the total lack of playlists. Very, very hard to work around. Cowon's 'folder' solution is no serious competition for the iPod and other players that incorporate playlists. I'm no fan of iTunes but I do love the way a desktop app like winamp - so simple to use - can manage my iPod playlists and virtually all of my music.