Cowon iAudio 7 Review (Ubuntu perspective)
December 1, 2007
A little backstory
Last week, my 256 MB Sandisk player died. I really liked that player. It was ugly, and it didn’t support free formats, but it was functional and small.
So I did quite a bit of online research on a replacement player. There were a few things I was looking for in a new player:
- Relatively cheap (nothing over US$200)
- FM radio
- Not terrible looking
- Long battery life
- Linux compatibility
- Support for open formats
My search brought me eventually to the Cowon iAudio 7, which fit all of those criteria. It was quite a bit pricier than my cheap Sandisk had been, but it was still under $200; it had an FM radio, and most reviews said the reception was pretty good; it didn’t look too bad in the pictures; its battery life is supposedly 60 hours; the Cowon website prominently includes Linux compatibility in the description (Linux kernel v2.2 or higher (data transfer only); and it supports both Ogg and FLAC.
First Impressions
Well, it arrived yesterday, and immediately my wife remarked that it was “cute” and I agreed with her. Despite most online reviews complaining about the iAudio 7 being too thick, I was surprised at how small it is. Yes, it isn’t as slim as the iPod Nano, but it isn’t a giant monster either. It’s more like a box than a flap, that’s all—a very small box, though. I was a little disappointed to see that the packaging did not list Linux under the system requirements’ operating systems (only Windows and Mac), considering Cowon makes no bones about mentioning Linux support on its website.
The Quick Guide that comes with it is quick indeed! It basically tells you nothing. It has pictures of the included parts (headphones, USB cord, player) and labels all the buttons (menu, play/stop, hold switch, etc.), and that’s about it. There is no manual explaining how to use the iAudio 7, and I couldn’t find one at the Cowon website either. Most of the reviews online (CNET, anythingbutipod, Amazon, NewEgg) gave me the impression that the controls were not intuitive but also not too hard to pick up. As a matter of fact, the controls make almost no sense. When you’re in the menus, Play/Pause goes forward (that makes sense) and Record goes back (that makes no sense). I accidentally enter Record mode while I was browsing the menus and started recording, but I didn’t know how to stop. I paused, of course, but there was no way for me to stop—I just pressed a bunch of buttons in the hopes of something working. One of the buttons got me back to playing music, but I had no assurance that I wasn’t simultaneously recording something at the same time. If someone can point me to a PDF manual (or even a website) explaining the iAudio 7 controls, I would be much appreciative.
Loading songs on to the iAudio 7 is easy. You plug it in, and it’s drag-and-drop. It has a bunch of top-level folders (I deleted the movie folder, as I’m pretty sure I won’t be watching movies on the one-inch screen) for text files, pictures, and music. I dragged about 4 GB of music into the MUSIC folder, and the transfer was fairly quick (USB 2.0, I assume). To test out the Ogg support, I redownloaded Mel’s Hey Girl album from Jamendo as Ogg instead of MP3. That worked out well. I’m slowly moving myself over to Ogg from MP3. It’s a nice free feeling.
I haven’t had a chance yet to test whether or not it lasts 60 hours, but I listened to it for about two hours and the battery meter hasn’t budged. I’ll update this review later with my iAudio 7 battery life experience. There is an annoying little bit with charging—you don’t know when it’s done unless you unplug the player. I’m assuming that once it runs out I can leave it in for about three or fours and it’ll charge. We’ll see. The only other minor bone I have to pick with the charging is the little flap that you open to get the USB cord in—it’s a little hard to open and doesn’t open very gracefully. If you have long fingernails (I don’t), it shouldn’t be a problem, though.
In terms of actual use (apart from the controls not making any sense), the playback is good. I’m no audiophile, but it sounds good to me, clearer than my Sandisk did using the same headphones. By the way, the headphones that come with the iAudio 7 are fine for normal people like me (not those who claim they can hear the difference between CD quality and 192 bitrate MP3). I prefer my own headphones, though, just for physical comfort.
The navigation is a bit annoying. When you try to press the Next button, if you don’t press it exactly the right way, the iAudio 7 decides you want to fast-forward instead of skip to the next song. It also took about three seconds to skip from one song to the next. That’s a long time to switch between songs. Granted, I had almost 4 GB of music together in one folder, but the player is a 4 GB player and should be designed to accommodate that kind of capacity. I upgraded the firmware in the player, and the three-second pause went away, but… A) the firmware upgrade was available as of September, so why didn’t they include it in the player I bought? Maybe it’s been sitting on the warehouse for almost three months. Who knows? B) There is absolutely no warning on the Cowon America website that the firmware upgrade will erase any music and preferences you have. The instructions just tell you to unzip the archive and copy it to the iAudio 7 and then restart the player.
One last note about the FM Radio: it sounds good (my Sandisk player had problems getting good reception for a couple of radio stations I listen to), but you don’t have the option to set your own presets, as far as I can tell. You can have the iAudio 7 scan the stations for the ones with the strongest signals, and then you’re stuck with those unless you manually tune without presets.
Summary Review
The Cowon iAudio 7 is a solid choice for those looking for a cute player that is definitely Linux compatible (no need for MTP plugins) and supports Ogg and FLAC music formats. The sound is good. The FM signal is strong. I definitely recommend a firmware upgrade the minute you open the thing (before you put any music on it), and if anyone knows how to make the controls make sense, please let me know! It has its kinks to be worked out, but maybe those will be taken care of in future firmware upgrades.
Read my follow-up review here
December 1, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Maybe somebody should make an MP3 (or should it be called OGG?) player for linux that has excellent design and stuff like that. It would be kinda awesome to have full Linux compatibility in a portable music player.
But, if somebody or some people design a Linux music player, they are going to have to make it cheap because of low demand from people; Linux users would be the most interested.
And I thought this would be worth a mention: those radio tuners for iPods are a rip off. $100 for something I can use to tune into the radio? Heck no. Now, if it were lower, like, in the $10-$20 range, I would be interested.
December 2, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Its not exactly hard to make a player Linux compatible, in fact, if manufacturers left the player relatively open, the community would do the rest of the work! What annoys me is the way that they lock them up, ahem *Creative* ahem *Apple*.
I mean why can’t they just leave them easily rockbox-able? If they explicitly stated that it voided your warranty doing so, they wouldn’t have to worry about it.
December 2, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Well, some people think the iAudio 7 does have excellent design. I just happen to disagree with them. There are many great things about it, however, including the sound, radio reception, battery life (if the claims are true), and Ogg and Linux support.
December 2, 2007 at 6:37 pm
slibuntu, the fact that Apple locks up their iPods maybe related to the fact of Hollywood wanting DRM.
December 2, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Well given they already lock up their music using fairplay, what is gained by locking down the players hardware and operating system? I don’t really see how that contributes to DRM.
December 3, 2007 at 12:13 am
Thanks for the nice review. My lil’ Apacer sorta died (well, I actually think I killed it. What happened was that a lot of music got moved over to .Trash instead of deleting, so I tried to reformat it - tried all types of filesystems gparted can do, but the player refuses to work. Feh!), so I’m shopping around for a new one - this one definitely got on my list.
December 19, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I followed your thought pattern on the Ubuntu forums, for I was looking to purchase an audio player too. And like you I have just purchased an iAudio7. I don’t know if you have tracked down any documentation yet, however I found this user manual: http://www.cowonglobal.com/download/file/manual/iAUDIO7/i7_ENG_manual_1.2EN.pdf
:cool:
December 19, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I read your addendum to this after submitting a comment and it seems someone has already posted you the link I’ve just given. Apologies.
:cool:
December 21, 2007 at 3:53 am
Nice review. I just wanted to say that the player *does* tell you when the battery is fully charged. I charged mine last night, and when I woke up, it said “battery full” or something to that effect. This may only be with newer firmware, though.
Current firmware is 1.15. It is dead simple to install it too (drag .bin file to root, power off and on), so it’s worth it. Warning: any music and customized settings will be lost, so my advice to anyone is to update when you first get the player.
December 25, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I just got one for Christmas and it doesn’t say “charging” when plugged in. Since it says “data transfer only” for Linux, does that mean it doesn’t know how to charge from a USB port being run by Linux (that’d be weird) or do I have 2 bad USB cables or does it only know to show the “charging” thing when plugged into Windows?
December 26, 2007 at 6:26 am
I also got one for christmas, it charges just fine under linux, it just doesn’t show that its charging.:)
December 29, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Nice review, I just found the manual but during the search I came across this. Just bought the 16 GB due to all the same reasons you had (minus the budget … I wanted something that could hold most my about 275 CDs). Very happy with it so far, although I’m still figuring it out. Thanks for the warnings about the firmware upgrade.
March 19, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I just bought an iaudio7 and plugged it into my linux box. It just says USB connected, but according to a previous message here it should be charging.
However, I don’t know how to do file transfers, because
I can’t mount its filesystem.
Program fdisk gives me the following output:
Disk /dev/sdb: 8120 MB, 8120172544 bytes
250 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15500 * 512 = 7936000 bytes
This doesn’t look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 50203 123849 570754815+ 72 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(357, 116, 40) logical=(50202, 79, 11)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(357, 32, 45) logical=(123848, 24, 51)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 ? 10884 135789 968014120 65 Novell Netware 386
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(288, 115, 43) logical=(10883, 48, 47)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(367, 114, 50) logical=(135788, 60, 42)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb3 ? 120638 245543 968014096 79 Unknown
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(366, 32, 33) logical=(120637, 128, 30)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(357, 32, 43) logical=(245542, 139, 39)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb4 ? 186173 186177 27749+ d Unknown
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(372, 97, 50) logical=(186172, 244, 25)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(0, 10, 0) logical=(186176, 139, 33)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Is it safe to just delete all those partitions and then create linux partitions or vfat partitions?
Ina
March 20, 2008 at 4:51 am
There should be only one partition, and I think it’s FAT32 or FAT16. As long as you install the firmware upgrade, it should still work even after the repartitioning.
March 20, 2008 at 11:57 am
So could I create one 8 GByte FAT32 partition under linux, then install the upgrade on it and it will all work? Or should I install the upgrade first under Windows, since I cannot access the disk under linux right now.
BTW how long does the first charge of the battery last?
The player has now been plugged in for 16 hours and all I get is “USB connected”.
Ina
March 20, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Oh well I ended up installing the firmware upgrade under
Windows, then repartitioned and reformatted the disk under linux and all is well now.
There were quite a few files on the player as it came out of the box including boring pictures. I can’t help feeling someone has played around with it and possibly partitioned/formatted it in a weird way before I got it.
Many thanks for help
Ina
April 7, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Changing the default sensitivity will fix your problem with “accidentally fast forwarding”. I had the same problem as well at first.
I’ve had no problems with it under Gentoo.
For the guy re-partitioning, back up it’s file-system, re-partition and you’ll be fine. I’m not sure what those partitions do, but removing them has had no adverse effects for me (including re-flashing it).