Cowon iAudio S9 Comments

I got one of these and WOW it sounds good (using Shure SE530s). Drag & dropped Iron Man without converting and it looks and sounds great.

but just a bit disappointed at the lack of gapless playback from all my dance music compilations with continuous, mixed tracks - my 3.5 year old sony could do it and so could my iPod Classic. This Cowon is an audiophile's dream for sound so why can't they have firmware which can play gapless? apparently none of Cowon's players support it.

(and no review I've seen has mentioned this lack!)

but seriously compared to the iPod Touch 2G i tried in the store, the sound quality is light years ahead of apple. I've got a WinMo phone for browsing and emailing, Apple can keep their WiFi, Appstore and games lol

(that said - if they spent as much on their audio quality as they do on marketing, the Touch would be the one for me...but they don't so it's not!)

You have also failed to mention that it does not include any sort of expansion slot, which yet again kills the deal for me.

If I'm paying this kind of money for an mp3 player i would like to be able to add more memory to it, and Cowon have tried to be business smart here by omission of the slot so as to not cannibilise sales of D2.

Sony NWZ-S639F 16gb at half the price still makes the most sense I feel if you just want music.

I managed to get my hands on one of these about a week before Christmas and I am very, very pleased. The screen is absolutely fantastic and even the press shots don't really do it justice. And although it struggles with some .wmv files (although I found that all the ones I tried from BBC iPlayer worked when synced from WMP) it actually plays a huge range of xvid files including resolutions above that Cowon 'recommends' although to get the most out of it you really have to convert, but it's nice not to have to!

The only slight niggle I have is the battery meter is rather inaccurate, it will run down to about 20% in a couple of hours, then remain that way for 5 or 6 hours before going to 0% and remain on for another hour or so before turning itself off due to low battery.

I Have just Traded my COWON iAUDIO X5L Mp3 In for a COWON S9 And I am waiting Delivery,
The sound on X5L Was BRILLIANT!!I Hope (in comparison) I am not Dissapointed...David