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November 23, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving
Posted by Me at 04:50 PM | Comments (1)
November 21, 2006
Vosonic VP-8360
I finally received my Vosonic VP-8360 on Friday. After the sale of my VP 3620 , I decided I wanted to still have alot of portable storage as a PMP and a portable memory card reader. With the funds from a few eBay sales and a few weeks of waiting for stock at MyDigitalDiscount.com my desire was finally fulfilled.
I'm sure I'll hear slack because I have the Cowen A2, yet the VP-8360 fills a different need. Don't get me wrong everything about the Cowen A2 is about quality, yet I find the 30GB space limiting for some uses.
As of late I need to move very large files (VMware images and DVD ISO images) to/from locations.
THe cut/paste to/from card reader is real dam handy too!
I like the VP-8360, and even more that it has Tetris included, but as far as Media playing quality, it's only about 75% (if even) as good as the Cowen A2.
Music wise, the VP8360 is good. With a 120GB drive and the potential for 200GB this is a portable jukebox dream.
Video wise, it just does not have quite the same smoothness/play quality the Cowen has. I find the Video to be a lil jerky, which could be due to the lower frame rate. (25FPS for 720x480), Supposedly 640x480 yields 30FPS, I've yet to try.
The card reader cut/copy/paste is just dandy and I love this thing for that.
FM radio is barely usable, yet I find many of these portable units with FM barely usable (cowen A2 being amoung the best so far).
I have not recorded anything yet, but it has the feature to do so.
I like the Dock also.
My current configuration consists of the dock along with the Cowen A2 connected to a linksys NSLU2. This proivdes USB charging and network loading when I turn the units on.
My only recommendation for this unit would be an on te go photographer.
Media quality is OK, yet utility wise this unit is great.
It's very easy to download/upload and view images
PROS
Great Utility Hard Drive, Card Reader, Photo Viewer, Media Bank.
Supposedly good battery life (I've yet to test)
Decent Music Quality, Decent eq and a 3d surround enhancer
TETRIS!
CONS
VIdeo quality is medicore, adequete in a boring situation
Music quality is adequete, buit it also makes me miss the cowen.
FM mediocore at best.
Score
I would rate it a 3 out of 5.
It's useful, but not the first choice if I'm into listening or watching.
Posted by Me at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2006
Mega CD Haul
I've been itching for some new music lately.
Especially since the aquisition of the Cowen A2 and the Vosonic VP-8360 (more to come on that later)
LaserCD.Com Haul
Angra - Aurora Consurgens
A.C.T - Silence
Outworld - Outworld
Zappa, Frank - Trance-Fusion
Silent Voices - Infernal
Silent Voices - Building Up The Apathy
Space Odyssey - The Astral Episode
G3 - Live In New York (2 DVD) (This is actually a bootleg from a show I Saw. The Bass player for Petrucci was awesome.)
Counter-World Experience - Fraktal
Xandria - India
Xandria - Kill The Sun
Xandria - Eversleeping (CD-Single)
Code Of Perfection - Last Exit For The Lost
NEH Records
Tony MacAlpine - Violent Machine
Rain - Stronger
Shiva - Shiva
Shiva - Desert Dreams
Shiva - The Curse Of The Gift
Evergrace - Evergrace
Winterborn - Cold Reality
Shakra - Fall Limited Edition
Joop Wolters - Speed Traffic And Guitar Accidents
I probably would have purchase more from NEH, only thier dam online shopping cart system seems tonclear all the carts out on the hour. As I was browsing looking for new music It kept clearing out my cart. What a poor design!
Atter a few clearings, I just put in the few I could remember and got out of there LOL!
I also found a bunch of new Ambient Rock / Enigmaish CD's on Amazon.. But Ihad to wait for those considering you can only absorb so many CD's at a time.
At least with Dual Core, I can rip -n store them in one sitting!
Posted by Me at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2006
Vosonic VP-3620
I figured it worthwhile to mention the
Vosonic VP-3620 as there are not many reviews on it.
My initial reason for purchase was for a very portable hard drive, capable of long battery times along with the ability to play music. (in particular in the car). This device did all and more.
It's touted as a photobank, yet it's also designed to play music and/or transfer data to/from various memory cards.
Utilizing a Toshiba 1.8" hard drive, this puppy is great on batteries because it loads the songs into a memory buffer, then spins down the hard drive. In most respects this is great as you can get 10-12 hours of music out of a charge.. In some respects this is bad as it prohibits gapless playback.
FWIW, it's small and light enough to deal with. Although a bit thick due to the memory cards.
One thing those who know about me is I dislike apple products due to the closed tight controls. Frankly the products themselves are great, but I don't appreciate the loss of control. Therefore I always go for these off brand products that can work as a basic USB mass storage drive.
(I still have the original NEO-25! the first MP3 hard drive player).
So with this unit, I was able to load up the drive, hang out with Tricia, and pop some music onto her music cards until she was tired of them. With a few button presses you can cut and paste between compact flash, SD and/or hard drive in any combination.
When hooked up to a laptop, it also functioned like an external hard drive/card reader.
it has an FM radio, yet it really was not worth much. Most of the foreign devices that have FM do not work well here. (although the cowon is the best I've dealt with so far).
The vosonic VP-3620 can also function as a voice or music recorder turning the audio into MP3's for later review.
I liked the unit, but after some careful consideration I sold it to my friend PhotoJoe. He could get more out of it with his outside photo excursions.
However, with my recent need for mass movement of data, I may end up getting a Vosonic VP-8360 as it will enable me to pop in a 120GB drive.
(wondering what I'm moving around? I carry vmware system disks to/from work so my development environment is never further them my book bag).
Sound on the VP-6320 was OK. Not great not bad, quite acceptable for the daily commute.
I would still have to say, the cowon A2 with all it's enhancements is one of the best players I've heard so far.
It simply makes me want to listen or watch more then any other device has done before.
I'm sad to see the VP-3620 go as I'll miss the mass storage and card readers, however my eye is on the horizion. LOL!!!
Posted by Me at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
Life with The Cowon A2
I ended up purchasing a Cowon A2 after checking out Packgrogs.
http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/cowon/a2/
The points that interested me were the added enhancers for music and the wide screen.
Although the hard drive is a mere 30GB (by today's standards) this thing packs a wolup on sound.
After receiving, testing and hearing the enhancements I was sold that this was a solid purchase.
Navigation is via folder based organization with a joystick.
It's fairly simple, yet the joystick can be cumbersome when you finally select a fil to play.
Once you get an mp3 up and running adding in BBE, MP3 EnHance, MachBass and 3D sourround this thing sounds so good you do not want to take your headphones off.
I found myself rapidly loading my favorite tunes and listening over and over.
Life with this unit has been pretty good. It's farily reasonble in size and with the added remote, allows me to leave it in my bag while on the subway.
For video, the cowon A2 excels. With it's wide screen 480x272 display and auto sizing almost anything looks good.
I've found AVI/XVID files made with autogk come out the best.
Yet be prepared to spend 4 hours encoding.
Heck, with that time frame, I may have to upgrade my video laptop!
Overall I give this unit a 4.5 out of 5.
Pros: Size, Battery usage, Screen, mp3 sound (OMG!), remote.
Cons: AV/jack door is a PAIN! USB charging has weird way of usage. USB usage still uses some battery power.
(wish it had a dock). Wish it had a larger hard drive. 30GB is good, but 60 is better LOL!
Posted by Me at 07:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Just call me Inspector Gadget
Perhaps I should choose a new nickname. Perhaps "Inspector Gadget".
In case you've been wondering where I've been or what I've been up to.. I've been gadgetizing myspace. LOL.
Well actually playing with all sorts of new gadgets.
Lots to blog about with the cool things I've been playing with. Stay tuned!
Reviews to come.
A series of PMP (Personal Media Players)
Noise Cancelling Headphones (A must fo the subways)
USB Speakers (The search for the best within budget)
The CX210X Laptop (I got a new one for my video ripping)
HTMP (home theater media players, the new rage, hard drive or network storage media players for video and music)
Posted by Me at 07:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack