Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Advice for a mobile media newbie.

The Cowon S9 will probably edge out the iPad on battery life slighty for media. Rated 55hrs for continous music playback and 11 hours video. Its an average rating. The iPad is rated around 10hrs(full functionality). Its just an average could be a bit more of less what depending on your settings and what you are doing. I would estimate for continous audio playback the battery life would be quite good on the iPad (40-55 hrs) but it would be silly to just use the iPad as a music device since it lacks portability/mobility to an extent.

10 hrs give or take is what you are probably going to get out of the iPad if you actually use its features. The iPod touch is half that or less. Continous Wifi on the touch I believe is somewhere around 2-3 hours.

I think within a years time we're going to see tons of of devices that will do most of what you want but right now it's about finding that one device that does "most" of the things you want (this goes for phones too).

I just love how the ZuneHD works. I'm hoping MS gets smart and tweaks the OS for tablets ASAP. For such a successful company they continue to make poor decisions in marketing.

I agree with you about the Zune. It was the first one I tried out that I liked and if it came with a larger screen would have bought one.

I’m hopping that you are right an companies have newer models in the works. I know that Cowen does and I assume it’s going to be a very competitive marked so I imagine others will also.

I think for now I’m just going to buy a laptop since most of what I plan on doing right now will be here locally at work and although not as convenient to use it will be more functional.

I finally bought a car stereo: Pioneer AVH-P4200DVD In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver

Yes it’s expensive but it is totally awesome. First off it sounds great even with the factory speakers so as of right now I don’t think I’ll need to upgrade them. The thing I like the most about it is the interface, and it also looks cool. Even my aging eyes can use every function w/o putting on my reading glasses. The function buttons are pretty intuitive taking less than10 minutes to learn everything on the demo unit in the store. When the installer took me out to show me how to work it I zipped through all the functions w/o any help and even showed him a feature he didn’t know.

It accepts input from CD/DVD including -R -RW but not dual layer (no head units I saw did), USB, iPod, SD card and of course AM/FM. Some other units accepted +R +RW but since most of my DVD rips (95% +) are on dual layer which they didn’t accept I’ll just have to rip things to -RW to take with me. I does read several media formats including mp3 off both CD and DVD. No FLAC but it does do WMA but for driving purposes I thing 320 bit mp3 sounds just fine.

It has all the standard head unit features plus some nice extras. The screen is easily visible even in the brightest light (important for Phoenix). Only direct light reflecting off it dulls the image somewhat but the screen tilts to it can be angled out of the reflection. A track progress slider allows you to queue the song/video up to any point by dragging it with your finger, even giving a time hack so you know exactly where you are.

One drawback, all the units I was looking at suffered this problem, is that it only sorts tracks by mp3 tags when hooked up to an “i” device, however one review I read said it worked with a Cowen S9 I think. OTOH the screen is so large that navigating files/folders is actually still quite easy since it lists about 10 on the screen at a time. You can also scroll through them with a flick of a finger.

Another drawback, legal one, is that DVD players can project an image from the front dash while driving so a DVDs video won’t display unless the parking break is on. However, you can still play a DVD hearing the audio and having full control over playback functions. So concert DVDs will play fine even when driving.

Since I spend about a total of 1 hour in the car each day I drive to and from work I wanted something I could really enjoy and most importantly learning from my last head unit was easy to use while driving. So I figured it was worth the extra money since I plan to keep the new car I bought to go with it for at least 5 years.

P.S. leaning heavily toward a Cowen J3 as a portable media player.

iPhone. I want to buy one But I have no money! So work hard! Fighting!

I finally broke down and bought a “portable media player.” More precisely I got a Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate from Verizon. I do however, have a couple of questions.

Can anyone recommend a good pair of circumaural headphones for mobile use. Along the same lines does using separately powered Bluetooth headphones help save battery life on the player or not?

Also can anyone recommend any Android Apps that they find useful? I’ve been finding and downloading some free ones so far but am starting to run out the commonly recommended ones. So far I’ve got:

Google Sky Map - just because it’s cool
Barcode Scanner - pretty much the same reason
Google Goggles - more of the same
ASTRO - for file management
Last.fm - seems it would have more of a “world view” than Pandora but I might try it too.
c:geo - an awesome geocashing app that syncs with the geocashing.com database.
My Tracks - logs distance, speed, elevation for running cycling etc. . . .
GPS Test - to make sure the GPS was working (hadn’t known to enable it for external apps)

The default video and music players seem ok with just one glitch. So far everything I’ve tried mp3, wav, flac, mp4, avi, mkv, wma have worked. The glitch is that the only subtitled video I’ve tried, the mkv file didn’t show subtitles on the Galaxy S but works on the computer.

Also I was able to sync up the phone with Mediamonkey so music management is already seamless.

Got WiFi working for when I’m at home.

Any other suggestions or tips are welcome since this is not only my first mobile media device but also first cell phone.

I can’t comment on the audio quality yet since I don’t have headphones that this little thing can power but the PQ is amazing.

Are you going to be listening to headphones with this device in environments where outside noise could be a problem?

BTW congrats on a excellent purchase.

I already have a pair of noise canceling headphones for work when I’m flying but I don’t want to cart those around for normal use like when I’m sitting I the lobby of the doctors office. Mostly these headphones will be used for when I just need to kill time but not when I’m flying. I don’t listen to music when I’m running or shopping or anything like that, but at the same time I’d like a little more separation than open headphones like my Sennheiser’s provide. Also I just can’t stand to where earbuds or on-ear headphones.

And thanks. I held out for the Galaxy S since a friend got a Droid X and by comparison the PQ on the Galaxy S is night and day better.

Alessandro MS-1?

http://www.alessandro-products.com/headphones.html

P.S. They are on-ear.

Beyerdynamic DT880 (32 ohm)

http://www.headphone.com/headphones/beyerdynamic-dt-880---32-ohm.php