That would get you 90% of the way home, from your list. Refurbs are cheap enough now where you could simply buy one to try first. Capacity is your biggest issue though. None of the current crop of MP3 players that I am aware of have such 'external hard drive'-like capacities that you require unfortunately
. The closest you could get would be a Sansa w/ multiple 64GB microSD cards if you could pare down your library a little. Archos & Cowon are both buggy in their own respective ways. IMO they try to do too much, complicating matters.
Hello there!
After five years, the battery in my Cowon iAudio X5 60GB died, so I'm now looking for a replacement. The X5 has been a wonderful player, so my first option was to replace the dead battery. I ordered a replacement from Amazon, but the replacement battery only lasted about three months and now is actually worse than the original one. ![]()
The next options I found were the Cowon iAudio X7 160GB and the Archos 48 500GB. Both of these have very mixed reviews, leaning towards negative.
I decided to take a chance on the Archos 48 because it's a lot cheaper than the X7 and the hard drive is much bigger, but I've had numerous problems with it.
The Archos 48 is extremely slow and unresponsive, with the file manager taking over a minute to open to browse my music. The battery seems to be bad, as it takes many hours to charge, never goes above 94% and loses charge very quickly. Finally, the 2.0.45 firmware upgrade I did this morning seems to have bricked the unit, as it now gets stuck on the boot screen and just shuts down after a few minutes.
These seem to be very common problems with this player.
Anyway, I'm sending the Archos back for a refund, so that option is out. I'm not really sure I should take my chance on the Cowon X7, because the reviews seem to be even worse than the Archos 48.
So, I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a decent upgrade path from my old Cowon iAudio X5?
I do have some requirements for what I need in my new MP3 player. In summary, I just want something that can match the Cowon X5, but I'm having great difficulty finding anything aside the two I've mentioned above.
To be specific with regards to my requirements:
First, the player must support at least MP3, OGG and FLAC files. 20% of my music is Ogg Vorbis and many of my newer rips are FLAC.
It must support M3U playlists.
It must have at least 60GB capacity, but more is better. My music collection is currently around 250GB.
It must run for at least 10 hours on a single charge. Again, more is better.
It must support ability to browse and select music by folders and files.
I only use Linux at home, so it must be possible to transfer music on to the device using Linux. USB Mass Storage support is preferable, but anything that is known to work well on Linux by whatever means is fine.
Voice recording via built-in microphone is preferable, but not essential.
Cross-fade support between songs is preferable, but not essential (Rockbox on the X5 supported this).
Smaller dimensions and higher portability are preferable to larger screen size.
I don't care about video, games, applications, Internet, phone, camera, multi-touch or anything else besides music.
I'm open to hacking and custom firmware if this is a known workaround to get what I want with any particular player. I ran Rockbox on my X5 for most of its life.
Well, that should do it. Hopefully someone can recommend an upgrade path from my X5; it will be much appreciated!
With Kind Regards,
Martin

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