iRiver to iPod: Upgrade, downgrade, or the same?

[mkozlows]

I've got an iRiver H320 that I hated until Rockbox made it great.  I don't care for the capacity, though, and have been considering replacing it with an 80GB iPod; but I want to make sure that I don't make my life worse by trying to make it better.

So I understand that the iPod port is less mature, but -- apart from the battery life, which I'm aware of -- how would this play out in practice?  Would it skip (I only play FLAC)?  Would menu navigation be slower?  Would it crash?  Weird bugs?  Something else?

Or would it be basically the same experience, just with more storage, a bigger screen, and a sleeker physical appearance?

[mnhnhyouh]

I moved from a H320 to a 60Gb 5G iPod for capacity reasons. I now like the wheel, and dont miss any of the extras (FM, Recording, USBOTG).  

Using the wheel is different, and the 80Gb 5.5 port is less mature than the 5G port, and seems to be having some problems with freezing. There is a thread on it around here.

But Rockbox looks about the same, though the iPod screen is bigger.

h

[pondlife]

I have only a little experience with Rockbox on the iPods 5G (from a couple of months ago), but based on that I much prefer it on my H340.  On the iPod, the UI seemed a lot less responsive.  Also the PortalPlayer targets still have fairly poor battery life - ask around, but I suspect yoiu're talking about 6 hours rather than the 16 hours that the H340 gives me.

Now if only I could find a new suitable 80GB drive for a reasonable price (as opposed to £400 on eBay for a "refurbished" one)..

pondlife

[bascule]

I'm surprised EvilG hasn't jumped in here... so I'll do it for him

My personal opinion is that the Gigabeat is the best *sleek* option for RB at the moment.

I've used RB on an H120, Nano and Gigabeat and it's the GB I'm staying with for the fantastic screen, powerful processor and all-round good performance.

The H120 is excellent, but it's niche is the recording/tapers market which I don't move in and I personally think it's quite ugly.
The Nano is good for it's size, but I never really got on with the scrollwheel. That's a personal thing, however.
For me, the Gigabeat is the natural sucessor to the irivers in terms of button layout and functionality etc.

[frause]

Downgrade.
I bought an ipod 5.5G 30GB as an replacement and upgrade to my somewhat broken and disk capacity challenged ihp100.
I used the ipod for a couple of months, then I repaired my iriver and put in a 60 GB disk and a new battery in it.
I sold the ipod to a coworker for about what i gave for the used 60 GB disk and the new battery. (I believe he sold it for almost the double when he got bored with it, though.)
I never became friend with the wheel. This might just have been the state rockbox was in at the time, I never really compared in the OF.
The ipod also couldn't handle my low impedance earphones. They say you shouldn't go lower than 32 Ohm.
I don't have experience with the H300 series, but I imagine it's not *that* different from the H100 series.
I later bought an iaudio M5 as a replacement for if (when) the ihp100 broke down completey  but that hasn't happened yet, even though I use it almost every day.

[lights0ut]

I'm surprised EvilG hasn't jumped in here... so I'll do it for him

My personal opinion is that the Gigabeat is the best *sleek* option for RB at the moment.

I've used RB on an H120, Nano and Gigabeat and it's the GB I'm staying with for the fantastic screen, powerful processor and all-round good performance.

The H120 is excellent, but it's niche is the recording/tapers market which I don't move in and I personally think it's quite ugly.
The Nano is good for it's size, but I never really got on with the scrollwheel. That's a personal thing, however.
For me, the Gigabeat is the natural sucessor to the irivers in terms of button layout and functionality etc.

I've owned a iPod video, but I've never owned an H300 so I can't really help mkozlows out

Comparing the iPod and  the GB though, no contest GB hands down just about everything is better with it. The only things the GB lacks are recording, FM, and optical I/O (correct me....). I suppose you could through capacity in there too if you're wanting an 80GB, but I've found 40GB enough to keep me happy, you might get lucky and nab a 60GB though.

[soap]

I am in love with the scroll wheel.
I always hated the buttons on the H300, and find the Gigabeat "X" interface worse.
That being said...
Every other metric weighs in against the iPods, so if you like your H320's buttons, I'd either buy a 40GB single-platter drive, or buy a new-used back-plate and upgrade to a dual-platter hard drive.  
OR:
Buy the backplate off of a H340, and put a single platter HD in there AND a big honkin' battery.  Can't beat that player with a stick.

99% of the time I have one of my iPods on my person, with my other players at home.

EDIT:typo
EDIT2:new idea

[gnu]

I had a nano and I loved the scrollwheel.
Then I fried it (d'oh!) and bought a iaudio X5 30gb and I'm totally happy with it. The only thing it lacks is the scroll wheel, in my opinion.

[Llorean]

I personally prefer buttons to a scrollwheel, you have a much greater degree of precision because you have distinct increments of movement. They also have the advantage that you can continually scroll without continuous hand motion just by simply holding down the button, rather than having to continually move your thumb/finger.

Anyway, the iPods have two main problems to expect: The battery life, as you know, and the fact that their processors are slower. This mostly manifests as the equalizer causing music to skip, and peakmeters on your WPS being a bad idea.

The iPods also don't have their own USB mode, but this is transparent enough that many new users have to have it explained to them that we're using Apple's emergency disk mode, not any USB mode of our own, it doesn't get in the way for many users.

In the specific case of the 80gb iPod, there's some new code for using the disk that may not be 100% reliable yet (there have been some reports of freezes).

[mkozlows]

Anyway, the iPods have two main problems to expect: The battery life, as you know, and the fact that their processors are slower. This mostly manifests as the equalizer causing music to skip, and peakmeters on your WPS being a bad idea.

I don't care about the peakmeters, and don't use equalizers -- but I do use crossfeed, which I suspect has similar codepaths.  Is FLAC with crossfeed going to skip on the iPod (I have no sense for whether FLAC is a particular intensive codec)?  Because that would pretty much kill the usefulness for me.

[GodEater]

I've got crossfeed turned on on my 80GB - seems ok to me - but I'm not a big FLAC user - I stick to MP3. From what I'm told though, FLAC is one of our better optimised codecs, so you're probably in luck.

[Raineer]

Anyway, the iPods have two main problems to expect: The battery life, as you know, and the fact that their processors are slower. This mostly manifests as the equalizer causing music to skip, and peakmeters on your WPS being a bad idea.

I don't care about the peakmeters, and don't use equalizers -- but I do use crossfeed, which I suspect has similar codepaths.  Is FLAC with crossfeed going to skip on the iPod (I have no sense for whether FLAC is a particular intensive codec)?  Because that would pretty much kill the usefulness for me.

I use crossfeed and play lots of FLAC on my 5G 30g.  It does not skip for me, but I do not use the EQ's or peakmeters either so I can't speak to that.

[ItsMyLife]

I've been using my 5.5g 80gb iPod with lots of Flac w/ the graphic equalizer and have noticed no skipping or anything in the music.

[Krellion]

On my 5.0g 30GB iPod, I've noticed that when playing FLAC files that the processor stays at 30MHz, never boosting to 75MHz (that I saw).

FLAC is purposely encoded so that it takes little power to decode.  See here.

Of course, any battery savings you get from the non-boosting of the processor is offset by how much more often the hard drive has to be spun up due to the size of FLAC files.

[psycho_maniac]

I guess us ipod users will have to wait for the next feature freeze. The reason I got the 80gb ipod was because of the disk capacity  and the color screen. Its somewhat of an upgrade but for ease of use (bugs) and battery life I would consider that a downgrade.