Alright, since it was announced, I've been pretty hyped up about the iRiver iHP-120. It looked cool, came with this awesome remote that even had a graphical LCD in it, AND it even played OGG. How sweet could it get, right?

Well, I just got one the other day.

I'm suddenly nowhere near as hyped.
Not only because of the fact that I have some piece of shite motherboard who's USB 2.0 ports do not work, but I have my complaints about the player, too.

1st of all, it takes a damn long time to start up...I mean, sure 30 seconds (with the drive less than half full and DB turned on) isn't all *that* long, but when the player doesn't even start playing after that, and I've been so spoiled with my YP-700's impeccable 7 seconds, it feels like ages.

2nd of all, OGGs!!! It plays them fine, but it doesn't load them into the DB. What gives? So, while for all my mp3s I get this nice broken down easy way to find my files, I have to into folders and find the specific files if I wanna listen to an ogg? What a load of...

3rd...that remote that was so awesome... Who in the hell designed what would go on that? You get a display of the folder and the title of the song. What happened to the artist? I don't want to see half my songs saying ROOT or the album name or something, I wanna know who sings the damn thing.

I have some other issues with it, too...but they're minor and I'm gonna have minor issues with any player

Now, down to the point... I'm waiting to hear back from iRiver (as well as Asus who made that shitty motherboard); but I'm thinking I may very well return this machine. It was definitely not all that I had expected. I'm wondering now though, what about the Karma? I mean, it has similar features (save the recording and the FM tuner, both of which are great additions but not thigns I'll use much) and at a cheaper price (because of the lack of those things, and a remote, and a case). Is it any better with these things?
Does it have 'full' support for Oggs? Not some half-assed "ooh look, it can play Ogg Vorbis!" thing, but full support?
Does it take 30 seconds to start up, or is it as fast starting up as I keep hearing it claimed to be when in use?
What else could you say to sway my decision in either way?

Thanks for all your help, guys.

The Karma has full support for Vorbis files. Ogg is just the container Vorbis is in. The startup time with the Karma is about 5-7 seconds. The Karma also plays FLAC files which are lossless.

agreed
That is the db loading, you can turn it off.



use ihptool
http://www.gacel.de/ihptool.htm

I've had no problems whatsoever with my iHP-120 and it completely does everything the way I'd want/expect it to be.
I've never felt the urge to try the database and the only file in my ROOT folder is that stupid iRiver song; then again I don't get my songs from Kazaa and value an album as a piece of art...

Changfest: Thank you for that wonderful bout of correcting me on a little 'technicality' :-p I just like saying "ogg" more than "vorbis"...I'm wierd like that. But I do like that it only takes 5-7 seconds to start up

Grombulk: I know turning the DB off supposedly makes the startup faster, but I just timed startup with DB to 30 seconds, and without to 21...turning off DB doesn't really help me much as far as startup time goes.

Thank you for that iHPtool link though, I'll have to give that a shot when I get home....after spending a few hours trying to make my goddamn motherboard let me use it's USB 2.0 ports.

dev0: Though I do appreciate the gesture of having to point out how much better you seem to think you are than myself; I, too, value an album - especially in hard-copy form, as a piece of art. I buy as much music as my wallet allows and that I can find that is actually worth the money. I download for the little one-hit-wonders of the occasional top-20 hit that catches my eye; or to give a new artist I've never heard of a shot. However, I title all of my songs Artist - Title.ogg inside the folder Artist - Album. A little bit redundant, I know.
But, when using the iRiver in folder browse mode, I have to look down for the artist, wait for each one to scroll across to the album I want, then go file by file to try and find the song that I want, each time waiting for it to scroll across for the title. Granted, I could organize my files better and all that jazz, but I'd really like it if I don't have to spend hours reorganizing thigns just so that an mp3 player that I paid $600 (CDN incl. taxes) for to be able to do it's job properly. See what I'm saying?

Thank you for all the comments thus far, though.

if that programm would only support ape2 tags

I just ordered the IHP-120 online from Best Buy for $349(US). The good thing about ordering from Best Buy online... if it sucks, I can take it right back to the store. I expect it will not suck.

I'm actually amazed to see that it has optical & digtal line in/line out. Hope my headphones are loud enough with that 20mw+20mw output. I was thinking about some Grado 60's.

Yes, it has full support for Ogg Vorbis files. Karma entirely relies on the meta-data (tags) to manage your music, therefore it understands the tags. Startup time is about 6 seconds, regardless of the number of stored files.

Anything else? Yes: Sound quality is awesome. Access to any file is very fast. After selecting, it starts playing immediately. Karma can play gapless, i.e. if you've ogg vorbis or mp3 files of a live album, there's no pause between tracks. Navigation is very easy, the Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery lasts about 13-15 hours, it has a 5-Band parametric equalizer, ...

I just got the IHP-140. I don't see a problem with the startup time. I upgraded the firmware before I even used it, so maybe that helped. Startup time is about 9 seconds.

I didn't used the database until last night. Wow. I love the database feature. Makes navigation much easier. It didn't slow down the startup time at all as far as I can tell. I only have about 5GB on it right now, so we'll see if that changes when it's full.

I love this device. It has a couple of minor annoyances, but overall, it's amazingly good. Amazon has $50 rebates on the 140 right now.