Hisoundaudio AMP3 Pro 2
Dec 30th, 2009 | By DavidAfter using the AMP3 as my main portable music player for a few months, I am very familiar with the interface. It was obvious that the user interface of the AMP3 is a step back in terms of the available technology available today. Turning on the player after loading new music takes a long time. Upwards of 5 minutes was common and this wait takes even longer if a microSD card is used. However, after the first bootup with new music, the AMP3 turns on in about 10 seconds.
One of the biggest problems with the interface was just playing music. At the ‘Now Playing’ screen, you have to hold the Play button to go to the menu to select music. However, doing this always goes back to the ‘Resource Manager’ page, regardless of how you accessed the music in the first place. It would be nice if it could do a ‘one up’ function where it brings you back to the folder/album page that you were on before. This forces the user to make more button presses than needed. The ‘Now Playing’ screen only displays the file name of the song, instead of the usual ‘Title/Artist’ that most other media players display.
Playing FLAC was also a problem. On internal storage, it works and plays perfectly fine, but with only 4GB available, someone who wishes to use FLAC would turn to larger external microSD cards. However, FLAC files frequently skips and lags on external storage. There are no problems with playing standard .mp3 files on external storage.
The battery life of the AMP3 is the most impressive feature. In a controlled test and playing an album of 12 .mp3 tracks at 192 kbps on repeat, the AMP3 lasted a little over 90 hours. That’s almost 4 days straight! This proved to be very convenient because the AMP3 only needed to be charged up once a week for light to medium use.
The portable amplifier section of the AMP3 was also a feature. It can take a line-level signal from a variety of sources such as DAC’s and CD players and amplify it to suit headphones. However, it is not very strong, and inefficient headphones turn out to be quiet. However, with low-sensitivity headphones such as the Koss Portapro or any of the Audio-Technica headphone line up, the AMP3 can power them to uncomfortably loud listening levels. Being one of the first media players that have this function, it is great for people who need a portable amplifier and also want a built-in music player all in one package.
Now that we have finished looking at the music player from a functionality perspective, let’s put on some headphones and have a listen.
i suppose they’ll improve the ui, and the looks is ok with me, but:
4+16 G is too low to expect us to use flac or wma at 320 kbps or mp3 at 320 kbps, with low storage (and the need to carry a lot of songs) you have to use low bit rates, and for that it is recomended to use he-aac -many codec comparisons show it-, (nokia suggest 48 kbps, i use 50-70 kbps).
i don’t want to reconvert my music (nor i have ‘master’ copies at high rate to do it) so to atract customers that already have their music in he-aac, the ones that have aac from itunes, etc., the player needs to support that. this is for PORTABLE uses (and even at home i don’t have a silent environment).
also, the player ir supposed to be forgiving of low bit rates (or the radio, or whatever is put on the line-in ).
for same, it’ll be good if they put a noise cancelling function.
I agree for the He-AAC. Also, I need WMA-PRO10 support for some 64 kbps files.
At high bitrates there’s little difference between codecs, but at 48 kbps He-AAC is the best.