iAUDIO is the brand name for a range of
portable media player
A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...
s produced by Korean
consumer electronics
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually r ...
and
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
corporation
Cowon Systems, Inc.
Products
The iAUDIO range consists of players based on both
flash memory
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...
and
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
s. Flash memory-based players are available with a capacity of up to 32 GB, while the hard drive-based models currently have capacities up to 160 GB. The iAUDIO 6 was the first player to use
Toshiba
, commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...
's new 4GB 0.85″ hard disk.
iAUDIO CW100 and CW100s
Cowon entered the digital audio player market in October 2000 with the introduction of their first
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
player, the iAUDIO CW100. In March 2001, the iAUDIO CW100s, a revised model, was released.
iAUDIO CW200 and CW250
In December 2001, Cowon released the iAUDIO CW200. The CW200 had audio playback capabilities, an FM radio and voice recording through a built-in microphone. This player also had a revised model, the iAUDIO CW250.
iAUDIO CW300
In December 2002, Cowon released the iAUDIO CW300. This model was essentially an iAUDIO CW200 using AA batteries as a power supply. Most reviewers also regarded it as having a higher build quality.
iAUDIO 4
The iAUDIO 4 was introduced December 2003. It came with most of the features that users of the CW200 and CW300 had been missing.
Upgrades from previous players came in the form of
UMS UMS may refer to:
* Ulnar–mammary syndrome
* Underwriting Management System, for automated Insurance Underwriting
* Unfederated Malay States
* Unified Messaging (System, Server, or Service)
* Uniform Mark Scheme
* United Mexican States (officia ...
standard, BBE sound processing effects, line in recording and a 124 colour backlight
LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
display. This player used the STMP 3420 chipset by
Sigmatel.
iAUDIO M3
The iAUDIO M3 was introduced March 2004. The player was Cowon's first DAP with an integrated 1.8-inch (46 mm) hard drive. The iAUDIO M3 is completely format-agnostic, enabling the industry-standard 'direct encoding.' WMA, OGG, ASF, WAV, and MP3 music files can be transferred between PCs and Macs using USB 2.0 or direct input. The device has a 20GB storage. When the M3 was released there was a lot of controversy about it, because the actual unit had no display. All but a few basic functions had to be controlled via the included remote control. Some people liked this concept, others were not so fond of it.
When the iAUDIO M3 was first released outside of Korea, there was a quality issue with the player's remote control. There was a widespread "fading" issue, in which the text of the remote slowly disappeared. This issue was rectified by the rapid recall of all faulty remotes and free replacements.
iAUDIO U2
The iAUDIO U2 was introduced in July 2004. It was also Cowon's first player to feature a navigational joystick instead of the 2 rockers found on most previous releases. The U2 used the STMP 3520 chipset by
Sigmatel. It comes in the colours of Ruby Red (256MB of memory), Ocean Blue (512MB of memory), and Black (2GB of memory).
The iAudio U2 has rounded corners and delicately woven silver ring ringing the five-way navigational button. The U2 is smaller and lighter than the iAudio 4, measuring at 2.9x1.0x0.7 inches and weighing 1.2 ounces, and features a 128x64-pixel display.
The U2's built-in lithium-polymer battery lasted 15 hours. The USB 2.0 transfer rate is at 1.86MB per second.
iAUDIO G3 and G2
The iAUDIO G3 was introduced November 2004. The internal hardware was very similar to that of the iAUDIO U2. Both players used the same
Sigmatel chipset. The only difference between the two players was that the G3 was powered by an AA battery, allowing a playing time of up to 50 hours.
The iAUDIO G2 was a cheaper version of the G3 which was introduced in the spring of 2005. It lacked some of the main features of the G3: no FM radio, the interface was only
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...
1.1 (compared to
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...
2.0 on the G3), and the playback time with a single AA battery was down to 40 hours.
iAUDIO 5
The iAUDIO 5 was introduced in November 2004. It was the successor to the popular iAUDIO 4 series and was powered by the same
Sigmatel chipset that were used in the iAUDIO U2 and G3. The iAUDIO 5 was relatively similar to the aforementioned players. What set it apart from other players was the fact that it had 1000 different backlight colour combinations. It was powered by an AAA battery which allowed for a maximum playback time of up to 20 hours.The device's colour is determined by the memory size; the 256MB model has red accents, the 512MB model has blue accents, and the 1GB and 2GB units have black accents.
It has a size of 3 by 1.4 by 0.7 inches and weighs around 1 ounce.
iAUDIO X5
The iAUDIO X5 was released in April 2005.
The X5 uses much of the same hardware as the M3, and as such has much of the same features and capabilities. It has almost identical features to the
iriver H300 Series. The X5 includes a color screen on the unit.
As with the M3, there is an "L" version which is 4 mm thicker and has a longer battery life. Unlike the M3, the X5 comes in 20, 30, and 60 GB variants. It is likely that there will be no 60 GB X5L, as the 60 GB X5 itself is the thickness of the 20 and 30 GB X5L due to the increased size of the hard drive. The 20, 30, and 60 GB capacities offer a rated battery life of 14 hours for audio playback with a 950 mAh battery. The 20 and 30 GB X5L models specify a rated playback time of 35 hours with a 2250 mAh battery. Video battery life is unspecified. In addition to the "L" versions, the X5 also comes in a "V" variation, which lacks the FM radio.
Cowon announced in May 2007 that the X5 series had been discontinued. Its successor, the X7 series, was slated to be released at some point in the summer of 2007, but was delayed until October 2010.
iAUDIO M5
The iAUDIO M5 is basically a simplified version of the X5. It lacks an FM Radio, a colour screen (it has a greyscale screen instead), and
USB-OTG
USB On-The-Go (USB OTG or just OTG) is a specification first used in late 2001 that allows USB devices, such as tablets or smartphones, to act as a host, allowing other USB devices, such as USB flash drives, digital cameras, mouse or keyboar ...
functionality to save production costs. Its casing is a silver color instead of the black X5. There's also an "L" version available, which features enhanced battery life. The "L" version of the player is a little thicker and heavier though and costs slightly more.
iAUDIO F1
Introduced in July 2005, the iAUDIO F1 can be described as an iAUDIO U2 with an interesting design, a colour
OLED
An organic light-emitting diode (OLED or organic LED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light i ...
display, and higher power output (32 mW vs. 20 mW for the U2).
The F1 played
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...
,
WMA,
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...
,
ASF
ASF may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a drama festival
* ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', a U.S.-based English-language science fiction magazine containing SF stories
Science and technology
Biological
* A ...
and
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
files and could tune to the radio, as well as record from the radio. It could also record directly from sources or record using a built in microphone.
It came in 256 MB/512 MB/1 GB sizes of Flash memory.
iAUDIO U3
Introduced in October 2005, the iAUDIO U3 was the successor to the iAUDIO U2. The main difference between the two players was that the U3 featured a color screen (260,000 colors, 160×128 resolution) which allowed playback of
MPEG4
MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related tec ...
videos encoded in
XviD
Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi mas ...
, as well as picture display. Like the iAUDIO X5, the U3 only played video files at up to 15 frame/s with a resolution of 160x128. Most videos must therefore be converted to be played back on the U3 using the provided software from Cowon. The player can also display
JPEG
JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...
and
TXT files. The support for audio files was also enhanced from previous models: the U3 was the world's first Flash-based player that was able to play
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
files (but only from compression rate 0 to 2 with the initial Firmware v1.11. It now supports up to Q8 with V1.13). Another new feature was the U3's powerful sound output of 30
mW per channel (at 16
ohm
Ohm (symbol Ω) is a unit of electrical resistance named after Georg Ohm.
Ohm or OHM may also refer to:
People
* Georg Ohm (1789–1854), German physicist and namesake of the term ''ohm''
* Germán Ohm (born 1936), Mexican boxer
* Jörg Ohm (b ...
, achieved by utilizing the new Telechip TCC770 audio chipset and Cirrus Logic CS42L51 Codec). Like the U2 the U3 had a built-in
lithium polymer cell
A lithium polymer battery, or more correctly lithium-ion polymer battery (abbreviated as LiPo, LIP, Li-poly, lithium-poly and others), is a rechargeable battery of lithium-ion technology using a polymer electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyt ...
for a playback time of up to 20 hours. As with all iAUDIO devices, there was no need for the use of software, since the U3 was a
UMS device (though additional software was required to take advantage of some features, such as converting video to the right format to be played back on the player).
With the firmware version 1.20 Cowon added
ID3
ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself.
There are two ...
browsing and DRM capabilities to the U3. This made the U3 the first iAUDIO player that allowed the user to browse its contents by the contents of ID3 tags embedded in the files.
Features:
* 512 MB/1 GB/2 GB/4 GB of
flash memory
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...
* 260,000 color
TFT LCD
A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in cont ...
screen, with a resolution of 160×128
* Support for
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
,
WMA,
ASF
ASF may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a drama festival
* ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', a U.S.-based English-language science fiction magazine containing SF stories
Science and technology
Biological
* A ...
,
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...
,
Vorbis
Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...
,
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
, and
MPEG4
MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related tec ...
(video)files
* Support for recording in
WMA format at 32, 64, 80, 96, and 128 kbit/s
* USB 2.0
* FM radio
* Line in recording
* Voice recording via built-in microphone or an external microphone
* FM radio recording
iAUDIO 6
The iAUDIO was presented in January 2006 at the
CES in Las Vegas. It was the first digital audio player to feature a 0.85-inch (22 mm) hard drive. This technology allowed the production of a high capacity digital audio player in a very small form factor.
iAUDIO T2
In August 2006, Cowon released the iAUDIO T2. The T2 was a necklace type audio player. It featured a color screen, though it did not support video or photo viewing. Features included FM radio, voice recording and Cowon's traditional wide codec support: the T2 supported MP3, WMA,
Ogg
Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality d ...
, and WAV audio files.
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
was supported up to firmware 1.20, but not by later versions. Firmware 1.20 is no longer available for download from Cowon.
iAUDIO F2
In September 2006, Cowon System Inc. released the iAUDIO F2. The F2, with a design similar to a mobile phone, was the successor to the F1, and very similar to the U3 in features. Instead of the F1's OLED display, it featured a color LCD display. The iAudio F2 has a 1.3-inch display with 128x160 pixels, up to 2 GB of flash memory, line-in recording, 22 hours of audio playback on a single charge, and the usual Cowon supported codecs: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG Vorbis, and even FLAC for lossless audiophiles.
Apart from FM radio, voice recording and
line-in recording, it also featured video playback as well as photo and text viewing. The interface symbols indicate that it has an inbuilt FM radio and voice recorder. This 2-gigabyte device weighs 39 grammes and measures 34.4 x 72.9 x 16.7 mm.
iAUDIO 7
In June 2007, Cowon announced the iAUDIO 7, a player based on the iAUDIO 6 but with 4, 8, or 16 gigabytes of flash memory instead of a hard drive. The OLED screen from the iAUDIO 6 model was replaced by a TFT with 260,000 colors (18 bit colour depth). The device used a swing-control. Audio recordings could only be saved in WMA format, with a user selectable bitrate of 64, 80, 96, or 128 kbit/s. The device played MP3, WMA, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and ASF audio files as well as
Xvid
Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi mas ...
videos. The frame rate of video playback was limited to 15 frames per second. It was produced in Korea.
Unlike its predecessor, the iAUDIO 6, the iAUDIO 7 had no USB host (
USB On-the-Go
USB On-The-Go (USB OTG or just OTG) is a specification first used in late 2001 that allows USB devices, such as Tablet computer, tablets or smartphones, to act as a host, allowing other USB devices, such as USB flash drives, digital cameras, co ...
) capabilities.
iAUDIO U5
In August 2007, Cowon announced the iAUDIO U5 at IFA 2007. The U5 featured Windows DRM10 support as well as MP3 and WAV (Ogg and FLAC supported with updated US firmware v3.16). There was no support for video. The U5 came in 4 and 8 GB versions with a LCD with 128×160 resolution and 65 000 colors. The U5 had a 24-hour continuous audio playback time.
iAUDIO E2
In November 2009, the iAUDIO E2 was released. The iAudio E2 has no screen which means it fully operates four buttons, two on each side, and voice cues. The button location is at the same place on both sides of the device. The volume fluctuates in minuscule increments. The 2GB memory may be filled with songs to play in order or shuffle; it supports AAC, FLAC, MP3, OGG, and WAV files and can play for up to 11 hours on a single charge.
iAUDIO 9+
In July 2013, the iAUDIO 9+ was released. The unit has exactly the same physical and technical specifications as the original iAUDIO 9, except for a slightly larger internal speaker and JetEffect v. 5.0 (the original iAUDIO 9 was released with JetEffect v. 3.0).
The Cowon iAUDIO 9+ comes in three capacities (and two colours): 8GB (white), 16GB (black), and 32GB (black).
It has a 2-inch QVGA (320 x 240-pixel) display positioned atop a capacitive touchpad. It includes a 30mW headphone amplifier, video connectivity (through an extra cable), a microphone, and an FM radio (to record voice and broadcasts). The device is 40g in weight and is 95 x 43 x 8.9mm (3.74 x 1.69 x 0.35 inches) in size. It also supports a variety of audio formats (including rarities like FLAC and OGG) and USB mass storage.
iAUDIO 9
In November 2009, the Cowon iAUDIO 9 was released, more than two years after its predecessor, the
i7. iAudio 9 has a 43mm x 95mm x 8.6mm dimension, a weight of 40g, menu button and volume buttons on either side of the player, 8/16GB of memory, music and videos found on FM radio.
It features a new vertical form factor and improves upon its predecessor by the inclusion of a built-in speaker. The iAdudio 9 also supports files including MP3, WMA, FLAC and WAV files, as well as WMV and AVI videos. The iAudio 9 is a little larger and heavier than the iAudio 8.
Sound enhancements
All Cowon media players, starting with the iAUDIO 4, feature a set of sound enhancement technologies collectively referred to as JetEffect, including a technology known as
BBE+, licensed from
BBE Sound, Inc. The distinction between JetEffect and BBE+ is not always clear.
On Cowon media players, the JetEffect menu offers the following options:
* A five-band
semi-parametric equalizer
* A “BBE+” menu with adjustable settings for “BBE+”
(presumably a modified implementation of what BBE calls “process” in its Sonic Maximizers), “Mach3Bass”, “3D Surround” and “MP Enhance”
(the latter is described in detai
here
* A “Special Effects” menu with options for stereo enhancement and
reverb
Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...
algorithms
The latest version of JetEffect, JetEffect 5, was introduced with the release of the Cowon Z2 Plenue. It included an updated reverb algorithm, allowing the user to choose between nine different types of reverb
timbre
In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
s, including ''Chamber'', ''Room'', ''Club'', ''Hall'', ''Auditorium'', ''Cathedral'', ''Stadium'', ''Canyon'' and ''Long''.
All Cowon players following the D2+ (S9 and onwards) come with an updated version of BBE called BBE+.
Cowon S9 product page
/ref>
See also
* Cowon
Cowon Systems, Inc. (simply known as Cowon) is a South Korean consumer electronics and software corporation. The company’s initial focus was software development and microelectronics, specializing in speech synthesis and speech recognition te ...
* List of Cowon products
This is a list of the products manufactured by Korean consumer electronics and software corporation Cowon Systems, Inc.
Plenue brand
Cowon D3 Plenue
On , the Cowon D3 Plenue was announced. The Cowon D3 Plenue constitutes Cowon's first foray ...
* JetEffect
References
External links
Cowon global homepage
JetAudio – Cowon American homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:iAUDIO
Digital audio players
Portable media players
South Korean brands
Consumer electronics brands