Topic: iRiver iHP 120 vs. Nomad Jukebox 3

[Roving Sign]

i really like the size and build of the rockboxed h120's. but, be leary of refurbished NIB because i think they had a batch of bad hdd's. but is you can get a stable one i think you will love it.

I've never heard such a thing...

[Roving Sign]

1.) I will be feeding this recorder an analog signal from a SP-SPSB-6 battery module. Is it true that the JB3 has some sort of gain from its line input? I've never heard of that before. Surely, the mic input would include both power and gain from the internal pre-amp, but is is true that the line input feeds gain as well? I don't remember reading that in the FAQ.

Yes the JB3 has 12db of gain available in 1db steps. The unit defaults to 0 gain.
I never use the onboard gain - just set it at "0" and drive it with my preamp.
Some evidence that using the JB3 to add gain will also add HD noise...(seems to vary - probably depends on the HD)

The mic input on the JB3 is 100% useless...provides no power, and overloads if you fart too loud.

Is your battery box designed to output mic, or line level...?

[Yane]

Maybe this is in the FAQ, but you can use *some*gain on the JB3. You can change the line level by +/- 12db. DO NOT use the "mic" setting, which is digital gain -- sounds awful!

[Alchemy]

1.) I will be feeding this recorder an analog signal from a SP-SPSB-6 battery module. Is it true that the JB3 has some sort of gain from its line input? I've never heard of that before. Surely, the mic input would include both power and gain from the internal pre-amp, but is is true that the line input feeds gain as well? I don't remember reading that in the FAQ.

Yes the JB3 has 12db of gain available in 1db steps. The unit defaults to 0 gain.
I never use the onboard gain - just set it at "0" and drive it with my preamp.
Some evidence that using the JB3 to add gain will also add HD noise...(seems to vary - probably depends on the HD)

The mic input on the JB3 is 100% useless...provides no power, and overloads if you fart too loud.

Is your battery box designed to output mic, or line level...?

Thanks again for all of the responses. I read through them all. I think this was one of the answers I was looking for. The fact that the "line in" on the JB3 supplies gain is something I never heard of before. On my old Sharp MD, it was only the "mic in" that supplied gain, the line in didn't make use of the preamp at all.

Does the iRiver also supply adjustable gain from its line input? It seems that unit has only jack for both "mic" and "line in" and is switchable with an option in Rockbox? 

My battery box, the SP-SPSB-6, does not provide any gain, it only powers the mics. I think a preamp would be in my future, just not at the moment.

[jeromejello]

RE: iriver provide gain?

yes.  it provides both analog and digital gain on the line in (i havent used mic in, so i cant comment on that).
the gain starts out analog and then goes digital.

i have no idea about the specifics... but i do generally run my ihp with about +6dB coming off of my mp-2 set at about 8 o'clock.

[Alchemy]

Thanks jeromejello. I will have to look at the iRiver FAQ though, because I don't understand what you mean by the gain "starts out analog and then goes digital".

At this point, I'm pretty much sold on the iRiver though.

[George]

Thanks jeromejello. I will have to look at the iRiver FAQ though, because I don't understand what you mean by the gain "starts out analog and then goes digital".

At this point, I'm pretty much sold on the iRiver though.

If memory serves me right, the first +24db steps of gain are in the analog stage, the next +24db steps of gain are in the digital stage (and can add a lot of noise).  In other words, you have +/- 48db of gain to play with.  I typically never go past +20db of gain when running with a chris church bbox (no preamp) for loud concerts.  When I'm running my dpa's, I use the gain on the dpa preamp and just add a few db's of gain on the iriver. 

I have a H140 and I love it.  I will never look back to dat or a njb3.  It's easy to use, easy to transfer files off of and it sounds great (and it's tiny so it's easy to stealth with).  It's NEVER screwed up on me nor have I ever screwed up a recording with it...so its basically idiot-proof. 

Rockbox it, test it out for a few hrs and you should be set to go.  I get 16 hrs of playback and about 8 hrs of recording time with mine.

[petur]

The iriver gain works as follows:
- analog gain (3dB steps)
- digital gain (0.5dB steps)

Rockbox combines both to give a fluent 0.5dB step, so 4dB = 3dB analog + 1dB digital.
Once above 24dB, all additional gain is digital.

Do note that the digital gain works on the internal ADC data and not on the endresult (16bit) so the digital gain is not soo bad. Anything above 20dB - even pure analog - will be noisy anyway.

[Alchemy]

It all makes sense now thanks to the two posts above.

If I can get decently clean gain from the iRiver, I might not even have to bother with a preamp since I already have a bat box.

[IpaqMan]

I also have both the NJB3 and the Iriver H120.  The batteries for the NJB3 are still going strong, but I have only used the NJB3 for at home recording.  I have replaced the 3 year old battery in the H120 with a larger one, so I get about 24 hours of playback time and over eight hours (maybe twelve) of record time.

What I like about the H120 is:

1) USB 2.0 port

2) Long battery life

3) Small size

4) Replaceable battery (about $18 dollars)

5) Rockboxable with customizable firmware.  My version has a recording histogram.

6) Long lasting remote control.  I have had three NJB3 remotes fail.

7) AGC options to avoid clipping

8 ) WAV, mp3, wavpack recording formats

9) Fairly active user community

10) Clipping light option.  Tells you if your signal clipped.

11) Adjustable gain per input channel.

12) Volume adjustable during recording.

13) Rockboxed H120 is an extremely usable DAP.


What I like about the NJB3 is:

1) Real time clock to date recordings.

2) Replaceable cheap hard drive.

3) Rugged build


However, I have added a real-time clock function to my H120 by adding a RTC chip and a customized Rockbox firmware to support it.

Currently, I only use my NJB3 for at home recording.

[Alchemy]

I now have an iRiver iHP 120 and everything has been great so far. Haven't recorded anything yet though.

[petur]

if you don't need optical and do need/like the clock, go for the h3x0 series (h320/h340). As a bonus you get usb-otg...

[Alchemy]

if you don't need optical and do need/like the clock, go for the h3x0 series (h320/h340). As a bonus you get usb-otg...

Well I installed rockbox. Call me stupid, but it was really frustrating. When I went to the daily build page (http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml)- there simply wasn't anything to download. Just a link to "old", which produced nothing. I ended up browsing around the site a bit to get it from here: http://download.rockbox.org/daily/h120/
Doubt that was the way to do it though. 

[divamum]

Looks to me like somebody has goofed and mislabelled the H1xx series incorrectly as ipod mini - the PHOTO is definitely an iriver, and if you click the link it's labelled for iriver.

That said, I'm no Rockbox guru - hopefully Petur or somebody else will see this post and help ya out (in fact, you might want to post w/a separate header so it doesn'te get lost in this thread)

Good luck!

[petur]

Well I installed rockbox. Call me stupid, but it was really frustrating. When I went to the daily build page (http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml)- there simply wasn't anything to download. Just a link to "old", which produced nothing. I ended up browsing around the site a bit to get it from here: http://download.rockbox.org/daily/h120/
Doubt that was the way to do it though. 

There has been a problem on the download server but everything should be up and running again now.

You can also download the latest version from the 'CVS builds' page (http://www.rockbox.org/cvs.shtml).
As for installing guidelines, I think they're in the manual, and certainly here: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverBoot. I admit it may sometimes be a bit too techy...