Topic: Cowan IAudio !WoW!

[jaz]

  WoW have owned a 60 gig IAudio for 2 years now. Always been a great toy, I mean you can just drag and drop files just as you down load them from torrent sites, flac, wav, mp3. But the grate thing I just figured out the other day is one can make the Iaudio act as a host for other USB items. So if you are in festival or on the road for a while with no laptop. You can dump your files from your rig (edirol, tascam, korgs, you name it) as long as it has a USB port. Clear your card or drive and start fresh!!! WoW this will be a handy thing for the summer of taping! Thought this would be helpful info for folks wid storage issues   

[sunjan]

For the record, iriver H3xx has also supported USB-on-the-go since it was launched in 2004. Only non-US models though, and you have to boot into stock firmware (rockbox never implemented it).

Other players with USB OTG are Meizu M6, Gigabeat S, Samsung Yepp, as well as a few PDAs.

But these days when flash memory is so cheap, I probably won't bother with external storage next time I go to a festival. Just pick up a few extra cards...

[weroflu]

i am unclear about how USB OTG works.

does it mean that if i hook up an external USB hard drive to one of these devices that it will be able to play music files from the external drive?
or does this only have to do with copying files between devices.

[sunjan]

Even though you can hook up an external HDD, it's normally only for file transfers/backups.
IIUC, the problem is that most music player software/app doesn't seach/map the USB port to look for any additional folders, so it won't "see" your files stored externally.

This is valid for iAudio X5 as well as the H3x0 series. In the list of tested compatible gear, there are some proven HDD enclosures:
http://www.misticriver.com/iriver-h3xx-series-h320-h340/13334-h3xx-series-usb-otg-compatibility-list.html
http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1461&highlight=usb-otg

You could pick up any of these HDDs and experiment. Note that rockbox doesn't support OTG, you have to boot into stock firmware.

Recently, some more modern players have been released which supposedly can play files over USB-OTG. Nokia N8 and Astone EP-01 are two examples:
http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?125477-USB-On-The-Go
http://www.astone.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=487

[OOK]

Looks like the cowan audio X7 is the portable player I have been looking for....160gig...plays flaces...and if its like other cowan's it should be gapless...  plus appearently the cowan's are also know for having excellent audio quality.....never head of them until recently. The playsers get rave reviews....

OOK

[F.O.Bean]

+T for that! I have never heard of Cowan til RIGHT NOW, and I'm wishing I waited to buy another mp3 player. I JUST bought a 160GB iPod I now have a 120GB Zune(With ALL Phish from 99>Present[only missing a few 2010 shows]) and a 160GB iPod, and a 4GB Mini MP3 Player Looks like I'll be adding the Cowan to that list I thought my iPod had a good battery runtime w/ around 30+ hours. And my Zune's battery runtime is HORRIBLE compared to even the iPod at about 8-10  hours I could live w/ a 100hr runtime