The MP3 revolution is now in full swing even though some of us have seemingly been left behind. For example, I am not a big user of MP3 players. When it comes to burning tracks I use either Sony mini-discs or iTunes to rip CDs and I swear by both, but when the folks at irock! asked us to review their new 730i Digital Audio Player I jumped at the opportunity.
Although the irock! 730i Digital Audio Player is cross-platform and supports Windows Media files as well as MP3's, we experienced problems loading the drivers from the PC portion of the CD. No resolution was available at the time of this review and consequently all testing was solely Mac-based.
As an avid Mac user you can imagine my delight to find that the 'irock! 730i Digital Audio Player' works well with iTunes. Just pop in the CD that ships with the player and either launch the Flash movie or make your way to the install folders. If you launch the Flash movie and can put up with the annoying background music click on "Music Management Software" and then click on the appropriate plug-in for your version of iTunes (OS9 or OSx). If you bypass the Flash installer just run the appropriate installer under the 'install_folders' directory.
Once the driver's installed you're done. All you need to do is launch iTunes plug the irock 730i player into a USB port and then turn it on. The player shows up in iTunes' Source List. To add music simply drag the tracks you want from one of your playlists or from your library. Deleting songs is just as easy.
By itself the 730i can hold 128MB and there is a slot for adding a SmartMedia card to increase memory size up to another 256MB. It took only about three minutes to transfer 17 songs (48 minutes or 56.1MB).
To test sound quality I loaded two albums from Jesus and Mary Chain, the raw "Psycocandy" and the polished "Stoned and Dethroned." Playback of both albums was clear and crisp.
Although the battery power source is a drawback, the good news is that you get a full 8 hours of playback with a single AAA. The player itself is compact and light, but I got the impression that the gray plastic housing was not very sturdy. A good drop onto a hard surface would most likely shatter the device or at least render it useless.
Overall I was impressed with the ease of use and playback quality. There are several other neat features such as an equalizer with five presets (Rock, Flat, Classic, Hip Hop and Pop) and a built in microphone for up to 35 hours of voice recording. There is also a feature called MP3i available for the PC platform that allows you to load lyrics, text and images in sync with your songs. It's kind of a neat feature, but utterly useless once the novelty wears off. The MP3i Creator Software for Windows is included on the accompanying CD.
