Episode: 65
Title: HPR0065: Cowon iAudio U3 review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0065/hpr0065.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:55:08

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Music
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio at episode 65.
My name is Dave and I normally do my podcast recording on my way home from work in my
car.
But tonight, or I should say this morning, as it is 107 am, I am in my house and I am in
a room that has one, two, three, seven, eight, and ten computers in it.
And each one of these computers is running some variant of Linux or Unix.
But the device that I want to talk about tonight, the one I hold in my hand, does not run Linux.
I want to talk about the Cowan U3.
This, I think, still is the smallest personal video player you can buy.
It's a Cowan audio U3 and I love this device.
I love it so much.
I bought a second one so I now have two just in case the first one breaks.
I've had the first one for at least a couple of years now.
And it is a quote unquote to use the improper term, an MP3 player.
It's much more than that as it plays more than just MP3s.
It plays videos.
It's a picture viewer.
It does the standard things that these small MP3 devices do.
It has an amazing sound quality.
I'm not an audio file, so if I were to read to you the specs, the audio specs, there
would be meaningless to me, but you can go to cowanamerica.com products, cowanamerica.com
slash product, slash audio slash U3 to find out more about this device.
They're relatively inexpensive.
You can get one for, depends on where you look, maybe $120 to $180.
Maybe they come in, I think one gig and four gig, there may be a two gig model.
But it's about the size if you look at your smallest finger and your ring finger.
It's a little bit less wide than those two fingers are side by side, and it's about
as tall as my ring finger.
So you've seen this form factor before in some other devices, and it's got a joystick
or a toggle on the front and a small screen, not sure the size of the screen, I'll talk
in my head.
But this thing gets about 20 hours of battery life.
It gets the video screen, you can cover it with your thumb, it's small, but I have
watched 96 episodes of Justice League Unlimited, Sean of the Dead and Napoleon Dynamite, I think
of the movies I've watched on this thing.
The 96 episodes of Justice League Unlimited were quite enjoyable.
Even though the screen is small, if you're holding it in your hand, it's quite viewable.
I don't think it's a full 30 frames per second or anything like that, it's probably half
of that, but it is quite viewable.
I don't use this device for video except if I'm on a plane or something, but the main thing
I use this device for is to record.
I record my podcast on our audio U3, and before that I use the iRiver T30, I think, but
what I really like about the audio other than the fact that it plays MP3s, WMAs, ASAF,
waves, hogs, and flags, and other than the fact that it works as a USB-Mass storage device
and Linux.
The thing I like most about it is that I can record on it with a non-powered microphone
and I can hear myself, so I can monitor the volumes or the volume of my voice.
I can hear myself with the iRiver T30 that's something I couldn't do.
I would just have to listen to myself talk, not through the headphones, and I really had
no way of determining if I was clipping or anything like that.
With the audio though, and I don't know about the other devices, I know some people that
have about other models of our audio's, and they've tested them out and tried to record
with a non-powered microphone without much success, but like I said, I have two of them,
and I can stick in just a regular old computer headset and it is thing, and I can record
my voice with a non-powered microphone, so I guess that means it's got a preamp in
it, even though according to their website, you should not be able to do this, I can,
and I've upgraded the firmware probably four or five times, and I'm not lost this functionality.
I guess that's one of the drawbacks is unlike some of the more recent models of our audio
players, this does require Windows to upgrade the firmware, so I have to use my work laptop,
it's an XP laptop to do that with, I thought at one time these things had been discontinued,
but I don't think that's the case, because I mean, there's still a whole page dedicated
to this player at Calon America, and I'm sure Calon Global too.
But it works well with Linux, it works well with Mac OSX, I would imagine, and it works
well with Windows, I'm sure, but this is the device for me, I've owned, like I said,
two of them, I couldn't do my podcast and my call without it, I can use a powered
microphone, I've recorded the Upstate Carolina Linux users group podcast using a powered
conference room microphone, I have run a microphone through a mixer board to this, I have run
just a non-powered microphone to this, and through it all I've been able to monitor what
is being recorded with headphones, so it's really great, I'm even able to using a device
about it, Radio Shack, that strange enough has no identifying part number on it, so
whatever, if you go to RadioShack.com and just search for a cell phone recorder or mobile
phone recorder, you'll see it, but it is a device that you plug your cell phone into,
and the other end you plug into your recorder, and on that side I've recorded cell phone
conversations I've recorded, audio with a non-powered microphone, I've recorded audio,
a powered microphone, and I've recorded audio with the line in, I guess the other drawback
to this is that it records 128 kilobits per second, which is, I guess, CD quality, which
is fine for a podcast, but it records in WMA, which is not a problem for me because you
can easily convert that in Linux from the command line or several other graphical tools,
but that's a little bit of a pain, I keep hoping with every firmware release or upgrade
that they'll add, you know, functionality recording, I'll get a play, I'll get a play
flack, I'll get a play wave, I'll do all these codecs or file formats, so to play them
just fine, but you can only record in WMA, which is just a little bit of a hassle, but
I only, I guess it's a fourth generation iPod I've had for a long time, and I put rockbox
on it a couple of years ago, and have not looked back, I really only use it for long
trips, listening to music, but this is one device that I've, I see no need whatsoever
to replace the firmware, I really enjoy the firmware, I guess the user interface, especially
like I was hesitant when I first got it about this toggle switch, you've seen these
joystick-like buttons that stick up off these players sometimes, but it's got an audible
click when you navigate with it, you know, you can go up, down, right, left, and you can
press down on the button, and it's got a lot of button of course, but what that toggle
switch really allows you to do is operate this thing in your pocket, I mean it's just
really small, and you don't have to see the interface, you just got, I guess, tactile
feel, you can feel it, and you can hear it, so in the dark you can navigate through
the folders that contain your music, it's just, it's got everything I need, and it's got
themes, it's customizable, I guess, graphically, but there's really nothing about this I don't
like, it's got an FM player, if you can record, I've already mentioned a line-in or voice,
there's a, there's a, in the settings under recording, you can select that you want to record
using an external mic, which is what I do for my podcast, there's a voice activate feature,
so it will only record when it hears a voice, there's a feature called AutoSync that I'm
not real sure of, what that's about, but you can record the line-in volume and microphone
volume, you can record the bit rate of which you record FM radio, because it's got FM
radio built into it, you can control the bit rate that you record, voice-at, and line-in
at, it's just, it's just really nice, I mean I've got the Debbie and Swirl on it, it's
my, my default wallpaper, it comes with a graphical equalizer, and like I said, I'm
not an audiophile, a bunch, a bunch of other stuff, whatever, BVE is, mock three bass,
MP and hands, 3D surround sound, pan, for whatever reason you'd want to have the audio
move from your left to your, left speaker to right speaker, repeatedly that's there, with
some recordings, I imagine this has to do with either being a variable bit rate or constant
bit rate, I'm not sure, but you can adjust the play speed, so you can speed up the speed
that the audio plays back, so if you're in a hurry or if you have a lot of podcasts
to listen to or whatever, this, this thing's really nice, it's really inexpensive, when
I bought the second one, I was in the market to replace, I'm not replaced, but to buy
back up and case my first audio died on me, because that's what I recorded a podcast with,
and that, that model's only a one gig, and I was thinking, and I'm having to do, I listed
a lot of podcasting, one gig just wasn't cutting it, so I was in a market to buy another
device, and I looked around at a lot of them, but I, I knew I'd been able to get another
audio, and I looked at, I guess the, it's at the D2 and the, the A7, and I forget some
of the models that I looked at, you know, bigger, better, newer, supposedly, but I came back
to the U3, mainly because I know it does the line-in recording, it does the, the external
microphone recording, it's the form factor I like, it's the, the, the toggle is nice and
sturdy, and allows for blind operation, and I said, the only drawbacks that I can think
of, and I've owned these for about two years now, is it requires Windows to do the firmware
upgrades, and it records in WMA, but other than that, I am very happy with the U3, this
is the best portable audio device I've ever owned, if one of these breaks I'll buy a third
thing, I guess, if there's a third thing that I would list as bad as I, as I've dropped
the first one that I own, I've dropped it several times, but the last time I dropped
it, the whole switch that, that locks the, the buttons, so you won't inadvertently press
one of them, it broke, I mean, it's still, it's still on the machine, it didn't break
off, but I guess the plastic tab inside the case no longer functions with that last drop.
Anyway, I, I, I feel I'm beginning to ramble, and it's, it's very late, so that's my review
of the audio U3, if you're in the market for a, an audio device to listen to podcast
two, to record a podcast own, or even to watch video, you owe it to yourself to check
out the audio U3, all right, until tomorrow, this has been Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
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