A few monthes back you might recall that I reported on a new portable media device called the P5 from South Korean Company Cowon. It seems Cowon have been at it again, this time with a brand new even more compact portable device claiming to be one of the best sounding portable audio devices ever made. Big talk, but considering Cowon's glittering reputation particularly in the sonics department it seems perfectly plausible that the S9 may very well live up to the claims... Click the 'Read Full Post' link for more info, pics and videos.


On first impression the S9 is certainly a looker (Click images to enlarge). Clean lines and an elegant looking touch screen is complimented nicely with chrome accents. The question is what distinguishes this device from others on the market? Well when we get into the technical side of things it soon becomes abundantly clear that Cowon really means business and has gone out of it's way to really distinguish this device from the competition. Starting with the display...

Cowon have decided to use a 3.3 inch 480x272 resolution AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) capacitive touch screen display. For the less technical among us lets just say this was a very wise move. Unlike traditional LCD panels AMOLED's do not require back lighting as the pixels themselves illuminate when activated by an electric current. This means that they consume significantly less power than traditional LCD panels yet are still ultra bright, are capapable of producing ultra sharp images and have great viewing angles. The use of such a display has meant that Cowon are claiming class leading battery performance of 55hrs for audio and 11 hrs for video on a single charge, which is certainly impressive. The use of a capacitive touch panel also means the display should be highly responsive to touch unlike the less responsive resistive panels used in many mobile phones and other touch based media devices.

They haven't scrimped on any of the essentials either. As well as support for some of the most popular audio compression formats such as mp3, wma & ogg, they have also included support for loseless flac, ape and wav formats too. Video support is also decent with wmv, xvid and divx on board. Early reports have also indicated that while Cowon recommend re-encoding video to the player's native screen resolution of 480x272, certain higher res files do play smoothly. xvid and divx video support is said to be particularly good with certain reviews suggesting smooth playback up to DVD resolution (720x480) @ 30 frames per second, although wmv is said not to perform as well.

On top of this you also get a whole host of other features. Bluetooth 2.0 with A2dp is supported meaning unrestricted file transfer between Bluetooth capable devices and wireless Bluetooth headphone tethering is possible. You also get a text reader, photo viewer (jpeg format), FM radio and TV -Out functionality for hooking your device up to a television (cable must be brought separately however). Not to mention Cowons supposedly exceptional Custom EQ and sound enhancement technology known as BBE, said to significantly improve the listening experience. In addition you also get zooming functionality on the touch based interface for increasing the size of whatever is being displayed as well as album art support and a cover browsing system similar to Apples 'Cover Flow'.

The only real down sides are the price and capacity options. With the 8GB model retailing for a hefty £169 and the 16GB model coming in at £199 here in the UK, the S9 is certainly not cheap. Apparently a 32GB version will also be available in the future. I personally would have also liked to have seen an SD card slot included, as found on their older D2 model. In addition, it has been almost a year and a half and still no other company has built a sub 3.5 inch screened device with a web browser to rival that of the iPod touch. Not essential but would have been a great addition.

Here is an in depth 3 part review of the Cowon S9 from portable audio device website, 'anythingbutipod.com' (also available in HD).







To buy an S9 or for more info please visit:

Advanced Mp3 Players - Web shop
Iaudiophile.net - Cowon Fan Forum

Although not an application itself, this audio compression file format has some great advantages over other formats like Mp3 particularly for people looking for a higher level of digital audio quality or those looking to retain the full quality of their digital recordings when transferring files (e.g. ripping Cd's) to Computer. As you will have probably guessed from the picture, FLAC stands for 'Free Lossless Audio Codec'. Being lossless, FLAC does not remove information from the audio stream, as lossy compression formats such as MP3, AAC and many other popular formats do... Click the read more link below for more information and to download FLAC for free.

Just like mp3, FLAC is suitable for everyday audio playback and archival, with support for tagging, cover art and fast seeking. There are many free applications which can be used to playback, rip or edit flac files. FLAC reduces bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing the integrity of the audio source. A digital audio recording (such as a CD track) encoded to FLAC can be decompressed into an identical copy of the audio data.

A small file called a 'CUE' can optionally be created when ripping a CD. If a CD is read and ripped perfectly to FLAC files, the CUE file allows later burning of an audio CD that is identical in audio data to the original CD. This is great as it means that if you lose the original CD, then you can make an exact copy that is not of reduced quality, but is in fact an exact duplicate of the original. Bare in mind however that FLAC files are considerably larger than Mp3 files however still no where near as as large as uncompressed audio data in WAV format.

After using FLAC for while now I have really started to notice the difference in audio clarity and depth particularly when playing music on large sound systems. Digital Dj's may find it particularly useful as a compromise between a laptop disk space saving and maintaining high end digital audio quality. Highly recommended.To download FLAC for free and for a whole hosts of FLAC related applications and ripping programs click the following link:

FLAC - Home Page

With the multitude of audio and video formats floating around chances are you are bound to come across a certain file type now and then which isn't supported by your ipod, media/dvd player etc. Either that or you may just want the file in a different format or a smaller more compressed version. If this is the case then look no further as Media Coder will cater to all your needs. Media Coder is a audio/video batch transcoder for windows. Supporting almost every digital audio/video format known to man, Media coder allows you to easily transcode one audio or video format to another. All the settings are completely customisable too, so any file size/compression ratio, resolution, bit rate etc is possible. You can also transcode multiple files at once. There are many programs that perform similar functions, but this one has to be one of the best I have come across. Being open source it is also free, so click the link to check it out.

Media Coder - Download Page