impressions after 2 days

[Rakielis]

after having the zune for about 2 days now...(warning, this is a critique. i like my zune and im keeping it. but its not perfect)

-gapless playback seems to "REETCH" (thats the sound it makes) between songs sometimes. not sure why. other than that, the gapless is GREAT. it doesnt do it between all songs. and i think it has something to do with the songs having high notes, it seems to amplify them. at least, thats what i think is going on. if you have in search of sunrise 7, it happens between a lot of the songs there.

-the zune software needs some work. its pretty, but slow. dont sacrifice looks for speed. thats a terrible idea. make it so that we can edit ID3 tags and file locations straight from a playlist. give us the option to "open" a file. and in general, check out my next point for the thing thats really irking me right now. (though i do really like sync groups)...(just let us sync the thing with something other than your dang software with out having to hack through brick and stone)

-i have a playlist that when exported into the zune software, changed a lot of the songs to be something i didnt want them to be. basically, i had 6 VERY similar tracks, and the zune software took 5 of them, and made them all the same. its refusing to see all 6 tracks as separate. if i update the id3 tags in winamp for one of them, the whole lot of the ones on zune update to mirror it. its very frustrating. here is a picture of whats going on. the dark window is winamp showing what the playlist should be, and zune reading the exact same m3u file.




-divx and xvid support. yes, its not windows. sorry microsoft but WMV is not ever going to be the biggest and best format. just go ahead and except that while youtube is struggling to make their videos look good, divx can already stream HD content. it can STREAM HD CONTENT (blew my mind for a while really).

-this is a little off the wall...but when i turn on shuffle, it shouldnt shuffle the playlist into a new playlist and then play through it, it should just hop around in the playlist. i want to be able to turn on shuffle, but still browse my music like it was layed out in the playlist. have a look at itunes, winamp, and just about every other media player. the zune should leave the playlist alone, but jump around with-in said playlist. its very frustrating for me...if i have shuffle on, but want to go find a song, i have to turn it off, go get the song, come back, and cut it back on. its just silly the way they do it.

-over all, im very pleased. hopefully the first 3 will get fixed up, the 4th point is something i hope for but im not holding my breathe, but id REALLY like to see the 5th one put into use even though it isnt a major change. heck, at least give us the OPTION. maybe call it "static shuffle" vs "dynamic shuffle." just an idea. im very pleased with sound quality. EQs are great, but it actually sounded good on my phones and in the car (which on my old player had very different EQ settings). battery life isnt amazing and could use a little more, but its not a main concern right now. i really like the physical shape and size. i think its a really nice player as far as its looks. i was very pleased with zune originals. the headphones that come with the player are cool, but sound awful.

-o, one last point...when fast forwarding or rewinding, have it move at a % rate rather than a seconds rate. right now it feels like it moves at a set speed based on time...well there are a good deal of people that listen to mixed CDs, concerts, and the like...and we are talking 2 hour files. these are a HUGE pain to FF or RW through. it seriously takes like 5 minutes to get very far. give us the option to use the left and right scrolling (like swiping our fingers) to scroll through the song rather than to the next song. we can click if we want the next song.

thanks for reading everything!