Does anyone have a "Cowon J3" mp3 player?

Open Forum in English
21

audiobooks should be treated differently from music

Yep, I outlined that problem earlier. This mostly affects the ‘random shuffle’ option, and the sleep timer (since you may fall asleep listening to a book, but then the player can start playing music if the book finishes). Cowon are very good at improving their firmware with updates, but that is probably too big a change to address.

[it can’t] download newsfeeds from readers

No wifi or 3G connection, or any ‘apps’ such as RSS readers or browsers. All that was traded for better sound and an AMOLED screen. The J3 is definitely just a quality mp3/mp4 player, whereas the ipod is more of a general entertainment kind of gadget.

Haven’t got my head around playlists because, listening only to
audiobooks, I’ve never needed to use them.

I have short language tracks ripped from Cd’s (typically 1-4 mins) and downloaded podcasts (typically 15-20 mins). What I plan to do is make playlists that repeat each track a few times. Eg.

track1, track1, track1, track2, track2, track2, track3, track3, track3, etc

You can’t do that with the repeat functions; you can only repeat one track, repeat a->b, or repeat a whole folder.

You recommend buying proper, expensive headphones. What do you
do when the jack breaks, as mine invariably do after spending
16 hours a day stuffed into my trouser pocket?

They don’t need to be too expensive if you’re not an audiophile. I wouldn’t spend less than about £30 because with £10-£20 headphones (or using the ones supplied with the J3), you’re wasting the best (and most costly) feature of the player. My Panasonic phones have an L-shaped jack, which might help. A case with a belt clip, or armband case, might also help. Note that to get the best sound, you also need to set-up the Equaliser. Out of the box, the sound is purposely uncoloured and flat.

can you add dictionaries, and if so, where can you get them from?
A Russian-English & Russian-Japanese, dictionary would be useful.

Even if you were able to find a dictionary in plain text format, would it be practical to look up words using the search function, and view the entries as plain, unformatted text? I might try to find a txt dictionary and experiment once I’ve got my J3. I’ll tell you if I have any success.

22

It can display comics in jpg form. Ooh…where can I get comics in jpg form? Especially Japanese ones? (In Japanese).

23

After a long delay, I finally got mine. [insert rant about Spanish work ethic and corruption]

The only problem I’ve had with the J3 so far is working out that the playlists need to be in M3U(#EXT) format, they must have the header: #EXTM3U, and the J3 needs to be turned off/on to flush out deleted playlists (otherwise, if you create a playlist with the same name as a deleted one, the J3 will populate it using the old cached information).

I was disappointed that I can’t listen to anything whilst it’s charging, especially since a full charge takes 3.5hrs. Apparently though, if you use a AC wall charger that has an output of 1A, it can supply enough energy to charge and listen at the same time (most chargers only supply 500mA-700mA though).

Apart from that, I’m happy. Having a good mp3 player is really going to help with regard to listening to language tracks constantly.

24

I’m enjoying watching old Russian TV shows on mine. I never had a player that could play video before. Although the J3 weighs a bit more than my old mp3 player, a nuisance as I generally wear it dangling from a string round my neck, it is still a very good compromise between a bulky player and a clear screen for videos.

I haven’t worked out what playlists ARE yet, nor how to create them. I use Windows Media Player to sync my J3, as I did with my last mp3 player, and, as long as the files are properly tagged, it works just fine.

There is an option where you can find mp3 files by drilling down through the folder structure, which is nice.

Another thing I haven’t worked out yet is the option to play Flash applications. What is a Flash app and where can I get one? Are they all games?

25

I haven’t worked out what playlists ARE yet, nor how to create them

A playlist is just a text file with the extension .m3u
The file contain a list of the files you want to play, which the player reads.
Usually when on your computer, an m3u playlist will be in this format:
c:\users[username]music[artist][album][track]
and will simply look like this when edited in notepad:

c:\users\myname\music\BBC\spanish course\track01.mp3
c:\users\myname\music\BBC\spanish course\track01.mp3
c:\users\myname\music\BBC\spanish course\track02.mp3
c:\users\myname\music\BBC\spanish course\track02.mp3

As you can see, this playlist has absolute paths to the files (ie. includes the drive letter). This playlist would repeat track01 twice, and then track 02 twice. This illustrates the advantage of playlists, because you can’t do that with the J3’s normal repeat functions (you can only repeat one track, or repeat a folder).

However, the J3 does not use this format of playlist. Here is the same thing as above, put into the format that the J3 expects:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:539, track01.mp3
\music\bbc\spanish course\track01.mp3
#EXTINF:539, track01.mp3
\music\bbc\spanish course\track01.mp3
#EXTINF:321, track02.mp3
\music\bbc\spanish course\track02.mp3
#EXTINF:321, track02.mp3
\music\bbc\spanish course\track02.mp3

The extra line above the relative path is the track length in seconds & the filename.

You can make these playlists yourself, or sometimes your music software can create them for you. I use MusicBee, and it works well with the Cowon J3. I’m sure MediaMonkey would work well too. I don’t know about Windows Media Player - I suspect it only creates playlists in the .pls format, which won’t work on the Cowon unless you use the J3 in MTP mode when connecting to a PC.

Another thing I haven’t worked out yet is the option to play
Flash applications. What is a Flash app and where can
I get one? Are they all games?

Flash apps are just .swf files that you see embedded in websites all the time. There are no flash apps specifically written for the J3 (nor touchscreen devices in general - Apple doesn’t support Flash, and Android makes up the rest of the market). Maybe <5% of the games you see on websites will work on the J3, and there are no useful utilities to speak of (especially without wifi/internet access on the J3).

Basically, Cowon used Flash for the their own gadgets (calculator, notepad, screen brightness button, clock, date/calendar, etc), and thought that they may as well allow users to put other flash apps on the machine. It’s tokenistic at best. Their newest player supports Android, which is much more useful (but I’ve read that the player itself is inferior to the J3).