Got my 2 Glaciers back

[Que]

Received the 2 Glaciers back yesterday, 1 month after sending back the 2 that died.
They both have the latest firmware now, 9.0.50.
Different usb chargers too.
So, unpacked the 2 boxes. Put one of the 1900mah batteries in one, and put it to the wall charger, it charged. Too bad Uxcell once again did not pack the proper adapter for European wall sockets, lucky I held behind the only converter thingy from the first 2 Glaciers, they failed to send 2 converters then.
Connected the other player to an usb port, and filled the 1 gigabyte memory with mp3 and ogg files, bitrates at least 128, but mostly vbr @ 192kb minimum.
After the green light disappearing from the one that was charging, I put that one on the computer, and filled it with the same set of files just put on the other.
The one with the original battery was now attached to the wall charger, a loud crackling sound came from the adapter, a bad chemical smell too, and the lights went off, one charger dead!
Got the other charger out, connected, and it works. The screen came on, and I noticed the right side top corner of the screen is a lot brighter then the rest, seems like the backlight(s) are not aligned right, nasty.
A first battery test gave 9 hours of continuous play @ volume 23, with playing intro's/skipping songs for 2 minutes every hour, to pretend a sort of real life usage.
The upgraded battery still plays, will report on that one later.

For both players:
I had trouble with the one I bought earlier and the one I won in the lucky draw here, using the radio. A lot of distortion (static) when changing volume or station, recording from radio only with a lot of static distortion in the recorded file, unusable.
On both the new players, I've got the same problems again, annoying.

Pro:
-nice clear sound when proper headphones are used
-plays vbr without a problem
-plays ogg too
-nice screen, lot's of info on it
radio picks up stations well
not too bad battery life with the standard battery, better than most clones

Minus:
-quality of chargers too low, lifespan 1 charging cycle?
-quality of assembly/inspection not good enough, see comment about the bright spot on the screen of one of the players, I wouldn't give that one as a present.
-need more attention when packing the players, non-fitting chargers for European sockets!
-players seem to max out at transferring 1 MB per second, on 2.0 usb ports.
-radio function needs work, hardware or software, the recording function is not usable for the 2 players

Sofar a 6.5/10.

[michiganjfrog]

Just to balance out your comments.... My chargers have more than 1 charging cycle to them. As far as I know, they've not given problems. I'm in NA, and maybe that makes the difference. These generic chargers are cheap. They need to be to sell the players at their selling price. You're not the first to complain about them blowing up or getting the wrong type for your country, and perhaps the problems are greater on the220v grid; that seems to be the case from what I'm reading.

Again, your comments about assembly / inspecition, as with the chargers, can be applied to ALL chipod mp4 players, not simply Glaciers. I've had that problem with one of my MP4 players (Nano style), where you could see the LED's of the backlight. Some of the Nano clone screens are even physically larger than others, some brighter than others, some brighter in certain areas. No real consistency, again, consistency costs $$$.

Static in between changing radio stations is NORMAL. I've not seen an mp4 player that had an auto mute switch, so you must be used to home tuners. If you depress the left/right keys it will advance to the next good station it can tune to, thus avoiding the white static noise of a detuned station. I haven't tried recording FM on my Glacier yet, so I dont know if they're all like that. I think I read someone saying theirs didn't produce staticky files.

The USB transfer function on the Glacier is iffy, AFAIC. It periodically fails to connect at USB 2.0 (but 1.1), and you have to do a few extra clicks to tell Windows its a 2.0 device. I have seen it cut out in the middle of a transfer. It regularly cuts out (disconnects) after its left in the computer doing nothing. I have tried it on a friend's computer, with different USB cables and used a different Glacier, both Glaciers on all computers produce dodgy USB connections. But after my Glacier stopped being able to charge a battery, the USB problem really didn't seem so bad.... There may be others who have not had any problems connecting the Glacier, that it never fails to connect at USB v2.0 and never disconnects. Werent you saying to me you were one of them, at the beginning?

As for your claim of VBR/ Ogg files playing without a problem, again, I have different experiences. I find it don't play VBR mp3's and only some OGG files. WAV files produce problems too. I believe I have the same firmware.

[lattesurf]

Que , i'll agree with michiganjfrog's comments.

Abit more on the radio station reception thing. When i was in Australia, the reception worked fairly well, some occasional static, but usually when i'm moving around. Now in Singapore, the reception got worse, more static.
Mainly due to the fact of low-level buildings in Australia as compared to mostly high-level buildings in Singapore. The FM signal gets weaker when there are many obstacles that the signal needs to get through to the player.

[Que]

I am not talking about a little static noise when changing stations, but bout a lot, when changing volume (sounds like a ticking clock through the signal) you see the speaker icon blinking for a while, the static follows it. When you press M while listening to the radio and get to the menu, the static is enormous, hardly bearable to ones ears. All received stations play crisp and clear itself on the Glacier, it is just that any other action of the player gives interference.
Here's a sample of a radio station recording:
[stream:15972f80a2]http://www.pc123912.concepts.nl/REC003-1.mp3[/stream:15972f80a2]
About the usb slowness, did not have it on the first 2, took less than a second average per song to copy over. Now a song takes between 5 and 10 seconds. Usb ports aren't changed, a cardreader works at 2.0 speeds on the same ports. May be a glitch of the .50 firmware, the .48 players transfered faster, but that's just a guess.
Now that I have/had 4 Glaciers, 3 failing the euro converter, 4 having radio issues, 1 having a uneven lit screen (not just a bit brighter led out of those three, but an area about 1/5th of the top right side of the screen), 1 has a dead earphone, 1 usb charger dead, well, is it strange that I think a little more attention to quality might help them with their business?
I love these players, everybody that I show it to loves them. I just wished that a feature I was about to use worked like it should.

[Hotboxx]

I only have one Glacier, and it works perfect. The standard battery life is 10 1/2 hours, and the extra battery I bought can play 13 hours nonstop music. Both tests were done after the first charging. The battery is charging now, using the AC adapter, I will update how long the battery life is after a second charge. (the first charge was done over the USB cable connected to my PC)

[lattesurf]

Que , i get what you're trying to mean about the static. Seems like it's the clock pulses generated by the FM demodulator chip. It'll be very difficult to rectify the problem, as it'll involve filtering the output sounds with additional components to cut out pulses.

Also, when you press other buttons like Menu while listening to the radio, the extra noises you hear are because of insufficient processing power by the ATJ processor.
If you had used a computer like 7-8years ago where the fastest was only Pentium 1 - 133MHz, you'll also notice the extra noises when you play mp3s and process large data (eg transfering large files around the harddisk) at the same time. It's all due to the low capability of multitasking.

I'm not sure of the USB transfer rate, as it could be a hardware or firmware problem.
However, if you're really interested, i'll recommend USB Info at http://www.usbinfo20.com , it's a USB diagnostic tool, and is able to benchmark real time of the USB device's speed.

[Que]

Thanks for the link. Everything reports 2.0, the player however shows speed unknown, as the usb wireless that's on the same hub does. I hung a 2.0 cardreader on it, reports speed unknown too, but it works at 2.0 speeds.
If the radio distorts because of the slowness of the chip, there must be different chips, or another type of modulator mounted on some, because not all suffer.

Michiganjfrog, the first 2 glaciers worked at 2.0 speed, that's why it is so odd these don't, because nothing's changed here with my computer.
About vbr mp3's, maybe try another ripper, I use jetaudio for ogg and mp3 converting.
Another oddity, forwarding through songs goes very slow with mp3, jumps 3 or 4 seconds and takes ages to get halfway a large live-set. Forwarding through ogg files goes with progressive speed after some seconds.

[Hotboxx]

A good solution to avoid problems with the FM radio is to do what Apples did, simply no radio.

[Que]

Now that I am actually listening to the players after letting them play the battery empty to see how long they would hold, I notice distortion in mp3's and oggs too. In between songs or at silence parts in songs you hear a woosh-woosh-woosh in the background, like something is scanning.
The 1900mah battery I bought off ebay lasted only 2 hours longer than the standard one. Will test the other 1900 tonight. Crappy batteries or the charger can't fill 'm full?

[Que]

Right, the second usb charger just went up in smoke too.