Cowon D2+ DAB

The player is primarily a music player, with video as a bit of an afterthought – and a slight strain for prolonged viewing on this size of screen. Yet, for audio, it has a tremendous amount to offer. As well as stereo playback, there’s a sound recorder, which can record at up to 256kbps using the player’s internal mic, or be connected using an optional AV cable to an external mic.

It even doubles as a notepad

There’s still an FM radio in there, which gives reasonable reception, but the big news is the DAB receiver. Although we’re still unconvinced by DAB, as ‘more channels you don’t want to listen to’ seem a poor exchange for the wider dynamic range of FM. However, there’s little doubt that Cowon has got it pretty much spot on for a DAB receiver this size. The exact set of channels available depends on your location, but we received a full set of BBC transmissions, from Radios 1 – 7 and including the World Service, plus eight commercial stations, such as Planet Rock and Classic FM.

The original D2 included DAB radio reception, but it was flaky and difficult to get a solid signal. Things are much better now, even though it may not all be down to improvements in the player, as DAB transmission has been evolving, too. Whatever the reason, reception is now pretty consistent and sound quality is certainly at the MP3 level, though still lacking the dynamic range of a strong FM station.

Playing back recorded music, which is what the D2+ DAB will be doing most of the time, is made easier by support of typical lossy compression formats such as MP3, WMA and OGG, and more lossless offerings of FLAC, WAV and APE for the audiophile. The significant omission from the set is AAC, so if you’re an iTunes fan, you’re going to have to do some conversion before loading tracks onto the D2+ DAB.

Cowon’s JetAudio PC software won’t help, either. Although it converts between all the audio formats the D2+ DAB can play and others like IMS, Musepack and Speex, it doesn’t handle AAC. You could, of course, say that if you want to play iTunes formats you buy an iPod, but it’s a shame you can’t at least convert them with the software supplied for this player. For Mac and Linux machines, you use the player as an external drive and drag files to the appropriate folders.

Easy to use but, bizarrely, the jetAudio software offers no AAC conversion
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The key advantage of the D2+ DAB over its main rivals is the sound quality. Using the supplied iAudio earbuds the clarity of the treble and mid-range is good on a variety of material. Use better headphones and you can hear the quality of the sound across the full frequency range. The ability to play lossless files means you can get cleaner sound at the expense of larger file size, if you prefer.