IMM vs UMS

[BumblebeeMan]

Hi everybody!

I just want to say that this is a great site. I'm a relatively new owner of an iRiver IFP-395t, and I've been sifting through the cesspool of posts at the official iRiver site. I figured that any question I ask there would be wasted breath, so it's nice to find some knowledgable, helpful people here who are willing to discuss this stuff intelligently.

Anyway, I was wondering if anybody could help a newbie like me and give a quick rundown of the pros and cons of the IMM vs UMS. From what I've heard, the only real advantage of UMS is the simplicity of how it treats the player as just another flash drive, with the ability to transfer files from the player back to a PC.

The biggest concern I have over UMS is the ability to customize the order of the songs on my IFP. I heard a few things a while back that UMS will not let you move files into a preferred order. Is this true?

In addition, what firmware do you guys think is the best currently out there? I'm ashamed to admit that I'm still using using version 1.02.

[seadzz]

Welcome B M!!

To give you a quick answer;

IMM is an easy to use interface that allows you to download music from your PC to the player. It is one way communication. If you want the ability to communicate two ways...up and down load music or data to and from the player you need to go to the UMS.

Once you switch to UMS you no longer can use the IMM and instead will need to use Windows Explorer to drop and drag files.

Also in the process of this upgrade the entire contence of your player get deleted since the player needs to reformat the flash memory.

Small price to pay for bidirectional communications.

On the song order questioon, if you number your tracks correctly the switch over will not impact track ordering.

Remenber to include a zero in your odering:

01 song name

not

1 song name

good luck and enjoy the music.

sdz

[tristan]

I use UMS v1.11 and have not had any problems with it.

There are a few things to consider though:

1 - If you're in a hurry all the time, be aware that UMS file transfer is maybe 2/3 the speed of IMM file transfer. Personally I think a few extra minutes to fill the player using UMS is a small price to pay for the much greater flexibility and ability to use the player on OS other than Windows.

2 - The UMS firmware has a ridiculous 96kbps limit on recording mp3 from line-in/radio/mic.

3 - UMS firmware doesn't allow you to name your radio station presets, but I think that's a very minor issue.

There are probably other things I've forgotten!

Regarding song order. In my experimentation on my linux box, I think iFP UMS song order is dependent on the order in which they were transferred to the player. If you number your songs as sdz describes above, and your OS transfers them based on filename, then they'll be in order on the player. If your OS transfers files based on their timestamp, or some other criterion, then they may not necessarily be in the order you expect, even if they are numbered.