newby help

[urbantus]

First of all hello
Im a new owner of an iRiver iHP-140
Its arriving early next week

Can any one give me some advice on how to get up and running with my new player

Im a complete newb tbh

But very keen to listen , and learnBtw I think this site is exellent and Im really enjoying looking through the faqs and posts

There does seem to be a lot to take in so some initial guidance would be much appreciated

Im from Bath in England btw

Urbantus

ps will I need to update the firm ware when I first get the player

[nuwan]

hi there

Im new too, just recieved mine this morning.
Basically here is what you need to do. Charge it a bit.
Then install the software on you pc/laptop.
Connect the player to your pc via the USB connection.
Read the manual to find out what the on and off buttons are, and you need to learn how to use the remote. There is a slight learning curve with this player.

Once you are running its all good.

Anyway connect the player to your pc, then copy some music on. Then update the database. Use those mp3's to learn the controls. Then update the firmware via www.iriver.com

And then use TDT to organise everything once you copy your entire collection over!

[necroGL]

well from experience of the iHP-120 i have to say the manual is you friend
keep it handy for the first couple of days until youve found your way around the player

i suggest that as soon as you get it start charging it and then add all your music etc and upload the firmware
and you never know by the time its arrived mabey the new firmware will be out

[urbantus]

thx so far

what does this mean

And then use TDT to organise everything once you copy your entire collection over!

Up to now Ive always used nero for copying cds etc

Is there a better piece of software

Can you have different formats

[necroGL]

no TDT is the best program out there for making the database on the iHP
and you just load the music on by copying it in Windows Explorer (like My Computer etc)

[Dunno]

Hi and welcome,

With regards to what TDT or db (data base) or FT (file tree) is, head over to "H series FAQ". The moderators have put in a big effort to try and answer the most frequently asked questions Accurately and Concisely.

Enjoy your H140

[BlueBandicoot]

Welcome, Urbantus!

If you do not already know, you need a good CD Ripper (Audio Extractor), and a good Encoder for your choice of format - Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA and such.

A very good CD ripper used by many - including myself - is Exact Audio Copy. The name gives it away really -- the program utilises your CD Drive's accuracy and Error detection abilities, to create accurate copies of the CD Audio as exactly as possible, into a WAV file. And you can use external encoders with EAC, which encode the extracted WAV into another format on-the-fly. These can be found on their respective official sites.

For external encoders for OGG, MP3, and WMA, follow these links..

Ogg Vorbis
LAME MP3 Encoder-(Considered the best by far)

Any questions, then ask them here.
Have fun with your new iHP..!

[TCK]

Hey Urbantus. I don't live too far from you (well, relatively :P).

Here's my guide to migrating to a H Series player. Some of this you may know about, but in case you don't I'll cover this down to the basics.

Before Receiving Your Player

You'll want to prepare for receiving your player, because there's a lot of wasted time inbetween ordering and receiving.

First off, I'd make a folder on the desktop, and label it "iriver". Now if you've got any mp3s or oggs lying around that you want to put on your player when you get it, put them in here.

If you've got any CDs that you haven't converted to mp3/ogg, you'll need to convert them. A good program for this is Exact Audio Copy, which you'll find abbreviated a lot around here to EAC. EAC rips audio into files playable on your iRiver. There are plenty of topics on EAC around, so it should be easy to get and use this program. You'll want to choose between using mp3 or ogg files too, and at what quality setting. To sum up, mp3 is more compatable with other machines (although this isn't a problem with a PC), and provides better battery life, whereas ogg has smaller filesizes, and is debatably better sounding, at a sacrifice of battery life. Quality setting wise, play around with different bitrates, and see what suits you best, but 192kbps mp3/q6 ogg seems to be the average. Generally, go higher if you're more of an audiophile, and less if you're more of a casual listener.

You should have all the music in digital format now. Next task is to organise your music. You can use Windows Explorer, but I personally use a program called Servant Salamander, which I find a lot easier for moving files from folder to folder. There may be better file manager programs around though.

If you intend to use the text function, a good start to your root folder (base folder, eg. c:\) is to make two folders, "Music" and "Text". If you have any text files you want to put in your player, place them in the Text folder now.

Depending on how much music you have, you'll likely want to organise it in two ways:

If you have a lot of music, you may want to organise your music in an A-Z form, by artist. Make 26 folders in your music folder, labeled "A" to "Z". In these folders place your artists, eg. iriver\music\c\cypre ss hill, and inside these folders place your albums. If you have any tracks that you don't want to associate with an album, place them inside your artist folder directly.

Another way you may prefer to organise is by genre. In your music folder make genre folders, and place artists and albums in the same way as mentioned above. You could make sub-genres within folders too, eg. iriver\music\rock\pr og rock.

It's quite likely you won't finish all of this by time you receive your player, but when you do get your player, it's easy to continue the process on the player itself.

After Receiving Your Player

When you receive your player, first two things you should do are put your unit on charge, and if necessary, install the CD provided. Connect the usb port to the iRiver, and make sure that your computer recognises it at an external hard drive.

Once this is done, you'll likely need to update your firmware. To do this, download the appropriate zip file from iriver.com, and extract the hex file to your iRiver unit. Disconnect (using the safely remove hardware icon in the system tray), get to the general menu, and select update firmware. This takes approximately 30 seconds, after which the unit will automatically turn off. It's best to leave the unit charging during this process, and every time you connect to the hard drive.

Now, to copy that music from your hard drive over to the player. When you receive the iRiver, there will be one folder (record), and a default mp3, Catch The Digital Flow! Do what you want with this, if you're like most people, you'll likely delete this.

Copy the text folder into the root folder. Now for the music. Some people will likely copy each alphabet/genre folder separately, to avoid overheating, while others just copy the music folder as is. Note that this may take a while, depending on if you're using USB 2.0 or not. Once this is finished, your player is ready with all your music, and if you've still got more music to rip, you can rip these and create them in folders on your iRiver rather than on your hard drive. Just in case, keep a copy of what you've got on your player on your home PC as well, in case accidents happen. You hopefully won't have run out of space by now, but if so simply delete the less important stuff off of your iRiver, and make sure to use the recycle bin!

Finally, there are two ways to browse through your music when using your player. I'd recommend using the filetree method when you get the player, since the database navigation can be cumbersome, and can be beaten for ease of use with a good file structure.

____________________ ____________________ __

That's my guide. I may turn this into a full guide sometime, and as such if anyone has any suggestions for what I could put into this, and what I've missed on, feel free to contribute. I'll probably include images in a full guide.

Hope this helped.

[necroGL]

well it was better than my feeble attempt

[urbantus]

thx all

some really good stuff there

[Dunno]

my rippers are AudioGrabber and EAC.

click HERE for a good article on digital audio extraction.