Sound and RMAA

Hooked on Phonics

The iRiver really shines in its main function: music playback. Basically, it rocks, ya'll. The H320 has a very dynamic and punchy sound. It is also well balanced with deep bass and nice, crispy treble.  It reminds me of the original Audigy in character, smooth sounding, but somewhat dark or perhaps lacking in low level details. For what it is, I was quite happy with the sound.  You can't hear the disk spin up through the headphones (although you can feel it), and other operations are likewise silent.

Did somebody say RMAA? I thought so!

These results are from RMAA's test and calibration tones which we encoded to 128kbps MP3 and played them into a Terratec DMX 6-fire. This isn't iRiver's quoted -90 dBA noise level, but it's not horribly bad.  In your average environment, bus, airplane, class room, I'm confident you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and an Audigy2 ZS.  I want to stress that the H320 did sound much better than these numbers.

While the H320 doesn't have as many EQ settings as the newer H10, it does have 10 settings, 6 presets, and 4 SRS settings. I tend not to use EQ, but the U.Bass setting indeed has a lot of bass. It does have a 'user EQ' setting but it is limited to simple treble and bass.