A quick push of the thumb stick brings up the file menu, which is essentially organized like Windows Explorer. Highlighting a folder and pushing the thumb stick again will bring up all files within that folder.
Holding down the thumb stick for a second brings up the players configuration menu, which displays the firmware version, and allows you to customize all of the players functions and abilities.
For example, highlighting and selecting “mode” then takes you into a deeper menu where you can customize the available play modes to your hearts content.
For each play mode, you can set which types you want and don’t want to be available, which is a major help, since you only have one top button to cycle through the available play modes, and having to cycle through 50 to get to the one you want would not be fun.
The first revision firmware just had a bass and treble slider, but later iRiver added an update with a full 5-band equalizer.
The greatest feature of the player that iRiver has added with the latest firmware revision is the “Xtreme 3D” DSP mode. Normally I would scoff at such “simulated surround” efforts, especially on a player such as this, as they usually just add a ton of artificial reverb and turn the sound into an echo filled mess. Not so here. Xtreme 3D does a fantastic job of presenting a much wider, deeper soundstage, without messing up vocals or imaging. The slider allows you to control the level of DSP applied, so you can adjust it to best suit the individual recording. Additionally, Xtreme3D gets its own 5-band EQ separate from the regular EQ, so you can set to different EQ settings and switch back and forth any time you want.
