Recording Quality - Can left channel be heard on right channel (or just a U3 problem)

[kelmorn]

I currently own a U3, a brilliant player but it did have one problem. When recording line-in, there was a slight cross over between channels.
ie You could very slighty hear left side stuff on the right side, and very slighty hear right hand side side stuff on the left channel.

It was probably noticed by very few, but I use the U3 for recording the output of Bat Detectors (the little flying mammals, not sports type). Bat detectors output two types of signal for analysis, Heterodyne and Frequency Division, one to the left and one to the right. Studying sonograms its apparent that sound was 'crossing over'. Not a disaster, and it didn't make me go out and by a specialist recorder.
It was something to take into account when buying my next audio player (with line-in recording)

So, I now want update my audio player. Loving the U3, I'd like to get the Iaudio7 with a much larger memory that should allow me to record for longer.
Could someone with the interest or time check if this problem occurs in the Iaudio7. Its easy to do, play an audio file, with software like audacity, mute one channel and record the output to a Iaudio7. Then play the file recorded with the Iaudio7 back in Audacity on see if the sound is only on one side.

If anyone can do that for me.

This might be discussed somewhere else, but does anyone know how long the Iaudio7 will record for (before battery goes flat)

[Zilog Jones]

Hi, I did some experimenting with interesting results.

For testing all I was doing was playing some music on my PC and switching the balance to full left and right.

First I tested my headphones on my PC just to check they were not at fault:
Sony EX71: Noticeable crosstalk at max volume
Sennheiser CX300: No noticeable crosstalk

So I tried recording onto my i7 from the headphone out on my PC (what I just tested the headphones on) to the line-in. Playing back on the CX300s on the i7 I noticed crosstalk even worse than with the EX71s in my PC.

So I thought maybe it was the cable I was using (3.5mm to 3.5mm I got about 10 years ago with some PC speakers), so I tried recording on my PC using this same cable in the headphone out to the line-in. There was some crosstalk but just as much noise.

Then I opened the file I recorded on the i7 on my PC. I amplified the "silent" channels as much as possible in Audacity and there was nothing! No noise, no crosstalk, just a little DC offset. Quite amazing. The recording done on my PC was much worse in comparison - I guess what they say about on-board sound (mine is Realtek ALC882) is true!

Now if only the i7 could record something better than 128k WMAs...

Could the crosstalk observed while listening on the i7 be caused by wear to the headphone jack? I've had it nearly a year now and I'm often plugging and unplugging stuff from it, but I've barely used the line-in/mic jack at all.

[kelmorn]

Thanks Zilog Jones. I'll now be looking out for a new Iaudio7.
Hopefully the the rockbox thing will move forward and allow recording at a higher 'quality'.