So, I was excited when I bought an iRiver SlimX iMP-350 off eBay. The seller said the unit was "tested", and in, "Good clean working used condition". When it arrived Friday, it looked great. I plugged it in to check it out. The CD player sounded fantastic. But, no matter what I did, I could not get the FM tuner to produce any sound other than a hiss. I could see the remote thingie showing that the radio was apparently turned on, and that the tuner was moving up and down the FM band. But absolutely no sound came out. Turning up the volume just turned up the hiss. I fooled with the unit over this whole weekend, and could not get the radio to work, so back it goes. This is a disappointment, because this is a quality CD player that I would have kept and treasured, had the eBay seller described it correctly.
I like this player and the remote. I bought it as it looked very similar to the Freecom Beatman 3. However, it is not
I don't know much about these players but I know I have a really hard time with FM coming in on my phones. I think they run the antenna through the headphones? Hopefully you can find a better working model.
Yes, the headphones are quite commonly used as FM antenna. I’m not going to take my unit apart though , although I have only used it once after I purchased it.
I love the IMP-350. In the early oughts, those SlimX players were next level. When I was around 10, my dad handed me a box of 3 of em with 2 remotes and batteries and the travel sacks.. all in various states of condition... said he was going to throw them away, would I like em... I never refuse free stuff! It was around 2009 by this time, and the IMP-350 is from '03, so they weren't sought after quite so much by then. I had the exact same issue you exhibited on 2 out of the 3 units. CD was always great, but the FM never made any sound. I tried different remotes, and the original headphones, it made no difference for me. Eventually, I just made 1 decent player out of all 3 and it served me well during middle school years. I also had one of those iRiver T30s at the same time. I got a nano the next year, so the T30 went in a box, and the IMP-350 saw less use. I remember around 2014 or so the unit started boot looping when I'd try to charge the internal batteries, so I was forced to use that ridiculous external AA battery pack that plugged in. The IMP-350 is firmware upgradeable, and I found that on the one player that had working FM, once I upgraded the firmware, it quit working and did the same as the others. Loved the new snake game tho included on version 2.30! (think I started on 2.02) We had a lot of iRiver products growing up (I think dad had a deal through work), they were never reliable... and it was always the firmware. They'd stop working, we'd reach out to support, they would issue us a new firmware file, it would fix the issue for awhile. So, I'm going to guess the software on your unit is corrupt. There USED to be a portal on iRiver's website for firmware, but they are now Astel&Kern, and too darn fancy to fool with us.
Great thought! Unfortunately, they have nothing at all on SlimX there... they do have an updater on there from 2005 for the MP3 players, but nothing on the SlimX... https://www.head-fi.org/threads/iriver-slimx-owners-which-firmware-version-are-you-using.47890/ This is a GREAT thread I kept coming back to many times... also serves to highlight all the stupid quirks people had when they upgraded these. If my mind serves me right, 2.80 was the last one, and the one that bricked my FM... several download sites 'claim' to have it available. The process for upgrading was so dumb too. You downloaded a small .HEX file, then burned it to a CDR, put the CDR in the unit, and turned it on. Wait like 10min, hope for the best. Depending on what the OP's unit has (if he hasn't sent it back, I *may* have an old CD of 2.2)
That's 2.80! The last version ever produced (from 2004). This one broke my FM, but thanks for posting, good to have anyways for archival sake. I am attaching 2.50 and 2.60 (from the Astell&Kern Japanese site...)
A lot of the photos are down on the archived site but here's a jotting for the best of 2002. You might get lucky if you randomly hit links, they do have support information but it's difficult to find.
I never tried rolling back the firmware on my unit... although it's supported. Nevertheless, there is always the risk of bricking something when you rollback firmware or upgrade firmware. All I can say is, if you have a misbehaving iRiver, try another firmware version. If it helps, yay. If it doesn't, at least you tried.
I've done a rollback with 2.30 & 2.50 firmware version, but still have no FM tuner working. Don't know why.
