The best mp3 player

JimmyNeutron said:
It is all a matter of opinion,
Like Butthead used to say to Beavis, "You can't polish a turd". :butt1:
Even though I started this thread and with much respect and ado to all I must agree with the Cylon on this one. :yes:
 
uofmtiger said:
You may want to. It will definitely make the "jukebox" experience more enjoyable. Plus, it reduces the amplitude of music recorded at too high of a level (reduces the harshness of clipping) .
Checked out your top fives . . . great job, I'll try the RG. How do you or can you apply that to Windows Media Player? I can use another program if needed.
 
Checked out your top fives . . . great job
Thanks, I get bored very easily! :lmao:
How do you or can you apply that to Windows Media Player? I can use another program if needed.
I usually use a program called dBpowerAMP for normalizing and encoding music. The replay gain software can also be found as a plugin for many different players. I have not researched whether WMP has a plugin for it. Actually, I would not be surprised if it had a similar program built in already.
 
I'm honestly looking for a decent portable player I can add S/PDIF output to. I added S/PDIF output to my MyFi prtable XM radio, and I love the little guy. I hear a lot about the iRiver players though. I want one with a nice display to display all information and sound decent.

Jonathan
 
Hate to ressurect an old thread, but after reading all of this on mp3 players, thought I'd put in my two cents.

Now, I wanted to buy an mp3 player for two purposes. Number one was to have access to tons of music while at work, without running an addtional application on my computer. Running Windows Media Player while already running AutoCad, Photoshop, Illustrator etc... tends to slow my work down. Number 2, I wanted to be able to use the mp3 player in my car, or home stereo wen I was feeling too lazy to spin records, or even put in a cd.

I looked at all the reviews on Amazon, and other various web sites, and decided to get an iPod. That is until I read that the Ipod has an average battery life of 4 hours before needing recharging. Additionally, that when the battery needs replacing (6 months to a year depending on use), you have to send the entire iPod back to Apple!

Well, I work more than a 4 hour day, and I hate sending things back. I thought that not having a battery that is user replaceable is a REALLy bad idea. I mean, how could something that is such an obvious design flaw be over looked? Well, probably because it wasn't over looked. Chances are that someone at Apple thought it would really smart to turn the sale of an iPod into something that would insure even more revenue 6 - 12 months down the road when the battery had to be replaced.

I am not saying that Apple did this on purpose. But I am saying that it feels "icky".

I bought a Creative Labs Zen Xtra 30gig for 100 bucks less than the iPod 20gig. 12 -14 hour battery life, and it's user replaceable. Varied format support, and I can store any kind of file on it for the sake of transporting between home and work.

The headphones sucked, so I bought some Shure E2s.
 
iPod

dont know where you got your info, but the bit on battery life is just plain wrong. i've owned every generation of iPod and have yet to have to replace a battery. with each gen of iPod i have had at least 10 full hours of play time. also, the iPod charges to 80% of capacity in one hour. :D
 
styler said:
dont know where you got your info, but the bit on battery life is just plain wrong. i've owned every generation of iPod and have yet to have to replace a battery. with each gen of iPod i have had at least 10 full hours of play time. also, the iPod charges to 80% of capacity in one hour. :D
Well, to be fair, the battery life on an ipod is not something I speak of from personal experience. It is what I read in reviews. It was the reviews that steared me away from the ipod.

As far as replacement, I did say that it depends on usage. Again, not my personal experience, but knowing how much I (intended to) use my mp3 player, having to potentially replace a battery within a year is not something that I wanted to deal with. Sure, I will probably have to replace the battery in my Zen, but at least all I will have to do is buy one, pop the cover, and put it in.

To be clear though, I am not bashing Apple. Well, maybe a little. But all in all, I like Apple products. Probably would have bought an ipod, had it not been for the battery issue.
 
I would have to agree with Styler. I have a 2nd Gen Ipod that I have had for a few years and have not had to replace the battery. I listened at work almost daily for one year of that time. It is still running strong.

Actually, I would not be sad if it dies because I would have an excuse to buy the Archos AV400 or PSP that I have had my eye on.

If anyone thinks that Apple would get a lot of return business after a $400 iPod died in 6 months, I would beg to differ. Most people would be very unhappy and buy a different brand if that happened!
 
uofmtiger said:
If anyone thinks that Apple would get a lot of return business after a $400 iPod died in 6 months, I would beg to differ. Most people would be very unhappy and buy a different brand if that happened!
That was pretty much the jist of the reviews that I read.

Anyway, I don't want to beat a dead horse. I was offering my opinion on mp3 players based on what I read, and what I bought. So suffice it to say, I still reccomend the Zen Xtra based on it's merits, rather than the iPod's deficits, percieved or otherwise.
 
That was pretty much the jist of the reviews that I read.
It does not sound like you read any magazine reviews because almost all of them put the iPod at the top of the mp3 player list.

Cnet has most iPods listed with rating above 8 (the highest being an 8.3). The Zen has a top rating of 7.7.

PC Mag has ipod with a rating of 4.5 out of 5 and it is an editor pic. The Zen Xtra (60Gb) has an editor rating of 3.5.

PC World has Ipod at the top of their large capacity player list.

You have to look pretty hard to find the Zen beating the iPod in any publication that compares mp3 players. Most audio magazines have yet to review any mp3 players other than iPod.
 
Ok, last post on this from me.
It does not sound like you read any magazine reviews because almost all of them put the iPod at the top of the mp3 player list.
Here's where I got my information:

I did not read magazines. I did read reviews at MP3.com and like websites where the product is reviewed by a "journalist" / product tester. Although these types of reviews are helpfull in that they tell you major differences, feature sets and glaring short-comings of various products, I find them to be less informative than say, the reviews you find on Amazon.

The reviews on Amazon (and similar sites) are many (sometimes hundreds) reviews each by a different person who bought and used the product in question.

If you go to Amazon and read reviews of the iPod, you will find reviews for and against it. If you look at reviews for the Zen Xtra, you will find the same.

Additionally, when I look at something like Cnet, PC World, I look at more than just how many stars it has. 4 out of 5 stars does not mean it's the best product for me. If I did that, I would have bought an iPod. Clearly, the iPod has it wrapped up in the "star" category.

I am getting the impression that you are REALLY into your iPod. But are you so inflexable that you cannot admit that, like almost every consumer product, it has it's drawbacks?

So here's the bottom line. The point of my original post was to point out some drawbacks to the iPod that I hadn't seen anyone else mention. I DID read about these drawbacks on Amazon and MP3.com. I did not make it up to bash the iPod. I DO accept that the iPod is a great product. But it wasn't right for me.

I do apologize if I have offended anyone by saying the iPod lacks in the battery department.
 
You bought yourself a Creative. Congrats, my wife has one. We've both used it many, many times and it is a great unit - all for much less than an iPod. It's a great sounding unit, has many options available for it, and is small and rugged. You're gonna love it a whole bunch. Sometimes it just makes "economical" sense to not run with the i-crowd - you saved at least $100.00, now buy yourself some really nice headphones and treat yourself to a nice dinner with the money you saved.
 
Some replies to Jimmy Neutron about the iPod. Let me begin by saying that while I've owned many mp3 players I don't own an iPod, but I have listened to and used it along with many other players. I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions he has.

1.iPod contained no innovations, it sold solely based on style.
The iPod did have one enormous innovation, and that was ease of use. The scroll wheel was an amazing invention, and in usability terms I don't think anyone has ever duplicated it. When the first gen iPod came around the Creative Nomad was the king of HD players. This wasn't much of a kingdom though, because the Nomad was so difficult to use and so bulky many people were turned off by it. The Nomad took like 30 seconds to boot, and then each button click to scroll from one song to the next took almost a full second, sure the Nomad could hold a ton of music, but the only way to really listen to it was on shuffle or straight through, trying to do nearly anything with it's UI was unbelievably tedious. Then the iPod came around and blew it out of the water, it booted fast, it scrolled fast, and it's whole UI was designed to be simple and straight forward. The system didn't do many new things (it had a bit more PDA like functionality than the other UIs but really didn't add much) but it was so easy to use that people began using the features that had been existent for years, and they actually enjoyed using them instead of constantly being frustrated with them.

2.Any compression will make things sound worse
This is a mistake, there are many forms of compression that result in no sound loss within certain defined boundaries, this is the essence of sampling theory really. I won't go into how digital music works, but there are ways to compress data from a CD which result in absolutely no loss of sound. These methods require more processing power to be turned back into music, and that is why CDs have such low compression in the first place, to allow the decompression electronics on board to be as simple and cheap as possible. With simple lossless compression schemes a CD's filesize could probably be cut in half maybe more, especially when you consider the repetitive nature of most music, and how this repetition lends itself to lossless compression.

Here's a simple lossless compression algorithm. Lets say I've got a bit of a CD file, and it goes AAAAABBBBBAAAAABBBBB, I could compress this into 5A5B5A5B or maybe even 2[5A5B]. Both of these compressed formats can be converted exactly into the original but both take far fewer characters to express.

So yes, MP3 does accomplish extra space savings by throwing away data which it thinks most people won't notice, but no, not all compression schemes involve throwing out data.

3. Built in batteries are bad.
The reason Apple and many other companies choose built-in batteries over replacable ones is not some grand scheme to screw consumers, it's an effort to make the smallest player's possible. Pretty much all built-in batteries are Lithium Ion or some other advanced battery technology that has very high power/weight and power/volume ratios. These batteries are custom shaped to fit into the smallest space possible in the player, and allow the manufacturers to shave off a few ounces, and a few fractions of an inch while still having a decent battery life.

Now to respond to Elijah's post. Only really old iPods had such low battery life, the 4th generation ones go about 12 hours. If you wanted the longest lasting battery you should have gone for a Creative Zen Touch (over 24 hours) or that new Sony Network Walkman (they claim over 30 hours, though I don't know anyone who has one so I can't vouch for this, also you'd need to convert all your files into ATRAC instead of MP3 to get this battery life, it's not hard, it's just a mild annoyance).

All this being said, I run a RIO S10 with a gig SD card as my primary player, because I like the low power consumption and rugged skip free nature of Flash based players. I'm just trying to give a little credit where credit is due.
 
That was pretty much the jist of the reviews that I read.
It does not sound like you read any magazine reviews because almost all of them put the iPod at the top of the mp3 player list.

Cnet has most iPods listed with rating above 8 (the highest being an 8.3). The Zen has a top rating of 7.7.

PC Mag has ipod with a rating of 4.5 out of 5 and it is an editor pick. The Zen Xtra (60Gb) has an editor rating of 3.5.

PC World has Ipod at the top of their large capacity player list.

You have to look pretty hard to find the Zen beating the iPod in any publication that compares mp3 players. Oh yeah, most audio magazines have yet to review any mp3 players other than iPod.
you saved at least $100.00
I got my iPod with a $100 discount from Dell, so I guess it's a wash.
 
supermrh said:
Some replies to Jimmy Neutron about the iPod. Let me begin by saying that while I've owned many mp3 players I don't own an iPod, but I have listened to and used it along with many other players.
I also own a few different players, my niece owns the iPod and I transfer all her music to it on my computer, so I'm real familiar with it.

1.iPod contained no innovations, it sold solely based on style.
The iPod did have one enormous innovation, and that was ease of use.
True, but this was more "evolutionary" than "revolutionary". As more powerful players would hit the market, so too would better and faster software.

2.Any compression will make things sound worse
This is a mistake, there are many forms of compression that result in no sound loss within certain defined boundaries, this is the essence of sampling theory really.
Wrong. Any compression, by it's design alone, will throw out information to make data smaller. "Music" data, unlike "data" data, requires much more sophisticated decoding to be done correctly. Anytime you compress music, what the Error Correction System reconstructs is only it's best guess as to what should be there. I don't want a computer telling me that part "A" should sound like that when I know that it should sound like part "B" (because I've heard it several times on my analog turntable with no compression).

Here's a simple lossless compression algorithm. Lets say I've got a bit of a CD file, and it goes AAAAABBBBBAAAAABBBBB, I could compress this into 5A5B5A5B or maybe even 2[5A5B]. Both of these compressed formats can be converted exactly into the original but both take far fewer characters to express.
Decoders are revisioned all the time, as frequently as every month. This proves that there is no decoder that is accurate enough to decode and reconstruct data back to it's full originality. Manufactures also have several versions of the encoders/decoders, due to poorly written software - thus proving, once again, that no decoder will do the job better that using no compression can do.

So yes, MP3 does accomplish extra space savings by throwing away data which it thinks most people won't notice, but no, not all compression schemes involve throwing out data.
But people DO notice this, thus compression schemes do have one thing in common: they don't sound as good as no compression.

3. Built in batteries are bad.
These batteries are custom shaped to fit into the smallest space possible in the player, and allow the manufacturers to shave off a few ounces, and a few fractions of an inch while still having a decent battery life.
3rd party vendors have begun selling consumer replaceable iPod batteries. You don't think Apple could have mentioned this in their users manual instead of REQUIRING consumers to ship their units back to Apple for replacement, at a substantial price increase? Shame on you Apple.

.
:naughty: :naughty: :naughty: :naughty:
 
Wrong. Any compression, by it's design alone, will throw out information to make data smaller.
I send formated files in zip format via email on a weekly basis. The reason we use zip is because the format and data are identical to the source file.
you compress music, what the Error Correction System reconstructs is only it's best guess as to what should be there
FLAC has many choices including kicking out the file if there are errors. You do not have to use "Error Correction". http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation.html
Decoders are revisioned all the time, as frequently as every month. This proves that there is no decoder that is accurate enough to decode and reconstruct data back to it's full originality.
The decoders are not revised to make the files more lossless. They already accomplish this. They are updated to improve compression, time to burn the file, give more options (error encoding options as one example, "Normalization" being another).
But people DO notice this, thus compression schemes do have one thing in common: they don't sound as good as no compression.
They do not notice unless they are playing the file back on a computer or program that has a problem. The FLAC or other lossless file format is not the problem. Hydrogen Audio has a FAQ with the qualifications of double blind testing for music files. I have yet to read anywhere that people can tell the difference between the original CD and a FLAC file in a real test environment.
 
uofmtiger said:
I send formated files in zip format via email on a weekly basis. The reason we use zip is because the format and data are identical to the source file.
Sending zip files is quite a way different than music files. When you compress/decompress an audio file, your ears will be a lot more sensitive in how it was put back together. And because most of us (certainly an audiophile) will know what the source music sounds like based on hearing analog versions of it, he'll be able to tell the difference.



You do not have to use "Error Correction". [B]So if something goes wrong in ... was the last time someone improved a record?
 
They are all made in China,after all.
I completely agree with Jimmy about all mp3 stuff,compression,and Creative.
Have a nice dinner.
Enjoy
 
I'm not syaing compression is a bad pill to swallow. I love having my 600 CD's stored on my computer for instantaneous playback. But I'm not naive enough to believe the hype about analog and digital, no compression/compression, etc. All digital is compressed in some form or other, and judging by how many people still prefer analog records over their "perfect" CD counterparts, one can only assume that digital still has a long way to go. Even the manufactures acknowledge this by improving their players and software.
There are plenty of discussions about analog (vinyl) vs digital (CD) on this site. My opinions on that subject can be found in that thread.

I was referring to the digital CD vs the digital compressed lossless file. There is no difference between what you hear on CD and a compressed lossless file (FLAC, Apple Lossless, etc..).... Unless you apply normalization, at which point the compressed lossless file sounds better because it has lowered the amplitude of the clipping that is rampant on most of today's CDs.

For the record, I love vinyl, but this is a thread about mp3 players and there is no easy way to bring my vinyl records to work, to my car, to the yard, to work out, etc.... That is why I am only referring to compressed vs non-compressed digital music files.
 
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