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Good Quality Mp3 Player?

C

Chackalacka

Member
I have a mixer that will accept an Mp3 player.

I can connect it all to powered monitors that I have (KRK Rocket 6's)

Never been the Mp3 route before.......but in this instance it might have a useful application for me.


(1) What's a good Mp3 player without dropping major sheckles for I-pod related products?

(2) Does the audio reproduction differ between players?

(3) all I'd use it for is music from I-tunes store

(4) are I-tunes o'k for half-decent-sound?

(5) Do I need an mp3 type player...or have they come out with something better than that in those kinds of players?

(6) want keep it simple.......just download I-tunes...then put them into player.......then play player.
 
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I have enjoyed my Sansa Fuze (not the second one) for a few years. I put RockBox on it and it certainly does. It was < $100 and it is brilliant. I have kept it mint (much to the chagrin of my kids who each have their own, or, had...) and can turn it on to either the stock Fuze firmware or the RockBox firmware.

It sounds better than any of my ipods and plays about any type of audio file. It's got a micro-sd slot and, yeah, my kids had music from their Aunt, who purchased it from the itunes store. We run Debian so I don't know how it works with itunes. It works with all the music managers in Linux.
 
I love my Cowon S9. When it was reviewed they said it's interface was a little clunky compared to the I-Pad, but it's sound was superb. Considering an MP3 player is ostensibly used for listening I dare say the sound is a rather important factor. ;)

Never tried it on iTunes. I try not to use iTunes wherever possible.
 
For your needs, it really sounds like an iPod Touch would be best suited for you. You can try finding an older used one to fit your budget.

Since the iPod Touch has WiFi, you can browse iTunes Store directly, download directly to the Touch and play. Very simple.
 
For iTunes with the old DRM, you must have iPod. Apple has tried to go away from DRM in recent years. And iTunes downloads are not MP3, Apple uses AAC as their compression algorithm (which is actually superior quality to MP3).
 
Have Sony's newest mid mp3 which sells for around $90. For the money, I think its the best offered and it has a decent cache...16GB, but has no SD card expandable.

It's easy to use (has a couple of minor quirks) but the long batt life makes up for these. It's fairly well built. Dropped my several times with no bad effects.

It is superior to the early Sansa Fuze I had, and the Sony program (Media Go) is better than the WM site to transfer.

Remember that the mp3 will greatly reduce the quality if you pass the data through your home system.

However, if you want to spend $250+, then you could go to the Apple Touch or the Sony Z series, which I think will record in FLAC, which is a lot better than AAC/MP3 formats.

Would I go with the NWZ-E385? You bet. Remember you get what you pay for.

Q2
 
I was thinking I'd go with a player that handles AAC.....

I will pay for I-tunes because they claim all their downloadable music is AAC......without having to convert anything once you get it in the computer

The I-pod Touch that was mentioned seemed to fit the bill....but I'll check out the Sony.......

I was hoping that an AAC capable player's sound would not degrade further
when I hook it up to my mixer jacks (which amplify headphone sound)

How much sound quality loss can I expect doing this?
 
Chackalacka said:
I was thinking I'd go with a player that handles AAC.....

I will pay for I-tunes because they claim all their downloadable music is AAC......without having to convert anything once you get it in the computer

The I-pod Touch that was mentioned seemed to fit the bill....but I'll check out the Sony.......

I was hoping that an AAC capable player's sound would not degrade further
when I hook it up to my mixer jacks (which amplify headphone sound)

How much sound quality loss can I expect doing this?
Click to expand...

The E-385 handles AAC, and is suggested to transfer using this format, which is at 256.

Any mp3 will result in compression which leads to a loss of quality, unless you go Lossless (FLAC)...which in turn calls for the upper ender units of over $200+

Mp3 is really meant to transfer and carry. The newer mp3 is better, but you have to pay a lot to get any quality, eh?

Q2
 
Chackalacka said:
I was thinking I'd go with a player that handles AAC.....

I will pay for I-tunes because they claim all their downloadable music is AAC......without having to convert anything once you get it in the computer

The I-pod Touch that was mentioned seemed to fit the bill....but I'll check out the Sony.......

I was hoping that an AAC capable player's sound would not degrade further
when I hook it up to my mixer jacks (which amplify headphone sound)

How much sound quality loss can I expect doing this?
Click to expand...

I run my Sony into my home system thru it's headphone jack all the time. If the mp3 file is decent to start with, I find the results quite acceptable. A lot will depend on the style of music you listen to. I listen to modern rock/post grunge a lot so the source material isn't that "hi-fi" to begin with:lmao:
 
The Samsung Galaxy S and its Nexus S twin with its Wolfson dac are considered one of the best if not the best in terms of portable players. Does require Voodoo sound app.
Plays anything including flac.

Apparently it makes phone calls too. :)
 
You can find a Fiio X3 for less than $150. THE BEST portable player...period. And a very fine headphone DAC. This machine will play mp3, flac, Ogg, hi-rez files, WAV, and many others. Clunky user interface, but the sound is the bottom line. No other portable can match it (except, maybe, the Astell machine...at five times the price...and, even then, it only matches it).
 
I'm stuck on having a "hard copy", that is I'll buy the CD rather than download a single song. Does ripping from CD change the game, or is a good player still a good player, regardless of the source material (download versus CD)?

Probably a dumb question, but I am the least computer savvy person I know.
 
I own a Galaxy S4 with the Exynos 5 Octa-core processor and Wolfson Micro WM5102 DAC since I live in Korea. However, to be honest, my iPad with a Cirrus Logic DAC sounds better outright.

Using the built in music app on the iPad versus using either Neutron or PowerAmp on the Galaxy. To be honest, my 5th generation iPod "Video" which uses a Wolfson WM87588G DAC, also sounds better than the Galaxy S4.

wunderkind said:
The Samsung Galaxy S and its Nexus S twin with its Wolfson dac are considered one of the best if not the best in terms of portable players. Does require Voodoo sound app.
Plays anything including flac.

Apparently it makes phone calls too. :)
Click to expand...
 
Chack, why would you want to apply an mp3 through a system, knowing that compression would reduce the end result? I can see it if working in the garage and you don't want to handle the unit with greasy hands or preoccupied.

Q2
 
trhee said:
I own a Galaxy S4 with the Exynos 5 Octa-core processor and Wolfson Micro WM5102 DAC since I live in Korea. However, to be honest, my iPad with a Cirrus Logic DAC sounds better outright.

Using the built in music app on the iPad versus using either Neutron or PowerAmp on the Galaxy. To be honest, my 5th generation iPod "Video" which uses a Wolfson WM87588G DAC, also sounds better than the Galaxy S4.
Click to expand...

I suggest you Google up the "original" galaxy s voodoo sound.

Know that modern phones <> better sound. There are tweaks behind the scenes that allowed the galaxy s to be sdoi good too the point that an external DAC is unnecessary. As usual ymmv applies.
 
Quadman2:-


Reason I'm considering running an mp3 thru the stereo:-

I play bass guitar. For practise I like to play along to songs that can be played on the stereo.

I have cd's........I have cd players........but they (players) are getting old and I'm not crazy about the sound they produce anymore.

but for faster selection of songs I could run a good quality Mp3.

It occurred to me after reading another post here that I could rip some songs from cd's to the computer (Windows Media Player) and then sync and download selected songs to an MP3.......

In the Windows Media Player it seems to give the impression that I could select songs from the library playlist and then choose a quality format to burn to the MP3.....

So doing this I could bypass I-pod and Apple and still get half decent sound when I played the MP3 thru the stereo.

The MP3 seems more convenient to me for what I would be using it for.

But like you say....if it's going to sound really crappy over the stereo.....then I won't go that route.

If I had the Sandisk ClipZip....or the Fiio X3...or the CowanS9....etc etc....I should be able to download from WinMedPlayer in a fairly good quality format.....right?

I think WinMedPlayer let's you select your format for MP3 download.

I could burn a lot of tracks from cd's doing this method and save myself some major deniro instead of shopping I-tunes.....right?


I suppose I would have to pick an MP3 player that supports the best audio format that WinMedPlayer supports.....
 
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