My Sandisk Sansa View is dying or nearly dead, so I find I need a new portable MP3 player. I may well wind up with another Sandisk Sansa, but I thought I’d ask y’alls opinions first.
This is what I want:
[ul]
[li]Plays MP3s (and maybe other formats, but that’s what all my digital music is in)[/li][li]I should be able to use WinAmp or Windows Media Player to play music from it if it is plugged into my computer[/li][li]I should be able to use Windows Explorer to view files on it; in other words, I want the computer to see it as another hard drive when I choose to use it that way.[/li][li]Can be plugged into an external speaker/dock, preferably one that supplies its own power and can recharge the player. This one’s important, since I like to listen to music at home but my stereo system has no way to accept input from an MP3, and no, I’m not changing that any time soon. Right now I have an Altec Lansing speaker for my Sansa, but since it’s a proprietary interface, I don’t expect to be able to reuse it. :([/li][li]Has an AC power adapter available[/li][li]Minimum of 16Gb of memory. If it takes one of those microSD cards, all the better[/li][/ul]
I don’t care if it does videos, radio, or recording. Buying a smartphone is not an option.
The good (for now) news is that I seem to have fixed the dang thing. I found a web site called Anything but Ipod, and it gave directions on how to get into both the Manufacturer and Recovery modes, plus a utility called SansaViewTool which does things like clear everything off the Flash drive, set up new partitions, and reinstall firmware. Between those things, I was actually able to get the computer to recognize the player again, and I did a full format of the drive, reinstalled the firmware, and (so far) things seem to be working.
So I have a follow on question, that arouse from looking at the backup I’d made a while back of the files on the Sansa.
It organizes the music VERY nicely, from a folder and directory perspective (Artist, Album, songs), and I have loads, oodles, boodles of music that isn’t sorted in any way, shape or form. I’d like to have the unsorted music sorted the way the Sansa does it.
So is there any software out there that I can import all my music files into and then export to a new set of directories all nicely sorted? I could do it using the Sansa, I suppose, and that’s my alternate route, but it would be nice to do this without spending hours moving files off it and on it.
i’ve liked a number of different Sansa models, all worked good, FM radio very sensitive too.
Anything but Ipod is a very good website.
The Sansa can operate as external data storage and directory structure is important in that. with MP3 files, the tags in the file header govern the sorting and how the player presents files to you. you need to have the files on a computer to change the tags for the file. you can change any tag for a file in Winamp. mp3 file tag renamers can do all the files in a directory or subdirectory (like a subdirectory for an album).
[li]I should be able to use WinAmp or Windows Media Player to play music from it if it is plugged into my computer[/li][li]I should be able to use Windows Explorer to view files on it; in other words, I want the computer to see it as another hard drive when I choose to use it that way.[/li][/QUOTE]
Buy another Sansa, if you need to. iPods are better in a lot of respects, but obviously won’t do either. Likewise Zunes, and they’re being discontinued (RIP, noble Zune).
There’s other companies out there (iRiver, Cowon, Archos) come to mind, but, for your needs, I’m not aware of any obvious reason to switch. And you have a Sansa dock, so.
It sounds like your criteria has pretty much eliminated the lion’s share of the options. iProducts have plenty of docking options, smartphones have plenty of drag and drop windows options, and standalone mp3 players are going the way of the dodo.
Buy a cheap mp3 player, plug it into the aux in jack with a $8 cable.
How much music is in your library? As much as you hate iTunes, an IPod classic that’s big enough to hold your whole collection would at least minimize your interactions with iTunes. and youd get your docking options…and of you don’t want to send your money to the evil empire, buy used on Craigslist…
I did enjoy that, ShallowEnd, thank you. And Unintentionally Blank, I don’t regard Apple as the Evil Empire. I just want a few more choices than Apple is willing to provide. Or was willing to provide; I admit I haven’t kept up with what’s going on with iPods of late.
Thanks to the descriptions of Media Monkey’s capabilities (thanks for the pointer, typoink), I found that WinAmp (a program I already own) has a plug-in that will do the sort of organizing I want. I’m fiddling with a few things right now, but so far things are going well. If Media Library is to be believed, I have over 10,000 songs on my hard drive.
I love my ipod nano 4th gen, it is lovely and perfect in every way.
I hate itunes for Windows in a way that I’ve never hated anything before. itunes sucks the cock, it blows goat for quarters, I fart in its general direction.:mad:
If you don’t want to use iTunes, hers what you do. Get an iPod video (5th gen) and put rockbox (www.rockbox.org) on it. Then you get to use all the accessories that are made for the iPod without having to use iTunes. I use this and it works great.
It’s simple, easy to use, and the software is a lot better than Media Player.