Reccomend an MP3 player to me. (please)

In My Humble Opinion
21

I have an iRiver SlimX CD-MP3 player. I bought it from some online retailer for $120. They ought to be availible from any reputable online electronics retailer.

I love it. It’s not tiny, but since it lives in my backpack, it’s no big deal. Its slim shape fits well against my books, and the remote makes it ideal for backpack use. The remote on the SlimX really is the best remote anyone could ask for, and I can’t imagine having a CD based player without one. It come with an external battery plugin (which is a tube the size of two double A’s) and with that the battery life is a good twelve or so hours.

About a hundred and twenty or so songs fit on a CD. By carrying the player and a small jewel case with a couple CDs in it, I can have more music on me then I’ll ever need. I’ve had CDs that I’ve been listening to for months of heavy use and I still occasionally hear new songs come up. About once every three weeks I’ll burn a new CD with whatever has been on my mind, as well as an assortment of random stuff. It works out perfectly.

I don’t regret for a moment not having an iPod. They are dead sexy, for sure. But they arn’t worth the cost compared to the functionality of a CD based player. CD based MP3 players give you the option of infinate storage space on practically free CDs. They are not pocket-small, but how often are you really going to put an MP3 player in your pocket where it’s gonna bang around and get knocked into things and stuff? Chances are it’s going to end up in a backpack or purse- which a slim CD-based player is pretty well adapted for(a remote even makes it more desireable for backpack based play).

Overall, CD based systems are the best value. You lose a lot of the show-off value that comes with having your entire music collection on an iPod, but for the two to four hundred dollars you save, you can buy something else to show off- maybe a digital camera or a plane ticket to Europe or whatever sounds fun- and still have a very good way to listen to music on the go.

22

Whether they are worth the cost is a subjective matter. I’ve tried both and for me, the convenience of the iPod is worth the extra cost. 20GB is 30 CD-R disks worth of data, which is a lot to carry around. The iPod has a more flexible interface that makes it easy to choose the artist/song you want, and you can also set it to random play through your entire music collection or a selected subset of it.

By the way, a few people have mentioned the Archos players. There is a very important difference between Archos and other HDD MP3 players: the Archos needs no special software. It connects as an external hard drive, and you simply copy MP3 files onto it. The iPod (and others, I believe) needs the bundled software to transfer MP3 files. You can use the iPod as an external hard drive but it’s a separate feature, and MP3 files transferred this way does not play on the iPod. Also, you don’t really “transfer” files, you “synchronize” to the MP3 files on the host computer, so it only works with one host computer. It’s all a bit annoying, but I find it to be an acceptable compromise. Besides, once your CD collection is transferred, the only time you connect it to a computer is when you buy a new CD.

23

Flash players:
Pro: unskippable, small, light.
Con: Expensive, not much storage space.

Harddrive players:
Pro: fairly small, fairly light, massive storage space.
Cons: with so much music it’s really hard to write a really good interface. I want the flexability of winamp. Fairly expensive investment. They are skippable, but Ipod and nomad Zen, archos MMJB, edigital odessy 1000 are both very refined products which can take quite a beating and keep on ticking. beware, 3rd generation players are coming.

Mp3 cd player:
Pro: very flexable storage options, cheap.
Con: Big.

Personally i’m all for the HD players. The harddrive option is simply indispensible to me.

If anyone has questions feel free to e-mail me personally. I’ve done extensive research in my quest for and mp3 player(and i’ve yet to get one =( ) I also know of quite a few cheap, good quality players.

24

I own a Archos 10gig jukebox,so i can give you some of my opions on it.

The HD feature is a big plus,being able to transfer any large file in my pocket is great.
One annoying thing i have noticed is that if it is a long song,or encoded at a high bit rate there is a noticable skip as the HD spins up to load the remainder into the buffer.

You are also limited to 999 playable songs in one folder,so hitting shuffle on a large collection is impossible.

Another thing is that the internal charger has “burned out”,i have to take the four AA batteries out and charge them in a battery charger.
I bought it off a guy that needed to make rent so no original package or warranty card.
No idea how common this problem is.

One nice thing is the fact that the HD can be upgraded with a larger one right off the shelf at Fry’s.
When the DRM insanity finally hits all consumer electronics,i can bet there will be a large market in moding these older units with 30-40gig drives.

25

Does this mean you have to keep all your MP3s on your hard drive, as well as on your iPod? What if my hard drive was wiped out, is there a feature to download all the songs from the iPod back to a new hard drive? Could I use the same feature to copy all my music onto a second computer?

Does anyone know how the Nomad handles file and music transfers?

26

Archos for sure. I have the 10g player and use it when I go out running. Honestly it has yet to skip on me, ever. I have used the I-Pod. A friend of mien has it at work and lent it to me trying to convience me that it was superior to my Archos.

The I-Pod… looks… nice… yeah. Archos is a much more solid product imo.

27

I’ve never had this problem with mine.

With mine, I have a few folders of 1000 files each, and the random function uses them all as if they were one folder.

Mine’s got an internal rechargeable battery, so I don’t know, either.

28

Out of the box, you can keep one iPod syncronized to and from one computer. So no, you don’t have to keep the songs on your computer hard drive; you can always sync them back to the computer you transferred them from originally.

There are a number of shareware and freeware programs that overcome the limitation of one iPod/one computer, and allow you to back up to and from freely from other computers you may have. iPod.iTunes is a very popular one, but if you just go to versiontracker.com and search for ‘iPod’, you’ll find a number of similar products.

What do you mean by ‘solid’? If you mean ‘solidly constructed’, I gotta beg to differ. If you mean ‘solidly over-all a better product’, well, that’s just a matter of opinion. As you said. :slight_smile:

29

I’ll plug the Archos line as well–I’ve got the 20 gig Jukebox Recorder, and it’s served me well. It has a much smaller memory cache than the iPod, so the hard drive spins up more often, but I’ve never had problems with skipping and such, though I’ve never jogged with it, just lots of walking with it tossed into a coat pocket or backpack.

Anyone who owns one of the Archos line owes it to themselves to ditch the default Archos firmware and go to http://rockbox.haxx.se/ for Rockbox, and open-source firmware that’s continually evolving and does quite a few things with more functionality than the out-of-the-box stuff.

30

I have the panasonic expandium mp3 cd player, it works very well and all in all I am happy with it. Like others have said it fits about 120 songs on the cd. What I like about it is that it doesnt skip. I bought another mp3 cd player but the name of the manufacturer I do not know and that skipped constantly and returned it for the panasonic one. It was a toss up between this and the rio model.

The only con is that the display doesnt allow for text so I dont know what song it is and that it doesnt allow me to skip forward in the same song but only jumps to the next song.

Does everyone elses mp3 cd player work that way too?

kind of looked like

this

31

The question is really what do you want to do with the MP3 player.

I have a 5 gig iPod, and absolutely love it. The small size is the key feature I like about it. I would advise against buying a player unless you have held it. I have messed around with one of the Rio ones (20 gig) and while nice, the size reminded me of a Sega Game Gear.

Not quite portable.

The iPod is the size of a deck of cards, is lightweight, and will fit in your pocket without being obrtusive. It also has a 32 megabyte buffer so it has 20 mins of anti skip on it. It also exudes a feeling of quality when you use it somehow. I must say, I am generally quite jaded when it comes to electronics, but when I got my iPod, I was actually IMPRESSED by the quality and thoughfulness of it. It is pretty durable too, just shows scratches easy, but there are quite a few companies that make covers for them, and the 10 and 20 gig ones I believe come with one from Apple.

I would avoid some of the flash ones, while small and light, they really serve no purpose. MP3 encoding offers roughly one minute of music per megabyte, so a 128 meg flash based one only holds about 2 hours of music.

You can do that cheaper by just carrying the two CD’s with you. While smaller, they strike me as rather gimmicky, and memory expansions are expensive.

If you are going to spend the money, might as well get a HD based one, since it will be able to make up for its cost by the sheer volume of music it can hold.

I’ve found that even with only 5 gigs of music carrying capability, the iPod made my CD collection even more valueable to me, since I can now carry it all with me at any given time. Without the filler songs.

The price seems high, but frankly, I feel it worth every penny as it allows me to listen to my whole collection anywhere, any time, by carrying a 6 oz white and chrome box in my pocket.

Without even noticing it is there.

Other things to keep in mind, if it is a USB based player, avoid it. USB is slow. USB 2 is much faster, but if your computer has a USB 1 chipset in it, the player will default to slow speed transfers, and what would take a few minutes for a USB 2 or Firewire interface, will take a few hours instead.

Also note if you get an iPod, if your computer doesn’t have a Firewire port, you will need to buy a card. I believe they run like 30 bucks. Same for USB 2.