Looking for an mp3 player...

**DumberDrummer** · 06-05-2006, 07:14 PM

I'm going off to college this fall, and am in the process of getting myself an mp3 player to take with me...

What I need from you are good experiences, brands to stay away from, etc...

I'm looking for something in the 20~30 gig range (I have a 9 gig music collection), preferably able to play videos, but its not necessary.

I know the ipod is kind of the ubiquitous mp3 player, but I don't know if I want one yet, so I was hoping to get some of your ideas first.

**Fox** · 06-05-2006, 07:35 PM

My MP3 player is the Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, 40GB version. I've owned it for... at least three years. I've had the headphone jack crap out on me twice, and it's not fun to resolder at all. This was in part due to my use of Grado heaphones, which have very heavy cords, and long stiff plugs that put a good amount of tension on whatever jack they happen to be in.

Not to mention the fact that it's pretty outdated compared to what's on the market now, and you won't be getting your money's worth when you think of the superior construction quality of newer models.

That said, I would recommend the Zen Vision:M 30GB (US$294). It's a little pricy, but there you have the option of viewing pictures or playing video. Word to the wise- the video, while of decent quality, isn't worth the extra dough unless you have a lot of downtime and a behemoth collection of pirated videos. My brother bought one a couple months ago, and it's served him well but I don't think I've seen him watch a video on it yet. It's just been a replacement for his Dell DJ 20, whose heaphone jack bit the dust the same way mine did. The only difference there was that with his player the solder joint for the jack was buried under the screen, which was attached in a way I do not understand.

If you're looking for a decent bit of storage and you decide that video is not for you, the Zen Sleek 20GB might be for you. It has -amazing- battery life and is said to be much more durable than my player or the ipo(o)d.

**40sondacurb** · 06-05-2006, 07:43 PM

If you want the most bang for your buck feature wise I'd go with the Archos Gemini: $269.99

It plays games downloadable from archos
WMV9, MPEG-4, AVI
up to 720x480 @ 30 f/s and stereo sound
Acts as USB host for your camera
JPEG (except progressives) or BMP
2.2" LCD 220x176 pixels, 262 000 colors
20GB
USB 2.0
Stereo analog Line In (via adapter included)
Audio and Video line Out (TV output)
Built-in microphone
Built-in camcorder and still camera
Up to 10 hours for music
Up to 4 hours for video on built-in LCD
Up to 2 hours for camcorder
4.2" x 2.4" x 0.7" Compared to the Ipod: 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.55"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...35#DetailSpecs

But I have no personal experience with it, just got a recommendation from a friend. I can tell you that creative has great firmware though.

sinclair_tm · 06-05-2006, 10:14 PM

i have to say ipod. i own an older 15gig one, and have loved it since the day i got it. and the new ones are even cooler, they have color screens, show pictures and play video. but the truth is they are all pretty much the same. i'll tell you what i tell everyone that asks me about ipods, and mp3 players. the best thing is to look at your music collection. what kind of computer is it on? what os do you run? how large is your library? what kind of file types do you use? do you plan on using online music services? with that in mine, see what players will work with all your stats. then goto a electronics store that has lots of different players on display. go heft them in your hand. play with their controls. see how they feel in your hand. take headphones and listen to them. then walk out of the store with the one that stole your heart. the ipod i got was perfect for me, but its not for everyone. and i hate the click wheel, which is why i still haven't gotten an new video ipod. well, that and i don't have thee cash or need for one.

**Fox** · 06-05-2006, 10:40 PM

Here are some good reasons why it's a bad idea to own an ipod

1. The battery will die within two years of moderate use. Most of my ipod-owning friends have had this happen. It will cost at least a third of the original price to have the battery replaced, and you lose all your music in the process.

2. The music format is completely proprietary. Forget about using napster, PlaysForSure wma, and even unconverted MP3 for that matter.

3. If you buy music from iTunes, your ipod is lost/destroyed/stolen/formatted and you no longer have those songs on your computer, you lost all your music. Period. Apple will not let you re-download those tracks. This did happen to my brother's girlfriend, and she was oh-so-super-pissed about it.

4. The price of an ipod is almost always more than the competitor

And the Archos... All I have to say about that is that the only Archos players I've experienced have been crap. My best friend owned one, and it was only trouble from the start. It's now sitting dead in a shelf of his; a 200 dollar monument to his buyer's remorse. The thing ran super-hot while it worked, and I would assume this had something to do with its demise.

A final note though- do look through all your options before making your final decision. The iPod wasn't for me, but you may find that you like the interface and styling enough to make up for its vast shortcomings.

**DumberDrummer** · 06-05-2006, 10:41 PM

The Zen sleek photo looks pretty sweet, I think, and 200 is just about right... I'll probably make a run into some stores around here after graduation and see what it feels like.

Another thing that just occured to me is that I'm going to have a laptop with me 90% of the time anyway, and its probably easier (and better) to watch videos on that instead...

Anybody else can feel free to chime in!

**Jason** · 06-06-2006, 12:00 AM

i have an iRiver. Its a 20 gig version. i found it through our PriceGrabber link. It was cheaper then the 5 gig version. The reason I went with iRiver is the reviews I found in many podcast books and articles. A lot of them rated it very high. Yes, I have though about doing podcasts for TSF. If enough people request it, and tell me wha they are looking for in a TSF podcast I will pick it up again. But back on topic, I love it. I was given a few mpe players before. None have compared. I can change songs by feel, change volume by feel and much more. I can hold pictures and text files. It is fairly easy to copy songs, much better then having to install iTunes for my nephews iPod. Infact I use MusicMatch for most of my playlists on my iRiver. Now to be fair, my nephews iPod is a bit smaller, but I always hated having to through iTunes for it. I did have a small mp3 player I got from geeks.com, but the lcd stoped working after a few months. That worked as an external drive and was fairly nice.

**DumberDrummer** · 06-06-2006, 12:04 AM

y'know a podcast sounds kind of interesting... you should start a thread and see if anyone is interested...

Anway, the 20 gig iRiver is 300 big ones, the same price as the Zen M, only without video support... kind of a tough decision... anyone used both and want to tell me which was better?

**Jason** · 06-06-2006, 12:08 AM

i know I didn't pay that much. Mine was under $200. It was actually less then the 5 gig version my about $30. I think I ended up getting it off of amazon.com.

sinclair_tm · 06-06-2006, 12:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox

Here are some good reasons why it's a bad idea to own an ipod

i don't think so!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox

1. The battery will die within two years of moderate use. Most of my ipod-owning friends have had this happen. It will cost at least a third of the original price to have the battery replaced, and you lose all your music in the process.

had mine 3.5 years and still get 6hrs out of the battery with apple's test. its only pricey if you have apple do it. you can get the batt and tool and howto from macsales.com for cheap. and if you do it yourself, you don't loose anything on the ipod.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox

2. The music format is completely proprietary. Forget about using napster, PlaysForSure wma, and even unconverted MP3 for that matter.

all legal music sales downloads are proprietary for the most part. drm itunes only work on ipods, and drm wma only work on devices that support them, and there are non that support both. itunes can convert any non drm wmas into a format that can go onto an ipod. and what do you mean by unconverted mp3? never heard of it. i have mp3's from all kinds of places, most of which i got long before itunes was around, and my ipod plays them all. and i have done no kind of converting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox

3. If you buy music from iTunes, your ipod is lost/destroyed/stolen/formatted and you no longer have those songs on your computer, you lost all your music. Period. Apple will not let you re-download those tracks. This did happen to my brother's girlfriend, and she was oh-so-super-pissed about it.

and who's fault is it for not making backups? its like that will all music download stores as far as i've been told.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fox

4. The price of an ipod is almost always more than the competitor

almost is the keyword.

<steps off soapbox> sorry, you took a stab at my precious ipod, and it did not like it, so i had to stand up for it.

there will be rants like this for and against all mp3 players out there. so lets stick to personal experience with these things. i love my old ipod, don't care for the interface of the new ones, and have a co-woker who has some little creative thingy that is super cool and he likes, and another's who wife has a iriver, and loves, and i think its neato too.

**Glaswegian** · 06-06-2006, 06:43 AM

Now that sinclair has stepped off his soapbox.........

I bought my daughter an iRiver for last Christmas. She had bleated on about wanting an iPod, but I knew it would never last in her hands. She would have dropped it and broken it within 3 hours (or possibly minutes).

I checked out a good many players and came down in the end to Creative or iRiver. iRiver won this time and my daughter thinks it is cool. It's just the flash memory one (so when she drops it, no damage) but the hard disc ones looked good as well. Plug it in and it appears as a removeable drive - nice and simple to use.

yustr · 06-06-2006, 08:11 AM

The iRiver H10 (20GB) looks attractive. Does anyone know if it can be used for file backup/transfer? My son has (had?) a Creative Zen Nomad that served as an auxillary HD on his laptop.

Can these new ones do that?

By the way, used Zen Nomads are readily available on ebay. You might think about one of those to save big $$$ (40GB = about $200).

**Fox** · 06-06-2006, 08:22 AM

Sinclair, please don't take my criticism of the iPod as a personal dig. I acknowledge that there are plenty of people out there that love it for what it is.

But consider this... why would you pick iTunes DRM over audible or wma if you're a consumer looking for flexibility? With wma and audible you can jump across different brands, but with iTunes you're tied to apple forever. What if the qualiy of their players starts to decline over the years?

And by unconverted MP3... I was under the impression that iTunes converted mp3s into AAC automatically when you put them on. I could be wrong, but it doesn't make a difference because you can't pull them off the pod anyway, and that brings us to a whole other extremely annoying flaw of the ipod- you can't take the music back off it. I don't know why apple would limit its players like this, except to boost iTunes sales for people who lose all their music (which I'll assume is true, because it is).

I'm listening to music almost every minute of every day. Music is my only passion, and I'm pretty serious about it; both performing, recording and listening. And I can hear flaws in hardware. For instance, now that I've repaired my headphone jack, I can tell that the right and left channels are out of phase slightly. It wouldn't bother the average listener. When it comes to quality, the iPod is lacking. 85dB SNR is way below par, with quality audio equipment in the 100+ range and tolerable equipment in the high 90's. This doesn't matter to the average user who still uses those atrocious apple earbuds, but it makes a difference.

If only for the flexibility of being able to use uncompressed WAV, Audible, OGG, MP3 and WMA, my vote still goes to anything other than Apple.

**40sondacurb** · 06-06-2006, 10:30 AM

Do you buy music or are you planing on using a subscription service? Because if you're going to use YUL or Napster then you should pick a player from the list of supported devices:

http://www.napster.com/compatible_de...ompatible.html

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mus...ble-56175.html

06-05-2006, 07:14 PM	#1 (permalink)
DumberDrummer Cymru am byth Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Oregon Posts: 5,377 OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 My System	Looking for an mp3 player... I'm going off to college this fall, and am in the process of getting myself an mp3 player to take with me... What I need from you are good experiences, brands to stay away from, etc... I'm looking for something in the 20~30 gig range (I have a 9 gig music collection), preferably able to play videos, but its not necessary. I know the ipod is kind of the ubiquitous mp3 player, but I don't know if I want one yet, so I was hoping to get some of your ideas first. __________________ Living with Louie dog's the only way to stay sane _____________________________________________ ... and with those words so begins my lifetime of longing for the devil's warm embrace

06-05-2006, 07:35 PM	#2 (permalink)
Fox TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: NJ Posts: 7,752 OS: XP Pro, CentOS My System	My MP3 player is the Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, 40GB version. I've owned it for... at least three years. I've had the headphone jack crap out on me twice, and it's not fun to resolder at all. This was in part due to my use of Grado heaphones, which have very heavy cords, and long stiff plugs that put a good amount of tension on whatever jack they happen to be in. Not to mention the fact that it's pretty outdated compared to what's on the market now, and you won't be getting your money's worth when you think of the superior construction quality of newer models. That said, I would recommend the Zen Vision:M 30GB (US$294). It's a little pricy, but there you have the option of viewing pictures or playing video. Word to the wise- the video, while of decent quality, isn't worth the extra dough unless you have a lot of downtime and a behemoth collection of pirated videos. My brother bought one a couple months ago, and it's served him well but I don't think I've seen him watch a video on it yet. It's just been a replacement for his Dell DJ 20, whose heaphone jack bit the dust the same way mine did. The only difference there was that with his player the solder joint for the jack was buried under the screen, which was attached in a way I do not understand. If you're looking for a decent bit of storage and you decide that video is not for you, the Zen Sleek 20GB might be for you. It has -amazing- battery life and is said to be much more durable than my player or the ipo(o)d. __________________ Antec Neo Power 500W, ABIT IP35-E, Intel E2180@2.66Ghz, Corsair XMS2 2x1GB DDR2-800, PNY 8800GT, 320GB Seagate * lazy college student alert *- If I've inadvertently ignored a thread, please Let me know about it Have I helped you solve your problem? Donate to Techsupportforums Klart Skepp!

06-05-2006, 07:43 PM	#3 (permalink)
40sondacurb #64 & #36 BACKBONE Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 5,805 OS: xp	If you want the most bang for your buck feature wise I'd go with the Archos Gemini: $269.99 It plays games downloadable from archos WMV9, MPEG-4, AVI up to 720x480 @ 30 f/s and stereo sound Acts as USB host for your camera JPEG (except progressives) or BMP 2.2" LCD 220x176 pixels, 262 000 colors 20GB USB 2.0 Stereo analog Line In (via adapter included) Audio and Video line Out (TV output) Built-in microphone Built-in camcorder and still camera Up to 10 hours for music Up to 4 hours for video on built-in LCD Up to 2 hours for camcorder 4.2" x 2.4" x 0.7" Compared to the Ipod: 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.55" http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...35#DetailSpecs But I have no personal experience with it, just got a recommendation from a friend. I can tell you that creative has great firmware though. __________________ Donate to keep the forum running "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully" -George W. Bush Last edited by 40sondacurb : 06-06-2006 at 10:24 AM.

06-05-2006, 10:40 PM	#5 (permalink)
Fox TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: NJ Posts: 7,752 OS: XP Pro, CentOS My System	Here are some good reasons why it's a bad idea to own an ipod 1. The battery will die within two years of moderate use. Most of my ipod-owning friends have had this happen. It will cost at least a third of the original price to have the battery replaced, and you lose all your music in the process. 2. The music format is completely proprietary. Forget about using napster, PlaysForSure wma, and even unconverted MP3 for that matter. 3. If you buy music from iTunes, your ipod is lost/destroyed/stolen/formatted and you no longer have those songs on your computer, you lost all your music. Period. Apple will not let you re-download those tracks. This did happen to my brother's girlfriend, and she was oh-so-super-pissed about it. 4. The price of an ipod is almost always more than the competitor And the Archos... All I have to say about that is that the only Archos players I've experienced have been crap. My best friend owned one, and it was only trouble from the start. It's now sitting dead in a shelf of his; a 200 dollar monument to his buyer's remorse. The thing ran super-hot while it worked, and I would assume this had something to do with its demise. A final note though- do look through all your options before making your final decision. The iPod wasn't for me, but you may find that you like the interface and styling enough to make up for its vast shortcomings. __________________ Antec Neo Power 500W, ABIT IP35-E, Intel E2180@2.66Ghz, Corsair XMS2 2x1GB DDR2-800, PNY 8800GT, 320GB Seagate * lazy college student alert *- If I've inadvertently ignored a thread, please Let me know about it Have I helped you solve your problem? Donate to Techsupportforums Klart Skepp!

06-05-2006, 10:41 PM	#6 (permalink)
DumberDrummer Cymru am byth Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Oregon Posts: 5,377 OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 My System	The Zen sleek photo looks pretty sweet, I think, and 200 is just about right... I'll probably make a run into some stores around here after graduation and see what it feels like. Another thing that just occured to me is that I'm going to have a laptop with me 90% of the time anyway, and its probably easier (and better) to watch videos on that instead... Anybody else can feel free to chime in! __________________ Living with Louie dog's the only way to stay sane _____________________________________________ ... and with those words so begins my lifetime of longing for the devil's warm embrace

06-06-2006, 12:00 AM	#7 (permalink)
Jason Seasons Greetings Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Tampa, FL Posts: 6,848 OS: Windows XP My System Blog Entries: 2	i have an iRiver. Its a 20 gig version. i found it through our PriceGrabber link. It was cheaper then the 5 gig version. The reason I went with iRiver is the reviews I found in many podcast books and articles. A lot of them rated it very high. Yes, I have though about doing podcasts for TSF. If enough people request it, and tell me wha they are looking for in a TSF podcast I will pick it up again. But back on topic, I love it. I was given a few mpe players before. None have compared. I can change songs by feel, change volume by feel and much more. I can hold pictures and text files. It is fairly easy to copy songs, much better then having to install iTunes for my nephews iPod. Infact I use MusicMatch for most of my playlists on my iRiver. Now to be fair, my nephews iPod is a bit smaller, but I always hated having to through iTunes for it. I did have a small mp3 player I got from geeks.com, but the lcd stoped working after a few months. That worked as an external drive and was fairly nice. __________________ Posting Tips \| Advice for New People \| Common Fixes \|

06-06-2006, 12:04 AM	#8 (permalink)
DumberDrummer Cymru am byth Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Oregon Posts: 5,377 OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 My System	y'know a podcast sounds kind of interesting... you should start a thread and see if anyone is interested... Anway, the 20 gig iRiver is 300 big ones, the same price as the Zen M, only without video support... kind of a tough decision... anyone used both and want to tell me which was better? __________________ Living with Louie dog's the only way to stay sane _____________________________________________ ... and with those words so begins my lifetime of longing for the devil's warm embrace

06-06-2006, 12:08 AM	#9 (permalink)
Jason Seasons Greetings Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Tampa, FL Posts: 6,848 OS: Windows XP My System Blog Entries: 2	i know I didn't pay that much. Mine was under $200. It was actually less then the 5 gig version my about $30. I think I ended up getting it off of amazon.com. __________________ Posting Tips \| Advice for New People \| Common Fixes \|

06-06-2006, 06:43 AM	#11 (permalink)
Glaswegian Moderator/ Rangemaster TSF Academy; Analyst, Security Team; Oor Wullie; TSF Surgeon and Resident Comic Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Glasgow Posts: 21,762 OS: Win XP Pro SP3 My System Blog Entries: 10	Now that sinclair has stepped off his soapbox......... I bought my daughter an iRiver for last Christmas. She had bleated on about wanting an iPod, but I knew it would never last in her hands. She would have dropped it and broken it within 3 hours (or possibly minutes). I checked out a good many players and came down in the end to Creative or iRiver. iRiver won this time and my daughter thinks it is cool. It's just the flash memory one (so when she drops it, no damage) but the hard disc ones looked good as well. Plug it in and it appears as a removeable drive - nice and simple to use. __________________ Iain - Defender of the Haggis and all things Scottish. I don't help by PM - post in the Forums. Ad-Aware::SpywareBlaster::SpyBot::SpywareGuard::SnoopFree::AVG Free::HOSTS File::HijackThis::Donate::5 Steps For Infected PCs

06-06-2006, 08:11 AM	#12 (permalink)
yustr Asst. Manager, The Conversation Pit Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Connecticut shore Posts: 5,007 OS: XP Pro My System	The iRiver H10 (20GB) looks attractive. Does anyone know if it can be used for file backup/transfer? My son has (had?) a Creative Zen Nomad that served as an auxillary HD on his laptop. Can these new ones do that? By the way, used Zen Nomads are readily available on ebay. You might think about one of those to save big $$$ (40GB = about $200). __________________ I didn't mean to say it. But I meant what I said. J. McMurtry In Vino Veritas

06-06-2006, 08:22 AM	#13 (permalink)
Fox TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: NJ Posts: 7,752 OS: XP Pro, CentOS My System	Sinclair, please don't take my criticism of the iPod as a personal dig. I acknowledge that there are plenty of people out there that love it for what it is. But consider this... why would you pick iTunes DRM over audible or wma if you're a consumer looking for flexibility? With wma and audible you can jump across different brands, but with iTunes you're tied to apple forever. What if the qualiy of their players starts to decline over the years? And by unconverted MP3... I was under the impression that iTunes converted mp3s into AAC automatically when you put them on. I could be wrong, but it doesn't make a difference because you can't pull them off the pod anyway, and that brings us to a whole other extremely annoying flaw of the ipod- you can't take the music back off it. I don't know why apple would limit its players like this, except to boost iTunes sales for people who lose all their music (which I'll assume is true, because it is). I'm listening to music almost every minute of every day. Music is my only passion, and I'm pretty serious about it; both performing, recording and listening. And I can hear flaws in hardware. For instance, now that I've repaired my headphone jack, I can tell that the right and left channels are out of phase slightly. It wouldn't bother the average listener. When it comes to quality, the iPod is lacking. 85dB SNR is way below par, with quality audio equipment in the 100+ range and tolerable equipment in the high 90's. This doesn't matter to the average user who still uses those atrocious apple earbuds, but it makes a difference. If only for the flexibility of being able to use uncompressed WAV, Audible, OGG, MP3 and WMA, my vote still goes to anything other than Apple. __________________ Antec Neo Power 500W, ABIT IP35-E, Intel E2180@2.66Ghz, Corsair XMS2 2x1GB DDR2-800, PNY 8800GT, 320GB Seagate * lazy college student alert *- If I've inadvertently ignored a thread, please Let me know about it Have I helped you solve your problem? Donate to Techsupportforums Klart Skepp!

06-06-2006, 10:30 AM	#14 (permalink)
40sondacurb #64 & #36 BACKBONE Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 5,805 OS: xp	Do you buy music or are you planing on using a subscription service? Because if you're going to use YUL or Napster then you should pick a player from the list of supported devices: http://www.napster.com/compatible_de...ompatible.html http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mus...ble-56175.html __________________ Donate to keep the forum running "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully" -George W. Bush

06-06-2006, 12:00 PM	#15 (permalink)
ebackhus Manager, Design Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: SATX Posts: 12,767 OS: WinXP Pro SP3 My System Blog Entries: 25