Help me pick out an MP3 player

[X-Caliber]

Hi,

Thanks for all the responses. one question, if I just rip a .wav file from a CD and copy it to (say) the iRiver HP-120 (without any compression), will it play properly since the bitrate is 1411k ?

The iRiver 120, is it just a portable hard drive, so when I plug it in, I would just drag files to the proper folders and go from there?

I don't like the idea of carrying around a portable CD player - just too bulky.

[Ribbit]

I don't know for sure since I don't own one, but I'm fairly certain that the iRivers can play WAVs, and are USB mass storage devices (so yes, you can just copy files to/from it without a special program). Go to iRiver's site and download the manuals to see what else they can do (they have optical in/out, for example).

BTW, just while I'm here, a friend of mine has an X-CLEF hard drive player. Avoid it.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by TransformX
Am I the only one who things the current best solution is still a portable CD player capable of playing Mp3 files ?

nope ...

I got the Expanium511 from Philips

when comparing various models at a local HiFi shop, it not only it offered the best sound by far (maybe except for a few +300,- € models), but it was also manufactured the best, that is to say, although it was a bit more pricey than the others I took into consideration, it was worth every cent and I didn't regret the purchase for a single second.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by Gurm
The iPod rocks. It's really a great player, and I wouldn't use iTunes even if you paid me. Just use one of the half-dozen third party apps.

- Gurm

Yo Gurm,

don't tell me you haven't heard about the 18 months lifecycle of iPOD's batteries and about the hassles to get a replacement ...

http://www.ipodhacks.com/article.php?sid=468

although, you can now use offers from 3rd party manufacturers, I'd clearly stay away from iPODs

[borat]

just got me a 40G ipod this morning, very nice too but itunes is doing my head in - ive got all my music files in a folder, called my albums, which then contains folders such as "beatles" and they then contain the album names and finally the songs. i used i tunes and it went away, disregarded the folders i have set up and tried to be clever messing everything up as it put them onto the ipod so now half of my songs dont come under any artist name. Is there any way of just plonking the folders which i already have into the ipod. So if i had a beatles folder, which contained hard days night and abbey road, it would come up on the ipod as artis beatles, with abbey road and hard days night as sub menues of it?many thanks
will

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Maggi
Yo Gurm,

don't tell me you haven't heard about the 18 months lifecycle of iPOD's batteries and about the hassles to get a replacement ...

I don't think those are reasons to stay away from iPods. <I>Some</I> people are having their batteries fail that early, it's not an "18-month lifetime" in general. And a new battery only costs $50 ($100 if you have Apple do it all).

My reasons for staying away from the iPod are the low battery time (as in, only ~5 hours on a charge) and the lack of better in/out ports, and no FM radio standard.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by Wombat
I don't think those are reasons to stay away from iPods. <I>Some</I> people are having their batteries fail that early, it's not an "18-month lifetime" in general. And a new battery only costs $50 ($100 if you have Apple do it all).

I should have put it in other words, like "do not support these kind of rip-off tactics" and remember, Apple started the battery replacement programm after they started getting slammed for that idiocy of expecting their clients to buy a new iPod, only because the battery had died down.

Obviously, the life time strongly depends on the amount of time you use the iPod.

Originally posted by Wombat
My reasons for staying away from the iPod are the low battery time (as in, only ~5 hours on a charge) and the lack of better in/out ports, and no FM radio standard.

fair enough ... my Expanium CD/MP3 player lasts 15hours straight with its single AA rechargeable battery and I don't miss an FM option at all, because I cannot find any radio station that I like to listen to for more than maybe half an hour.
Only exception would be one bavarian station that is digitally broadcasting via satelite, but I doubt that there are any portable personal DVB-s receivers available yet ...

[KeiFront]

Originally posted by borat
just got me a 40G ipod this morning, very nice too but itunes is doing my head in - ive got all my music files in a folder, called my albums, which then contains folders such as "beatles" and they then contain the album names and finally the songs. i used i tunes and it went away, disregarded the folders i have set up and tried to be clever messing everything up as it put them onto the ipod so now half of my songs dont come under any artist name. Is there any way of just plonking the folders which i already have into the ipod. So if i had a beatles folder, which contained hard days night and abbey road, it would come up on the ipod as artis beatles, with abbey road and hard days night as sub menues of it?many thanks
will

I guess your mp3's aren't tagged. Itunes looks at the mp3 tags to sort your music.

I personally use Ephpod works great it also has a preference "Use directory Structure if no tags available " so you don't need to tag all your mp3's (it could be that the windows version of iTunes also has a preference like ephpod to use the directory structure (haven't tried the windows iTunes yet ) only the Mac version).

If you need more help just ask.

[borat]

cheers, ended up going through 70% of my MP3 collection in itunes and renaming the artist and album so that it now appears on the ipod properly - Theres a real gap n the market for software which would allow you simply to grag and drop a windows folder of artist and album titles straight into a portable mp3 player.

[spadnos]

@borat:
I can do that with my M-Station.

I have a directory structure similar to yours, except for the album names. (Mp3\Artist\Song.mp3)

There is no software needed, apart from the USB mass storage driver. The thing is just a hard disk. In fact, it's a standard laptop HD - I have a 30G drive in it ATM.

The software gives me a menu that lists all .mp3 (or .wav, I think) files, and directories. If you're on a directory and hit the right arrow key, you get to the subdirectory. The songs are listed by filename (without the .mp3 extension). I think they list by Title if there is id tag info. (Because of the method I used to rip my CDs, I have no id3 tags on most of my collection)

Too bad it's only USB 1.1 - makes transferring 16G a long process.

- Steve

note: I didn't recommend this device because I have had problems with batteries and it's pretty big. Other than that, it's an amazing device: good sound quality, modular expansion (standard drives and battery accessible via snap-closed covers), inexpensive.

[KeiFront]

Borat I hope you got a firewire connection. It's still a bit faster (and lower CPU power) than USB2.0. Don't try to use USB 1.x, it's dog slow like spadnos mentions.

I've got almost all of my mp3's tagged (+-95%) it takes a while but it's worth it, it's even usefull when you use the winamp media library.

[spadnos]

Originally posted by KeiFront
Borat I hope you got a firewire connection. It's still a bit faster (and lower CPU power) than USB2.0. Don't try to use USB 1.x, it's dog slow like spadnos mentions.

I've got almost all of my mp3's tagged (+-95%) it takes a while but it's worth it, it's even usefull when you use the winamp media library.

It's CRITICAL when you use Winamp media library, esspecially if your layout isn't Artist\Album\Song.mp3.

If you don't use the 3-level hierarchy, it can't figure out artists (it thinks all my music is by 'Mp3Test' and I have albums like 'Til Tuesday' and 'The Beatles'. It was really funny with A-Ha - the hyphen in the directory mane made it think it was an Artist - Album type of name, so it thinks I have an album named 'Ha' from the artist 'A'.
One of these days, I'll re-rip, possibly to Ogg Vorbis - but it takes a while to do 300 CDs.

- Steve

[az]

Winamp 2.5 improves the library autodetecting

AZ

[spadnos]

This was with Winamp 5.01.

It must be better - it has a higher number

- Steve

[borat]

i find that firewire is pretty slow - i get an average reate of about 5-6 meg/second, which then means that im looking at the best part of an hour to move 20 gig of songs. i thought firewire could transfer much faster than this - must be down to the ipods HDD i guess - for anyone who is thinking of getting one, its a nice little thing, although i fing the user interface a little bit annoying, id like to be able to stack albums and use one button to change to the next album like on my CD autochanger, and it doesnt fit many album titles on the screen wothout scrolling, got the itrip with it which it really pretty spooky - its like roaming around with a remote control on your PC's mp3 list when your near an FM receiver. Also has limited format support, but i find MP3 fine for my needs. On plus side, very small, looks amazing, seems quite resiliant and robust and i know have 5000 songs in the palm of my hand to take wherever i want. Overall its a quality peice of kit - dont buy it from Eurpoe though, they cost £400 (40gig) here in the UK, i got mine for £310 shiped from USA, but if you have a mind to buy one on your holiday out there you will get it closer to £250!