Help me pick out an MP3 player

[Wombat]

5-6MB does sound pretty slow for firewire. However, USB1 is only going to give you 1+MB/sec

[KeiFront]

I also got an iTrip, nice little gadget I only use it in the car. And I get about 8-9.5 Mb/sec on firewire, USB 2.0 is a bit slower.

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by 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 ?

I don't think it will play WAV files. I briefly setup one for my buddy and it didn't have an option for playing WAV, but I didn't try either. The other thing is, it wouldn't play WMA files even though it was supported. I'm not sure why though.

Dave

[az]

Erm.. I of course meant WA 5.2, not 2.5 in that post

AZ

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Helevitia
I don't think it will play WAV files. I briefly setup one for my buddy and it didn't have an option for playing WAV, but I didn't try either. The other thing is, it wouldn't play WMA files even though it was supported. I'm not sure why though.

According to the manual, it does play WAV files, all the way up to 48KHz (although it looks like it only does the common sample rates, not any arbitrary rate). As for the WMA problem, that may have been due to the Windows DRM thingy, which I think is turned on by default in whatever software people normally use to encode to WMA.

[X-Caliber]

Hi Wombat,

"No, I had (it was stolen) a Nex. It's not bad, but it's way past its prime."

Can you explain this comment?

Thanks,

Vishal

[Wombat]

A Nex will cost you $100+, and that doesn't include the cost of the CF. Plus the cost of buying decent headphones (the ones it comes with are crap). And I was getting about 6-10 hours out of a pair of new batteries.

You can't upgrade the firmware on it, so it won't have feature upgrades in the future. Which is unfortunate, because there were a lot of things that are "okay but could be better with a software change."

It always drains the battery, even though I was told that it would power itself off of the USB cable when it was plugged in there.

It plays VBR MP3s, but it can't figure out how long they are (time remaining changes every time the compression rate does).

The display can show the MP3 info, or a graphic display of the sound, but not both, and changing between them is a couple menus deep. IIRC, messing around with the menus required you to stop playing music, pretty annoying.

For the money, there are smaller, more power friendly MP3 players now. And some of them have handy remotes which would have been kinda nice, too.

I bought it largely because I already had some CF. But now I would definitely buy a HD-based MP3 player if I were going to spend over $100 on a player at all.

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by 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 just purchased this player. To answer your questions:

1. Yes, it plays WAV files without any compression at the full 1411k bitrate.

2. Yes, you drag and drop folders, songs, files, txt files(and it can read the text file on the ihp-120)

One other thing I'll mention is that you can create playlists as well. You just tell winamp to open your iriver harddrive and create playlists right from the iriver. Then you save the playlist on the iriver and you are good to go.

If anyone has a question about the irvier, let me know.

Dave

[X-Caliber]

Thanks for the reply! How is the sound quality?

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by X-Caliber
Thanks for the reply! How is the sound quality?

I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I am actually very impressed. I'm not using the stock earbuds either though. I am using a low to-mid-range headset. I hear it sounds better than the ipod and most other players. I am ripping some OGG files right nwo to try it out. I'll report back.

Dave

[NuGGeTTi]

iriver ihp-120 except for the battery part just got myself one of theese and they rock!

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by NuGGeTTi
iriver ihp-120 except for the battery part just got myself one of theese and they rock!

What do you mean by "except for the battery part"?

Dave

[NuGGeTTi]

he didnt want a player with rechargable batteries and the ihp120 has a rechargable battery ! so that what i meant but im loving my ihp120 but it seems like i cant read txt files with it do u have to put them in a seperate folder to read them or????

[Helevitia]

The manual says that at 4 hours a day use, th battery should still be working great after a few years @ 80% capacity.

[NuGGeTTi]

yeah my batts hold upto 10hours at least!!!