Tell me about your mp3 player

[GB]

I am looking to buy (or get as a gift ) an mp3 player. iPod is obviously the most popular, but a buddy of mine has a Rio Karma and loves it. He told me that iPods are great for people who are not comfortable with technology because they make the menus so easy, but for people like him and me something like the Rio is great because menus do not intimidate us and the Rio is a bit more robust as far as features go. The problem is that they have discontinued the Rio Karma so that one is out of the question. The iPod also seems to offer the largest storage capacity which is important to me because I have thousands for CD's.

What mp3 player do you have? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? If you were to buy another one would you get the same kind you have no or look at other brands?

 

[Andy M.]

GB:

I do not now have an MP3 palyer and probably never will. But I do have a question generated by my lack of knowledge on the subject. Not trying to be a smarta$$ with this question.

Just how many features do you need to play songs?

 

[GB]

Since I will be storing my entire (or close to it) cd library I will need various ways to organize it. One of the main features I am looking for are way to do this. For instance if I am in the mood to listen to jazz then I would like to be able to tell my player to just play all my jazz CD's, but if I am in the mood to listen to CD's from the 70's then I want to be able to do that as well. Some CD's will fit into multiple categories though so I need to be able to put multiple labels on them.

My brothers iPod has the ability to do video as well as music. He can load pictures on it to show off his beautiful niece . He can also load TV and DVD shows and movies onto his.

 

[Andy M.]

Thanks for the tutorial, GB.

Yikes! I am woefully behind the times.

I have vinyl records and casette tapes (no 8-tracks) and CDs. I have to be in my car or in my home to listen to my music.

 

[jennyema]

If I loaded all my cds onto a tiny little machine I would surely lose it or break it soon after!

I have a little Ipod Shuffle. So does my little 5 year old neighbor boy. We share cool covers for them

I love it. I only holds 130 songs or so, but that's all I need to keep happy walking around or killing time. Plus it's sooooooo little.

Doesn't the new Ipod (not the video) do all that stuff?

 

[GB]

I am not sure Jenny. It might. My brother just got his last week and he is the only one I know who has one. He can assign genres to CD's, but he is not sure if he can assign multiple genres and that is something I need to be able to do.

I love how all of these mp3 players talk in terms on number of songs. The makers of these things obviously do not listen to the type of music I listen to where a song can last anywhere from 5 seconds to 75 minutes

 

[wasabi]

What a great subject! How did you know I just bought myself a video iPod for my birthday this weekend. LOVE IT! I bought the black, 30GB model and have been in download heaven. Photos, music videos, music. You will not believe the sound that comes out of this little thing. The movies come out crisp and clear. I went to the Apple store to see what the hubbub was about this 5th generation iPod. I watched an episode of Lost on it and was blown away. Here is a link to read all about it. Happy Birthday to me!

http://www.apple.com/ipod/ipod.html

 

[GB]

The black ones are so slick looking Wasabi! Happy early birthday. Have a blast with your new toy

 

[mudbug]

Thanks for the tutorial, GB.

Yikes! I am woefully behind the times.

I have vinyl records and casette tapes (no 8-tracks) and CDs. I have to be in my car or in my home to listen to my music.

This is how pathetic I am, Andy - I talked HH into buying me a new turntable so I can play all my ancient vinyl. Only the kid in our house has an iPod.

 

[recipefan007]

My mp3 player is my cell phone hehe

 

[Zereh]

I have an iPod and I've had nothing but bad luck with them. Maybe it's because I use it so much. =/ But I'm on my third one and it's dead again; luckily I have a month left before my warranty is up. I will be getting another mp3 player eventually, but I can definitely say it won't be an iPod.

Menus to me are just cosmetic. I'm like you GB and don't have a problem with using one that is a little more complicated. So while ease of navigation is nice, there are other things that I will be concentrating on for my next purchase.

The first and foremost thing I will look for is one that gives you the ability to remove songs from it. How stupid that the iTunes / iPod doesn't give you that option; instead I had to download hacks from the internet. Another really, really important feature to familiarize yourself with is the battery ... is it one that you can replace or is it one that can only be changed by the manufacturer or an authorized dealer?


Z

 

[middie]

i'm curious about them as well. i know nothing about these things, but i got one today as an early christmas gift. mine's a sony. it's 1 gigabyte (s/p)
holds 695 songs. network walkman digital music player, AND it has an fm tuner. 3 hour playback and up to 50 hour battery life. and a built in usb direct connector. says it's skip proof too. i think it was 109.00.
just wondering if this was a good deal ?

 

[masteraznchefjr]

i've always had bad luck with ipods so i got a creative zen micro, but i go for function and price. ipod is good looking and easy simple interface

 

[Vicious Vaness]

I've been looking for a mp3 player for a long time. I want something simple that I can work out with, so I'm looking for a flash instead of a hard drive. The sad thing is, I had a creative zen nano, but returned that because the store I got it from sent me the wrong one, and I had a big dispute about it with them. The second one was an iriver t10, that was "given" to me, but I returned it to get an ipod nano, but I couldn't find the 4 gb. But then, I saw the new ipod, and it was so pretty and it was only $50 more. It's so hard to decide what to get, there's always something new and cooler coming out. I guess it all comes down to my main purpose for it and what I can afford. [FONT=&quot][/FONT]

 

[urmaniac13]

I've been looking for a mp3 player for a long time. I want something simple that I can work out with, so I'm looking for a flash instead of a hard drive. The sad thing is, I had a creative zen nano, but returned that because the store I got it from sent me the wrong one, and I had a big dispute about it with them. The second one was an iriver t10, that was "given" to me, but I returned it to get an ipod nano, but I couldn't find the 4 gb. But then, I saw the new ipod, and it was so pretty and it was only $50 more. It's so hard to decide what to get, there's always something new and cooler coming out. I guess it all comes down to my main purpose for it and what I can afford.

If you are looking for a portable mp3 player for working out, I don't think too big of a capacity is necessary. I haven't even seen any portable with 4GB (1 giga is the biggest one I have seen) but if you are going to use it while exercising, you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time searching around the song(s) you want at that moment and you may want to change around the line up periodically, which means probably around 256mb would be sufficient. If I were you I would program several playlists on my desktop, considering the songs for warm up, lifting, low intensity cardio, high intensity cardio, stretching, cool down etc., and load the playlist I feel like that day into the portable before working out...

 

[Vicious Vaness]

If you are looking for a portable mp3 player for working out, I don't think too big of a capacity is necessary. I haven't even seen any portable with 4GB (1 giga is the biggest one I have seen) but if you are going to use it while exercising, you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time searching around the song(s) you want at that moment and you may want to change around the line up periodically, which means probably around 256mb would be sufficient. If I were you I would program several playlists on my desktop, considering the songs for warm up, lifting, low intensity cardio, high intensity cardio, stretching, cool down etc., and load the playlist I feel like that day into the portable before working out...

That's a good idea. Thanks! The ipod nano comes in a 4gb. I also like the idea of bringing the player into the car with me. So I've been thinking about that also. I'm indecisive and fastidious.

 

[thier1754]

I want to know how to take a track off a cd and post it online...Can anybody help with that? Will the quality be affected by the quality of the computer you rip/burn it on?

 

[marmar]

You can't assign multiple genres in iTunes... not that I've noticed at least.
You can make smart playlists though for each one, but that would take a bit more work, you could assign each smart playlist to pick songs with "whatevergenre" and then that way you could put multiple genres in, but it wouldn't work with the genre menu on the iPod sorting it into multiple categories.

I've had an iPod for nearly two years, but I've used Apple products all my life with no problems. And all my music was already in iTunes when I bought the iPod.

 

[Rob Babcock]

I haven't found an excuse to buy one yet. I have tons of music on my PC, plus $11,000-$12,000 worth of audio gear, but no real use for a portable. Still, if I was gonna buy one I'd go with the Zen Touch from Creative. The popular concencus among audiophools...er, I mean audiophiles, is that it's the best sounding player. Plus it's cheaper than the iPod.

Lastly, the iPod is just such a toy for the lemmings! I can't stand crap like that! It's just a yuppie status symbol, like a blackberry. I'd rather have something that's not so mainstream.

 

[Raven]

Zereh took the words right out of my mouth.

I have 3 major problems with most MP3 players on the market.

1. Factory installed batteries
2. Volitile Memory
3. No SD/MMC card support.

These three concerns play into each other quite nicely. Allegedly the "more popular" MP3 player batteries have an average lifespan, under normal (teenager) useage of approxamately 18 months, and also anecdotally, these batteries cost as much as the unit to replace.

I may need correction here, but it is my understanding that most MP3 players on the market do not utilize non-volitile memory (memory that will retain after the power is removed) so when the battery is removed at the factory, Poof! There goes your playlist along with any music that you have not backed up.

Few people know how the Secure Digital (SD) card came to be. It was originally intended to be the replacement for the Compact Disc (CD) and were thus optimized for storing and playing music. When this did not catch on, it was found to work fine in digial cameras and thus the SD card found it's niche. But now some MP3 players are starting to come back to the venerable old SD card. MMC cards will do the job, but are not optimized for music and thus slower than SD cards.

Both SD and MMC cards are non-volitile and will hold it's memory for an estimated 100 years after power has been removed entirely, so you have no worries about losing playlists and/or purchased music.

Further, by spreading your music out over several SD/MMC cards you won't have all your music lumped into one memory bank like a bowl full of jelly beans. You can catagorize your tunes by genre, year, artist or personal preference if more than one person in your household is using your MP3 player.

So what do I look for in an MP3 player? Only 2 things. Replaceable batteries, and an SD/MMC slot. Granted, low prices don't hurt either. The rest is just bells and whistles that drains the battery.

The best one I've found so far is a generic player from Overstock.com called a "Mini".

On the subject of not being able to download from an MP3 player to another device, it is my understanding that this is a concession made by MP3 player manufacturers to the recording industry to prevent piracy.

~ Raven ~