MP3 Player

1. People who exercise a great deal and find a CD player to be unreliable deadweight

2. People who enjoy headphones on the move but find a CD player to be unreliable deadweight & hate carrying CDs around with them

3. People who like gadgets and already have a MD deck and a japanese import GameCube etcetera.

Target shoppers are:

1. Ppl who don't have a lot of money who want a stylish toaster instead of the Wal-mart one

An iPod is a $350.00 invitation for a mugging.

-- jm (jtm), Sunday, February 23, 2003 6:32 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

The iPod's cachet has sadly diminished now that the common people own them.

They're made by Apple - they never had any cachet.

aaaaaaaaaah

The $199 iphone is out, that'd probably do it for me, but I think I'll just get the headphone jack of my sansa e250 repaired instead. Thing has a built-in fm radio.

If jm is to be believed, they once held considerable cachet for muggers.

e250 pFFFFT if you're not using the cheapo m200 series, you are a snob!

(but that $199 iPhone comes with a 2 year contract that is more expensive anyways)

Hello. I don't want to use my phone for music in the car.

Anyone recommend an MP3 player (presumably with Bluetooth), for a CD player-less car?

Still loving my Sony Walkman. They stopped making the basic good version but you can find them pretty cheap on Ebay from Japan. They do have Japanese menus though so that can be tricky.

What target market is buying the MP3 Player?
― Shirley Reddick, Sunday, February 23, 2003 4:29 PM (twenty-three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

People who like to listen to MP3s.
― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Sunday, February 23, 2003 4:38 PM (twenty-three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a Sony NW-A306 Walkman MP3 player. Sort of their mid to high range option when I bought it in 2023. The hardware itself is pretty high quality, good sound quality, all the features you'd want, great battery life, and most importantly it has a microSD card slot for music storage.

The one problem is, it runs on a modified Android OS that's SUPER slow. Like, it takes way too long to power on and it's laggy for a little while when it first boots up. And that's AFTER I had to use an open source app to "de-bloat" it, because it was full of random default Android apps that took up space, drained battery, and made the bootup process even slower for no reason. It's kind of wild how bad the OS is, a real own-goal and not what you'd expect for a gadget of this price. I've had MP3 players from various manufacturers before, all from decades ago, and they've all run much more quickly and snappily than this one.

I've got a weird mental block about this. Would this be straight-forward to use in a new car: https://www.fiio.com/echo ?

I emailed a car stereo centre and even they replied "We don't know. Everyone just uses their phone."

stupid page doesn't let you cut and paste but it does say "bluetooth for use with external speakers* (* not all speakers)". i guess the phone people are also using bluetooth.

I also have the a306. I love the cassette display, but yeah, the android is terrible. Also the analog output is limited at a really low output, I think that's an android limitation. Almost unusable. Thankfully I have a pair of Sony wireless headphones and it pairs really well with those, and supposedly pushes hi res audio to them over bluetooth. It seems like the more intense the file- for example, DSD- the more prone to interference over the wireless connection though.

Android really is the fuckin worst. Mac OS doesn't support any android devices of course, so I have to use a fairly janky app to get my mac to transfer onto the sony. I'll have to get a memory card soon.

I really like the idea of the mp3 player, though, even though I always also have my phone on me. It makes my listening more deliberate.

I'm not really sure why but I've always had a *thing* where I like to keep my phone and music separate.

does the car you're looking at have an aux port?

ime using an mp3 player in a car is not ideal because the player is small and the interfaces are clunky so changing tunes while driving can be dangerous unless you have a passenger who can help.

that fiio at least looks like it has big buttons so you can find the play/pause button easily.

Couldn't you just buy a cheap old android phone that has and SD card slot, fill it with mp3s and use it exclusively as an mp3 player?

this is what I do, just my old phone. the default Samsung Music app is perfect for my needs, they have stopped loading it on phones for some probably shitty reason, but it's still available on the app store.