recommend me an mp3 player?

Yea, Archos sounds up your alley. The thing with the iPod is that you need a 3rd party tool to get music back OFF it, which is a PITA.

i still use an old iriver flash player too!
it is constant ridicule central but i love that it takes a reg AA battery. plus is small and rox. dunno abt newer ones..

I think I have my first gen 64 megabyte rio somewhere.... god that was turd

It had usb actually....

WHICH ONE WILL PLAY MY .OGGs

-- bell_labs, Wednesday, 6 February 2008 15:52 (59 minutes ago) Link

I used an old iriver until about 4 months ago and got this:

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/7/

it's great. plays oggs, simple usb storage device, audiophile approved.

i endorse the cowon iaudio 7. i bought one for my bf.

i'm quite happy with my ipod though :(

i basically want this but small

http://media.zzounds.com/media/feed/large/MARPMD660.jpg

my only complaint about the i7 is that the touch controls are a little too sensitive. but it has awesome options like being able to adjust volume balance for the left and right channels. any musicians that may have slight deafness in one ear would appreciate this feature.

actually this is my favourite pic of the maranzt b/c srsly that guy's hand is either huuuge or shopped
http://www.synthtopia.com/news/05_06/images/PMD660_Hand.JPG

i7 also has an audio in for recording, but i haven't used it yet so can't vouch for it.

oh wait also has built in mic. (just looked)

that sounds awesome. it works ok with macs?

I like Zoom H2 for recording. I should get my own.

http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/images/zoom-h2-accessories.jpg

4 channels dog

yeah i assume it works with macs. i use it with linux and it acts just like a usb thumbdrive so there's no special driver software you need for anything. just copy files to and from it like a regular drive no problem.

Is there any Mac-connective MP3 player that isn't an iPod? I have never had an iPod that didn't fuck up all over the goddamn place EVERY TIME I pressed 'play.'

ha i was just going over the product features and totally missed another crazy thing i've never used. you can schedule it to record radio at a specific time.

http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_i7_feature.php

from the i7 page:
OS
- Microsoft Windows 98/98se/ME/2000/XP (NT not supported)
- MAC OS 10.X (data transfer only)
- Linux kernel v2.2 or higher (data transfer only)

i don't know exactly what they mean by "data transfer only" but i assume if you're using it with linux it will work fine for mac.

I'm guessing that the iPod probably doesn't actually have worse failure rates than any other mp3 player. Abbott, some of the ones that you can "just drag files onto" should work.

The i7 has programs that let you encode video files for it's small screen and do things like make animated wallpaper, so I assume that's what the data transfer only means.

hm see, as long as it has a good preamp, i'm fine with buying an ext mic
xposts lala

i7 also has way better battery life than the ipod

im getting one, you guys convinced me!

and the idea of having to use iTunes puts me off

lots of media sw supports ipod, drag and drop even, i just have itunes.exe in case i need to do the 'restore' thing to my wife's ipod (i have a little zen). less features + more expensive does the ipod in. i7 seems cool.

Flash based mp3 players are for housewives and little girls

and old ladies

and sometimes me

i'm pretty into the idea of the H2 zoom
tho btw
Please note: The Zoom H2 will not mount as a USB Drive on MAC OS X 10.5.0 Leopard unless you update to H2 Firmware version 1.2 or higher.

i ordered the 8gb i7 :D

awww yeah, i still use my old irivers too! H10 with 20gb (rockbox added of course), and ifp-799 with 1gb and fm radio!

i am considering getting something new though, because i care less about ogg than i did 5 years ago (my entire music collection that i ripped to ogg got deleted and i haven't been bothered to redo it, i might just go lame vbr...), although i do care about FLAC because some stuff i've only got in FLAC format. also, i want to be able to play my completely legal divx files so i gotta figure that out. without transcoding them, too, i'd like to add. any tips? my friend HATED his archos, it broke days after getting it, then the replacement broke days later or something.

i have heard good tihngs abt the sansa view players, though... and what was that other one i wanted for a while? big in china, unknown here... mizun or something?

meizu!

$50 new:

http://www.giiks.com/images/ifa/sandisk-sansa-clip-01.jpg

(only 1GB, 2GB and 4GB versions though)

i have only great things to say about the sansa. plug it in, drag and drop.

The Cowon iAudio 7 looks great, but it's very expensive.

cheaper than an ipod though!

Ah, I thought iPods had got cheaper than they actually still are. I don't think the iAudio is cheaper, at least not on amazon.co.uk, but the prices for 8GB versions are roughly comparable now that I look a little closer. I think I was initially aghast at the over-£200 prices for the 16GB iAudios I was seeing.

> because some stuff i've only got in FLAC format

does not compute. you do realise you can convert flacs to anything else, don't you, and because it's lossless then it'll be as good as ripping it to mp3 or whatever directly?

newer versions of oggenc can even read flacs as input and copy all the tags across to the new file.

my 20G iaudio m5 played ogg and flacs nicely. but the battery died within 15 months. now using a 1G atmt xseven with a 2G micro sd card. is tiny, plays oggs but takes forever to start up (because, i think, the 2G card is very slow). there also seems to be a 500 file limit. and it's discontinued afaict.

(oh, they've updated it. now plays videos as well and is a third the price. but mp3 and wma only
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ATMT-V-PLAY-MP4-PLAYER-EXPANDABLE/dp/B000PPJMCM/ref=pd_sbs_ce_img_5
)

i guess sandisk might have some updates for its flash players later this year:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/06/sandisk_43_nanometer_nand_flash

i have been told ipods can't do this but maybe i've been told wrong - i haven't looked into it

jon's right - just set to manually manage in itunes.

my 80BG ipod was $227 on sale. i love it. hoping it lasts as long as its predecessor, a 3rd gen 20GB which gave 4 years of faultless service.

so far i <3 my iaudio, sounds better than any ipod (and yes plays my .OGGs)

Dude, graphic eq "does not sound better"

Although you might get more volume out of them, which does sound better

I use a Sandisk Sansa e250. Bought it refurbed for $65.

Does the job. no itunes needed.

my drag & drop sony NWZ-A818 sounds fantastic. especially with my atrio headphones.

I bet you guys couldn't tell the difference in a blind test!

Bet I couldn't either!

well i never had an ipod where i could adjust the eq settings. i dont know if the newer ones have these. i did have an ipod that i couldn't use with my old mac because i couldn't get the newest itunes without upgrading my OS, which meant my computer didn't even recognize the ipod. that is so ridiculous. this just plugs in and shows up as a usb device and i don't even have to bother with itunes bullshit, just drag the files in. this is what an mp3 player should be IMO, not some fancy white little bitch.

the Cowon Plenue D3 looks a very nice small one, but not at all cheap unfortunately.

jesus, looking at some reviews and some people are rich enough to spend 2 grand on a Astell & Kern Kann Alpha high res mp3 player... that's madness.

I'm on my second Zune 1st gen 30GB player. This one I've had for almost 7 years. I bought it used, but its still going strong.

Still very happy with my cowon plenue D - plays hires flacs, great equalizer options, 180 Gb SD card as well, ridiculous battery life (have gone weeks of day long listening without having to charge). Newer generations have even better (twin?) DACs but shorter battery life.

180 = 128, sorry

i've been lusting after a standalone portable audio player for years but never bit the bullet on a cowon or w/e. i would really like something that is water- and sweat-resistant for runs but also sounds great w/ hi-res audio. i tried the $39 sandisk sportclip or whatever it's called and quickly lost it, lol. it was also a little too flimsy and lightweight. you wouldn't think so but a bit of counterweight at the end of a headphone cord is really useful. ipod touch? cowon? under $200 would be nice. don't care about more than 64gb. playlists and interfacing with itunes is a must. flac would be nice though i'm in the habit of transcoding to aiff for my iphone 6 that has somehow survived for 3 years.

Some discussion in the last couple of days over on the digital music thread.

I like the look of the Sony NW-A105 but I'm having a hard time getting my head round why I would need a separate device for playing music rather than using my phone as I do at the moment. What's the point of having two devices rather than one?

two batteries

phone/bluetooth pods for when I'm on the move or at work, player/better earphones for when it's quiet/late and I want to really focus on the music

If I had an android phone instead of an iPhone there’s a chance I’d just use my phone because you can stick a micro sd card in those. I need my activities to be based on a 1TB or 500gb micro sd which I can stick in whatever player I want.

I was one of the Walkman boosters on the other thread. Also the cheap fiio M3K because you can rockbox it now, and it’s got good battery life.

I have I think 6 of the sansa clip+ and 1 clip zip, god I loved them, but the battery life is pretty shot on all of them now.

Phone vs dedicated music device: I like to have a player that I can hook up to a speaker and leave the room with the speaker still playing and I still have my phone (I work in huge museum/warehouse spaces). I don't want to hear a phone ringing or messaging through the music that I'm playing, but I need to hear my phone if it rings. I have a work iphone that is my only phone and I have no interest in bluetooth stuff and all dongles I have tried have been glitchy. I don't like the incessant intrusion of the Phone Computer Thing into all aspects of my life. I dream of being able to have all my digital music on one device, and eventually 1 tb microcard things will be affordable.

I've got a 10 year old sansa clip that still works

i still use one of these regularly after 10+ years.

I paid less than 200 for my 1TB micro sd
Xpost

it blows my mind that 1tb can fit on something so small

at this point I'm mostly using my android phone (a Samgung Galaxy something) with a 400gb SD card. audio quality is finally comparable to my beloved 10-year-old old Cowon iAudio device with the now-badly-cracked screen. if I were richer I'd buy one of the higher-end Plenue models but this is a good solution for now.

but do these things handle 10s of thousands of files? my clip zip takes 5 minutes to rescan a few thousand files if i change anything. and i had another player that said it'd handle sd cards up to 16GB but there was a limit somewhere else so only 500ish tracks were ever available.

(even my pi jukebox takes a few minutes every time i turn it on. can't work out why it's reindexing, no reason it should)

I have 30k tracks (about 280gb or so, not lossless) on my android and it works perfectly well so far

These mammoth micro sd cards are really only feasible for folder based browsing rather than tag database browsing IME. I haven’t had any players that could index that volume of material. But it doesn’t matter for me because I’m all about navigate to album folder and play it

That's been my experience. Does the Walkman allow you to navigate via folder?

I was hoping that Hidizs ap80 would be covered by warranty since I've only had it two months. Technically it is, but that involves me paying to ship the player to China, lying about the value on customs paperwork and hoping that it doesn't get hung up in Chinese customs, hoping that Hidiz doesn't decide that the unit is malfunctioning because of my fault, then them fixing it and sending it back. I'm guessing it will cost around $30 to send something to China and it just seems like throwing good money after bad.

I'm on the fence about it, I hate being without my music for any length of time and I am compelled to say fuck it and get a walkman.

My Walkman experience was v v good, until I dropped it in a lake. I recommend you try to avoid doing that.

I use mediamonkey on my android and it detects + indexes the music on my SD card just fine, no need to browse by folder.

But yes Walkman can do folder navigation

my mother's had a Samsung mp3 player since the dawn of time, one of these with a slide out speaker. it's as chunky as all hell (sliding the speaker out is quite satisfying though)

https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/970x/assets/images/68981-gadgets-review-samsung-yp-k5-mp3-player-image1-iqbfmtno2l.jpg

and she was asking me to refresh the song collection on it recently, but I'm 100 miles away which makes that difficult. so i bought a new one, with more than 2gb of memory in it but it has interesting quirks:

off button just turns the screen off, keeps playing the songs. you have to pause it first.

it switches between artist, album and track name whilst playing, only it uses the filename for track name rather than the tag. and if that filename is too long it Scrolls slowly and doesn't display the other two bits of info.

you can list by artist or album but it truncates the name seemingly at random - Altered Imag, Augustus Pab (other names are much longer and display in full)

folder view displays directory names in full, which would be nicer but they aren't sorted.

(it's an agptec h9, nice purple colour, and was chosen mostly for the memory and the fact it plays oggs, which saves me having to transcode everything for her)

this thing is annoying.

i have seen *one* image show up when playing a track. the directory has a file in it called 'folder.jpg' so i copy all the 'cover.jpg' files that i've already added to 'folder.jpg' and... nothing. still only that one album showing an image.

and i wonder if it's expecting something other than a TITLE tag for the song name? ARTIST and ALBUM both seem ok.

renamed the working 'folder.jpg' and it stopped showing. renamed it back and it stopped working 8(

some others are now showing though. but the separate 'image viewer' fails to display about 50% of the covers - 'unsupported file format' - despite them all being seemingly identical (the image viewer helpfully doesn't show the directory name whilst viewing, only the filename which is always cover.jpg or folder.jpg)

a bit of investigating using two bowie covers, one of which showed and one whihc didn't suggested that the non-working version was interlaced and the working one wasn't. converting the image to bmp and back to jpg got rid of that so that's something to do today... (i've been collecting images for the raspberry pi jukebox so this won't be too much work)

oo chonky. i can smell the pixels