Advice for next MP3 player

[enelson125]

I'm currently looking to get a new portable audio player. Right now I have a Philips HDD120 20GB player. Honestly I'm fed up with this piece of junk that I have right now.

Currently I'm considering the following:
iPod 5th Gen 60gb
Creative Zen Vision:M 30gb
Toshiba Gigabeat S 60gb

Right now my music library on my computer is entirely encoded in .flac and i use goldwave to transcode it to 192kbps mp3 for my philips player. It would be nice to get a player which supports flac or ogg, but all the ones I've seen don't look that great in their reviews. I really don't mind transcoding as i usually set it to go over night and it's done by morning.

I know the ipod can play these with the rockbox firmware and ipod linux, so that's a point or two in apple's favor. I really liked the Vision:M after playing with it at Fry's, though the screen is awfully small for video watching being a practical thing. I haven't gotten a chance to get my hands on a Gigabeat S yet, but the CNET review of it was very positive.

I also considered the Cowon iAudio X5 60gb, but of the reviews I read it had a few problems that made me consider other players.

So help me pick one of these or recommend one I missed.

 

[jimmyb]

I have the 30GB iAudio X5L.

I bought it for the flac and ogg support, as well as the enormous >30 hour battery life. It also has dynamic playlists which is something I use all the time, and something that is fairly uncommon in portable audio players.

I can't say I've used the USB-on-the-go capabilities more than once. Though I don't take a lot of photos.

The video playback is nice, but the screen size and performance is not so great, especially compared to the new ipods. I don't care much for watching videos when I'm out, so this obviously isn't much of a concern.

The big feature that I wish it had is file browsing by tags. I've got my music set up in a very ordered directory structure, so again, it's not a big problem, but this is the one thing I consider to be a flaw in it's design. In iaudio's defence, they are supposedly adding that into a future firmware release. I wouldn't hold my breath however.

You can also put rockbox on the X5, but it decreases it's battery life significantly. I presume this is true for all audio players with rockbox on them.

All in all, it's a terrific player if you need ogg and flac support. Dynamic playlists are super handy. And the battery life is brilliant.

 

[HaX]

i have this sandisk sansa player.. it's like a nano; however, a little bit thicker..yet also plays video!.. it comes in 2gb, 4gb, and 6gb models.. though there's also an option for expansion. I love this thing!. the expansion you can only get like 1gb more space.. i believe it's a midi sd card.

 

[six_storm]

iPod FTW. You can't beat the quality of an iPod, I don't care who you are. You actually get what you pay for.

 

[HaX]

bah ipod is one big monopoly..shitting on the little guys. I got a mp3 player that doesn't support the apple revolution!

 

[iRoNeTiK]

iPod FTW. You can't beat the quality of an iPod, I don't care who you are. You actually get what you pay for.

Say the same thing about thier new laptop? Apple Book Pro or something...those new apple laptops are top quality with all the heat problems they have and malfunctions and that new magnetic power cord catching fire

Lets hope the ipods dont go the same route haha.

Have you considered an iRiver? My 2 friends have them and they love them.Just a suggestion..maybe google them.

 

[enelson125]

Thanks for the input thus far, I forgot to mention that I would prefer to stick with higher capacity players.

The lack of tag support on the iAudio X5 is kind of a turn off for me, even though I do have a good file structure with my music catalogue.

 

[banGerprawN]

Thanks for the input thus far, I forgot to mention that I would prefer to stick with higher capacity players.

The lack of tag support on the iAudio X5 is kind of a turn off for me, even though I do have a good file structure with my music catalogue.

The X5 supports tagging, just not browsing by tags, i.e. you have to browse for tracks by their filenames. It shows all tag info correctly when the song is playing.
iAudio have stated that they plan on adding tagged browsing in a firmware release by the end of the year. In the meantime, I think rockbox already supports it, along with a heap of additional features confused: ).

 

[synergyo1]

Say the same thing about thier new laptop? Apple Book Pro or something...those new apple laptops are top quality with all the heat problems they have and malfunctions and that new magnetic power cord catching fire

Lets hope the ipods dont go the same route haha.

Have you considered an iRiver? My 2 friends have them and they love them.Just a suggestion..maybe google them.

Yea and we all know other manufacturers don't have problems with their products

 

[enelson125]

Please do not go off-topic. Can anyone comment on the Zen Vision: M? I really liked it when i played with it over at Fry's, and I was curious what peoples' experiences have been with it.

 

[m1abram]

The X5 supports tagging, just not browsing by tags, i.e. you have to browse for tracks by their filenames. It shows all tag info correctly when the song is playing.
iAudio have stated that they plan on adding tagged browsing in a firmware release by the end of the year. In the meantime, I think rockbox already supports it, along with a heap of additional features confused: ).

And this is a huge problem for me. My music is well organised in folder formats, however I have enough music that I need to be able to drill down via different methods. i.e. sometimes Genre->Artist-Album works well, other times Artist-Album works, and yet others Genre->Album works better. You can not do this with a file based browser.

Question to the X5 owners, how is the battery life with FLAC only.

 

[jimmyb]

[...]
Question to the X5 owners, how is the battery life with FLAC only.

I've never done a specific test with flac files, but about half my collection is flac and I tend to get ~25 hours battery life. So definitely less than with mp3/oggs.

This is with the 30GB X5L.

 

[Blown 89]

Please do not go off-topic. Can anyone comment on the Zen Vision: M? I really liked it when i played with it over at Fry's, and I was curious what peoples' experiences have been with it.

My experience? Awesome.

Reasons the Vision:M won out over the Ipod when I was shopping:
Better Screen: The screen BLOWS the Ipod's screen away. It seriously puts the Ipod's screen to shame. The Vision:M's screen has 262,000 colors vs. the Ipod's 65,000 colors.
Battery Life: The Vision:M has over twice the battery life while viewing video. The Ipod's battery life while viewing video is nothing short of retarded.
FM Tuning: Not offered on the Ipod
FM/Input/Voice Recording: Not offered on the Ipod
Format Support: The Vision:M supports Divx, Xvid, and a host of other file types right off the bat and can play podcasts by quickly reworking the audio file.
MS Outlook sync: I didn't think the organizer would be of any use but I've found it quite handy.
Tivo2 Support

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www.shieldzone.com
www.bestskinever.com

 

[peacetilence]

I just received a Cowon X5 30 gig. Some quirks but overall I like it much more than the ipod I had. I bought it mainly because it supports flac natively and because it's not a fruit pod.


My main quirks with it are

it doesn't allow playback on the device when plugged into the USB. Not a major deal though as I would play the songs via foobar over my PC when it's connected.

USB charging doesn't seem to work, or it doesn't display when charging. I'm not sure which one it is though as I have only had the device a few hours.


Otherwise it is very nice. IMO it's the PC owners MP3 player since you don't need to use a load of proprietary software to upload songs, movies, to it ect. You just place them directy into the directories on the harddrive and you are good to go. To update firmware you just place the firmware in the firmware folder etc. It's very natural as a PC user to me and much more efficiant than other MP3 players I've used.


Tagging is no big deal for my. My files are meticulously orginized and I don't really listen to a huge load of bands anyways. I bought it mainly because of native flac support (taking up almost 10 gigs already with only 4 bands)

 

[m1abram]

Otherwise it is very nice. IMO it's the PC owners MP3 player since you don't need to use a load of proprietary software to upload songs, movies, to it ect. You just place them directy into the directories on the harddrive and you are good to go. To update firmware you just place the firmware in the firmware folder etc. It's very natural as a PC user to me and much more efficiant than other MP3 players I've used.

You do know you do NOT need iTunes to use an iPod? I have an iPod because it has one of the cleanest interfaces of the many players I have owned. Also being so popular it has many 3rd party hardware and software choices. I personally do NOT like iTunes but love my iPod. I use jrivers mediacenter to sync my iPod, because it allows browsing by tags software is required to sync music simply because the sync software builds the tag library DB. If X5 could browse by tags it most likely would require similiar software to sync, it is just to intesive to build the DB in device.

There are many many 3rd party software packages that support syncing the iPod. Even for foobar,foo_pod is pretty decent however not sure if the dev ever ported it to the latest version of foobar. Nice thing about most of the 3rd party programs is they support on-the-fly transcoding, so even if your music is in FLAC format it will sync it by transcoding to mp3 or aac on-the-fly. Jrivers product does this rather nicely using lame. I have well over 120GB of music in FLAC format and it just would not make sense for me to keep it in FLAC format on my portable music player. The environment I listen to my iPod in is not quiet enough to justify lossles, and lossless files make for much shorter battery life compared to lossy.

 

[Cowcaster88]

iPod just because it seems to be a status symbol anymore.

 

[jimmyb]

The environment I listen to my iPod in is not quiet enough to justify lossles, and lossless files make for much shorter battery life compared to lossy.

I'm listening on Shure e3 canalphones (which aren't top of the line or anything) and can definitely justify the use of flac on my X5L. Obviously this is just a personal preference.

 

[m1abram]

I'm listening on Shure e3 canalphones (which aren't top of the line or anything) and can definitely justify the use of flac on my X5L. Obviously this is just a personal preference.

I use audio-technica a900 with mine. However this is for my office environment and their is just too much background noise, I work in a software development lab and have several racks of servers in the same room.

 

[cfull]

I've owned an Iriver h320, an iPod Mini, and now an iPod 30gig Video.

h320 - nice that it played .ogg and .flac, had an FM radio. But absolutely the worst, most confusing interface EVER. also, it was ugly as sin.

iPod Mini - awesome. Built like a tank, you could toss it in your pocket with your keys or cellphone and not have to worry about scratching it up. My battery eventually started holding a charge for less and less time...so i ebayed it and got...

30G 5th Gen iPod Video - awesome screen, nice and bright, battery life rocks. very, very, very easy to scratch and ding. Interface is a bit sluggish when compared to my old Mini, and has locked up on me a few times. Quite an impressive looking device; say what you want about apple being overpriced and having a snobbish air about their products; but their designers are absolutely awesome. I would like it very much if apple would include support for .ogg and .ape, but eh.

Just by looking at brick and mortar prices nowadays, it seems that everyone else that used to be CHEAPER than apple have now priced their products on par with the iPod, thus eliminating the "OMG APPLE IS SO EXPENSIVE" argument that I and others have used in the past.

 

[peacetilence]

Very interesting points. I bought the cowon for something to listen to in the car so I really wanted to keep it flac. I didn't want to bother with third party open source software because I know it has the tendancy to require a lot of time to get it to work and that it is often very buggy. So in otherwords i bought the Cowon because it oftered everything that I wanted in an MP3 player with native support. I don't really have the interest to do all that you have said but rather would prefer the ease of use of having it already given to me. Also I wouldn't touch a fruit product with a 10 foot pole. I just loathe apple products... they are cheap, trying to be esoteric (but just cheap, and trashy) and only carry a high price tag because people think it makes them special to own one of the fruit products, as though they have some higher aesthetic sense or something silly.

You do know you do NOT need iTunes to use an iPod? I have an iPod because it has one of the cleanest interfaces of the many players I have owned. Also being so popular it has many 3rd party hardware and software choices. I personally do NOT like iTunes but love my iPod. I use jrivers mediacenter to sync my iPod, because it allows browsing by tags software is required to sync music simply because the sync software builds the tag library DB. If X5 could browse by tags it most likely would require similiar software to sync, it is just to intesive to build the DB in device.

There are many many 3rd party software packages that support syncing the iPod. Even for foobar,foo_pod is pretty decent however not sure if the dev ever ported it to the latest version of foobar. Nice thing about most of the 3rd party programs is they support on-the-fly transcoding, so even if your music is in FLAC format it will sync it by transcoding to mp3 or aac on-the-fly. Jrivers product does this rather nicely using lame. I have well over 120GB of music in FLAC format and it just would not make sense for me to keep it in FLAC format on my portable music player. The environment I listen to my iPod in is not quiet enough to justify lossles, and lossless files make for much shorter battery life compared to lossy.

 

[Blown 89]

I use audio-technica a900 with mine. However this is for my office environment and their is just too much background noise, I work in a software development lab and have several racks of servers in the same room.

Check out the Etymotic Researd ER6i earbuds. They block out 34 dB of sound, you won't even hear the servers with your music off.