[IceFire]

There is such a thing as hyperbole.  Learn it, use it, love it.

Basically, I've seen most portable audio devices simply don't have the kind of hardware to produce accurate samples without lots of local interference, timing inaccuracies, and delayed channel crossover.  Joint stereo is one thing, hearing a time-delayed, faint copy of the left channel on the right speaker is another...  Yes, I can hear that.

Secondly, I have yet to see any portable device that can drive a set of good high impedance headphones.  They simply don't have enough power.  And in order to actually hear the lower frequencies (which require LOTS of power output), it would require a pre-amp...  Which essentially throws portability out the window.

So, yeah.  I don't much like MP3 players because of the nature of lower quality and power in portable devices.  Simple as that.

Call me spoiled, I guess.

Seems wierd when normal headphones in an ipod turned way up can deafen you and be heard for ages away...same goes for some of those cans, you can hear them even though they're sealed when people turn them right up.

Yeah they are loud but they sound like ****.  A proper set of headphones will sound completely different and maintain absolute clarity while they claw away at your ear drums while the standard iPod headphones will distort and drop and otherwise sound aweful.  The stock headphones are never good.

I'm a bit pragmatic about the whole thing...I compete with myself on two levels...on one level I want to have an awesome sound and hear everything the way it was setup for in the studio. Then you can see if the people working on the sound were really doing some great work or not.  But on the other hand I want to be able to listen on the go...so the MP3 player is a brilliant piece of technology for being able to do that.  The quality is good enough from the right MP3 player and the right sort of earbuds/headphones.

[Polpolion]

Seems wierd when normal headphones in an ipod turned way up can deafen you and be heard for ages away...

Isn't ages a unit of time, not distance?

[Excalibur]

Seems wierd when normal headphones in an ipod turned way up can deafen you and be heard for ages away...

Isn't ages a unit of time, not distance?

Yes, and sound takes time to travel a distance.

[Nuke]

i run a 5th gen ipod video (60 gig) and ive been running rockbox on it for at least a year. i just upgraded to rockbox 3.0, which came out a few days ago. i get excellent battery life and while i don't use all that many features, mainly just doom and play mp3s on it, the most awesome feature is a total lack of drm and the ability to stick tracks on it through the file system without running itunes or any other program. its pretty awesome.

i hear its possible to do a hard drive upgrade on it as well. just requires aquiring the correct drive from toshiba and swapping it out with the existing drive, then running certain partitioning utils. since its becoming full i may consider the hackish upgrade. main problem is that the tiny hard drives are really expensive. i cant afford one at this point in time.

[Polpolion]

i run a 5th gen ipod video (60 gig) and ive been running rockbox on it for at least a year. i just upgraded to rockbox 3.0, which came out a few days ago. i get excellent battery life and while i don't use all that many features, mainly just doom and play mp3s on it, the most awesome feature is a total lack of drm and the ability to stick tracks on it through the file system without running itunes or any other program. its pretty awesome.

i hear its possible to do a hard drive upgrade on it as well. just requires aquiring the correct drive from toshiba and swapping it out with the existing drive, then running certain partitioning utils. since its becoming full i may consider the hackish upgrade. main problem is that the tiny hard drives are really expensive. i cant afford one at this point in time.

Just how big is your music collection? songs/space?

[Nuke]

its currently 8000 tracks at 50 gigs, but its always growing

[Polpolion]

its currently 8000 tracks at 50 gigs, but its always growing

That sure beats my 1.8 gigs. ~135 songs or so, IIRC. How long did it take you to build up that collection, and what percentage of the songs do you actually listen to? I started on my collection in like 6th grade, and I listen to pretty much everything depending on my mood.

[Nuke]

**** ive been collecting mine since highschool, although of those tracks have been removed. probably since '97. i probably listen to about 10% of them regularly, but every once and awhile il load up something i havent played in awhile. probibly a third to a half of it is death or black metal.

[Scooby_Doo]

I've got a question too... which ones are good/which to avoid for under $100 and about 2-4GB?  My 1G MuVo is literally falling to pieces and I'm going to be looking this BF.

[MC_Kejml]

Well, I finally purchased the ZEN, and boy it's good! Thanks for recommendations

[Colonol Dekker]

Big square MP4 one? I considered it as an upgrade but my zen v and psp compliment each other to the same effect glad to hear the upgrade went well.

[Polpolion]

Well, I finally purchased the ZEN, and boy it's good! Thanks for recommendations

The Zen's a good one. I was originally going to get the Zen, but they were a bit too pricey for me.

[Scooby_Doo]

Just got an Ipod shuffle as a gift, returning it tomorrow. ITunes is utterly useless.   

[Jeff Vader]

ITunes is utterly useless.   

Also, as far as I'm concerned with MP3 player properties, the Shuffle is also useless. Dang hard to try 'n find a particular song without a screen.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ya, it's very hard to find the song you want to play.  I used it for about 10 minutes or so and got a headache from it.  The sound quality is really bad. 
However, I do like the spin dial, as compared to what the MuVo has, but other than that my 2 year-old nearly falling apart, literally, MuVo beats it hands down. 

Oh ya and no folder support either 


Also am I the only one that thinks this auto-synching is absolutely useless? I want to put the files I want on there when I want to, without having to resort to adding it to a playlist then synching it up GRRRr 

[Scooby_Doo]

Well I was seriously thinking of the Creative Zen, but the SD memory card issue is a pretty killer deal, makes it almost useless feature 

[Excalibur]

Anything that restricts you in file transfer, i.e. ipods namely, are not worth bothering with really. There needs to be an "ipod" that allows you to transfer and use like the normal mp3 players/usb drive without the need for itunes or DRM etc / or that program.

[Nuke]

Anything that restricts you in file transfer, i.e. ipods namely, are not worth bothering with really. There needs to be an "ipod" that allows you to transfer and use like the normal mp3 players/usb drive without the need for itunes or DRM etc / or that program.

and those restrictions can be nuked by installing rockbox.

and you can play doom

[Polpolion]

Hey, Nuke, how much do you know about rockbox? Can you translate the progress from the new port thread for all of the sansa V2 players into layman's terms for me? 

[DeepSpace9er]

Was thinking about a 16GB Zune but I have some reservations obviously.

-Lack of expansion slot (not a big deal because i have 2GB of music and really am looking for a music player not a video player)

-Lack of Storage Disk mode

-Tied to Zune software

But i do like its

-navigation

-Interface

-FM radio

-WiFi connection to Marketplace with subsciption services which i might use since its very cheap for lots of music.

-Squircle is easy to use

I bought my sister a Sansa 2GB mp3 player and the EQ is just terrible in it, so im staying away from sandisk. I also had an ipod nano 1st gen but i hated the navigation on the wheel and itunes.