MP3 players

[LochnarITB]

With all the MP3 players being sold these days, I'm thinking that it might be a good thing to have some of my CDs transfered onto one. I would love to hear what other Lurkers have to say about the current crop, and any support software you use, so here are some questions to start the discussion:

- What player do you use and/or lust after? What about it makes it your favorite? How easy is it to set up categories and/or albums and to then navigate that setup? What formats do you use and what does it support? Does it have voice recording and/or an FM tuner? How is it on battery life and/or is it rechargable?

- What software do you use for ripping your CDs to play on it? How does it perform for speed and quality of sound? What formats does it support and does it convert formats?

- Do you buy MP3s off of one of the services instead of going the CD route? If so, what service and how good is it for services and availability?

I have pretty much ignored the iPods if for no other reason than it seems to be the "in" thing right now and I am not an in-crowd kind of guy. Rio and iRiver both seem to have some really nice units ranging from tiny little units that hold a few dozen songs all the way up to the 20+ gig units that I could never afford to fill.

Your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

[Bun-Bun]

I use a 20G second-gen iPod. :)

It's got a very intuitive interface. I've never had any trouble navigating. The scroll wheel makes one-hand operation a snap. The battery life may not be as long as some others, but it's plenty long enough for me; I never use it except in the car or the office.

There's no line-in, so if you need that, you're out of luck. No FM tuner either, but I'm not big on what they play on the radio these days anyway. I prefer the Internet species of broadcasting.

I use iTunes to rip, 192Kbps VBR. The quality of sound is fine, even directed out my stereo (via Airport Express). It supports MP3, AAC, ALE, WAV, AIFF. I think it can transcode - I've never felt the need. Some day I'll re-rip in a lossless format, probably ALE.

I never use on-line services for music unless they sell MP3 format. I prefer to buy CDs and have the freedom to use that music as I will.

[DeeBye]

- Do you buy MP3s off of one of the services instead of going the CD route?  If so, what service and how good is it for services and availability?
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I live in Canada where it's completely legal for me to download music as long as it's for personal use and it's not for commercial purposes :)

edit: As for rippers/encoders, CDex is a very nice open-source program.

[Selby]

- What player do you use and/or lust after?  What about it makes it your favorite?  How easy is it to set up categories and/or albums and to then navigate that setup?  What formats do you use and what does it support?  Does it have voice recording and/or an FM tuner?  How is it on battery life and/or is it rechargable?

I'm wondering the exact same thing as I have wondered about getting one of them too.

- What software do you use for ripping your CDs to play on it?  How does it perform for speed and quality of sound?  What formats does it support and does it convert formats?

FreeRip is my favorite. Easy to use, free, and has a decent CD database.

- Do you buy MP3s off of one of the services instead of going the CD route?  If so, what service and how good is it for services and availability?

No way. Services don't offer the kind of music I want to hear anyway, so I just buy the CDs and rip the CDs to my computer. I don't share it, so it annoys me when CDs have copy protection and I am almost to the point where I won't buy a CD if it has some stupid copy protection built in. All it does is harm the honest guys out there as the thieves don't care.

I have pretty much ignored the iPods if for no other reason than it seems to be the "in" thing right now and I am not an in-crowd kind of guy.  Rio and iRiver both seem to have some really nice units ranging from tiny little units that hold a few dozen songs all the way up to the 20+ gig units that I could never afford to fill.

I had a 32MB Rio about 6 years ago and could never get it to work right. I figured I would wait a few years before spending any kind of cash on one. 20GB units just seem awfully big for some reason ;-)

[Guest]

I had a 32MB Rio about 6 years ago and could never get it to work right. I figured I would wait a few years before spending any kind of cash on one. 20GB units just seem awfully big for some reason ;-)

Yes they do. If you think about it 1 gig is about 50 cds... 50 cds!, 5 gigs(ipod mini..drool...) 250 cds and 20 gigs 1000 cds. I don't know about you but i don't have 1000 cds. Not to mention the 40 gig ipod. ;)

[TPJ]

I've got an Archos 20GB player with record capability and built-in FM tuner. It's completely filled with my ripped CDs.

I'm looking to replace it and have pretty much settled on the Creative Zen Xtra 40GB model. I can get it for about $239.

[Bun-Bun]

Yes they do.  If you think about it 1 gig is about 50 cds... 50 cds!, 5 gigs(ipod mini..drool...) 250 cds and 20 gigs 1000 cds.
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Your math seems a bit off to me; you must be using a much lower bit rate than I to get that. I have about 300 CD's and can't fit them all on a 20G iPod.

[Munkay]

I don't know about you but i don't have 1000 cds.  Not to mention the 40 gig ipod. ;)
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I do!

That's right, I have a 40 gig 4th Gen clickwheel iPod. I love it as much as one can love a mechanical device. It's amazing.

I was never too hip about iPods until I actually got to play around with one. Everything about them was more than I expected. The interface was well thought out, very streamlined, the earbuds are exceptional for the 30$ value, iTunes is the best mp3 program I've ever used (note: I was a huge winamp advocate for years). The actual ipod is built very sturdy, and since it owns the percentage of the mp3 market, there is no end to the accessories.

Yes, accessories. I've fallen in love with my 35 dollar recorder that plugs into the top of my iPod. Stick it in, within 3 seconds a record screen comes up, you hit record and you're golden. It's been perfect for capturing lectures at my over priced school, or even recording mental notes, and hilarious moments at parties.

Do you need the 40 gigs? Probably not. If that's the case, go with the 20.

My best advice is to go to an electronics store like bestbuy (since they can now sell iPods) and compare the mp3 players. Most bestbuys have them on a cord, so you can physically hold them. For me this was a selling point; the other players felt like cheap plastic cd players, the kind that always break on me after a few months (I'm very tough on my electronics). This is a purely subjective statement, so you really have to go out and see whats best for yourself.

Cheers,

Munk

Edit: Fixed Quote

[gekko]

Your math seems a bit off to me; you must be using a much lower bit rate than I to get that. I have about 300 CD's and can't fit them all on a 20G iPod.
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I work at an electronics store, and there's a sony store just down the hall in the mall from me. I recently had a friend who was shopping for mp3 players come in and tell me sony told her she can get 11 hours of good quality music on a 256 mb mp3 player. I did a bit of a double take and told her that they clearly have a very different idea of what constitutes "good quality." I tell people to expect about 1 minute per megabyte.

I actually own 2 iPods, a first gen 5gb and now a 3rd gen 20 gb one (side note: I'm actually trying to sell the first one, so if anyone (preferably in Canada, since it'll probably get too expensive to ship it to the states) is looking for one, give me a PM and I'll give you the details). They're just fantastic. However, I also really like the iRiver mp3 players; both the little ones (from 128 mb all the way up to 1 gig, from what I've seen) and also the 20gb hard drive one that, if you only look at the specs and what's included, is a far better value than the iPod (same drive space, comes with a remote with a little LCD display, FM tuner, voice recorder, on the fly mp3 encoding, etc).

But you should still get an iPod :). See if you can get a 3rd gen one, or, at the very least, TRY THE CLICK WHEEL before you buy. I haven't tried it yet, but I hear it's a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing. Plus, the 3rd gen ones just look nicer.

gekko

[Copadope]

I'm currently rockin' with the 20GB Rio Karma. It was my Christmas present to myself last year and I love it. As long as you know where the menu button is, the controls are very easy to use. The clickable scroll wheel makes for easy one-handed navigation, and the interface is easy to understand as well. Albums and categories are set up automatically according to the ID3 tags on the files, so as soon as you load files on there you can choose them by artist, album, genre, year, track, or by playlists that you can set up yourself. It plays mp3, wma, Ogg Vorbis, and Flac.

I've just been using the Rio Music Manager that comes with the player. It allows you to rip cds to wma, ogg, or flac, but you have to get the "premium upgrade" to rip to mp3. I've been using wma and have no major problems with it. Occassionally, I'll end up with files that skip around a bit, but it hasn't happened enough to be more than a minor nuisance. The battery life is listed at 15 hours, but the actual life depends on the volume and backlight settings. I've played it at 2/3 max volume for about 8-10 hours before the battery ran out, and it is rechargeable.

One of the selling points for me was the docking cradle that comes with the player as well. I can bring the player home, drop it in the dock and it starts charging automatically. The dock has the USB link for transferring files, ethernet connectivity if you have a home (or school) network, as well as RCA line out jacks, and it glows a pretty shade of blue. :D The earbuds that come with the player are Sennheiser and they're decent quality, but I never really used them. They're a bit large and I have a smaller pair of Sony's that I use.

The Karma has no voice recording or FM tuner, but you can store data files on it using a free program called Rio Taxi. It's not something that I've played around with yet, so I can't tell you much about that. The player does have on-the-fly playlist creation so you can insert, delete, re-order, or append songs to the current playlist while it's playing. You can create and save playlists on the player or on your PC using the music manager software. And if you don't feel like creating your own playlists, the player has a sweet little feature called Rio DJ. It will put playlists together for you based on criteria such as most often played tracks, newest tracks, tracks that haven't played in the past X number of days/weeks/months, or it can make a totally random list for you.

I currently have 2623 tracks taking up about 10.7GB of the 18.6 available on my player, and most of those tracks were encoded at 128 kbps. The sound quality is great for me, but I'm not a hardcore audiophile so YMMV.

My buddy has an iRiver ihp120, and he's happy with it. It uses a directory system though for storing files and playlists, and I don't really like that. But it does have the FM tuner, line in jacks, and mp3 encoding/recording capability.

Did I mention the Karma has a stopwatch feature? :P

I ordered mine online for about $280 even though most places list it for $299, so shop around. I would suggest you go to a store that lets you actually hold the players and mess around with them a bit before you make your decision if you're going to order one online.

That's about all I can think of to say right now... Check back later. :P

[roguebanshee]

I grabbed an iRiver iGP-100 over an iPod earlier today. I had a chance to hold both of them and the iPod just felt unyieldy and extremely heavy compared to the iRiver. The reviews I've seen have been overall positive too. While the 1.5GB doesn't hold my entire music library it holds more than enough for me.

Other than that it was about 30% cheaper than the iPod.

[Munkay]

I grabbed an iRiver iGP-100 over an iPod earlier today. I had a chance to hold both of them and the iPod just felt unyieldy and extremely heavy compared to the iRiver. The reviews I've seen have been overall positive too. While the 1.5GB doesn't hold my entire music library it holds more than enough for me.

Other than that it was about 30% cheaper than the iPod.
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Interesting. Have you held an iPod Mini? This would be a better comparision, seeing that you are comparing a 1.5 gig mp3 player to a (at least) 20 gig player. Its almost like comparing a MiniCooper to a Ford Excersion, its almost apples to oranges.

My father owns a mp3 player by iRiver and my old cd player was an iRiver. I've never been too impressed with their durability (my cd player died within 2 months, my friend had the same model and it died within 5, and all he used it for was in his car to play music).

As far as the Mini vs. the iGP-100, the weights are the same (including battery). The Mini is 3.6 ounces [102 grams] vs. 100 grams on the iGP-100. (I can not find the iGP-100 listed on the iRiver America website, so the weight information is from Tom's Hardware).

In all fairness, the iGP-100 got good reviews by Tom's Hardware, though the mini beat it out. I found the average cost for the iGP-100 to be $230USD (from reputable dealers). Compared to $250 USD for the iPod Mini.

Then its a toss up of 1.5 gigs vs. 4 gigs.

I personally beleive the Mini fairs better in this direct comparision, but this is purely subjective.

Cheers,

Munk

[gekko]

To be fair, it is worth mentioning battery life when discussing the iPods. While I have never had a problem with battery life (on either my new 20 gb or the old 5 gb, which I've now had for 3 years+), I have heard quite a few complaints on that regard. The problems seem to be not the battery life (8 hours or so from a full charge) but rather how quickly the battery loses that capacity (less than a year before many people required a replacement). However, the 4th gen iPod's supposedly should be better in that regard, as well.

gekko

[LochnarITB]

I'm currently rockin' with the 20GB Rio Karma.
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Although I have not actually handled any of them to see how they feel, the reviews I've read make this one look like a winner. The biggest problem I have with it is that you need to have software installed on both computers to transfer other files with it. It is a shame to be able to carry a 20 gig drive around but have limited sneaker-net functionality. I do think this one will be my christmas list this year (if not sooner).

A couple questions for iPod users though. It appears that the iPod can transfer files by simply plugging in the USB/Firewire connector. Is it really that smooth or does it actually require special software on each machine also? iPod also has a couple games, a calendar and the contact/text reader. Do you actually use any of these? The utilities would seem to me to be very limited by being read only (unless there is some type of onscreen keyboard for entering info). I would guess that said function would be better left to a PDA or a fancy cell phone. Comments?

[Bun-Bun]

A couple questions for iPod users though.  It appears that the iPod can transfer files by simply plugging in the USB/Firewire connector.  Is it really that smooth or does it actually require special software on each machine also? 

It's really that smooth. If you OS supports FireWire or USB disk drives, it shows up as one.

iPod also has a couple games, a calendar and the contact/text reader.  Do you actually use any of these?  The utilities would seem to me to be very limited by being read only (unless there is some type of onscreen keyboard for entering info).  I would guess that said function would be better left to a PDA or a fancy cell phone.  Comments?
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If you lead a more structured life than I do, you might find the calendar useful. There are also bits of software out there to synch RSS with the iPod. I've never used any of the non-music functionality, though. If I hooked my iPod up to the computer more often it might be handy, but I usually only connect when I get new music (rare these days) or when I get a crazy idea to set up a new playlist.

Unfortunately, I have an older iPod that doesn't do on-the-go playlists. :(

Perhaps this Christmas I'll get a 40GB model, since they've gone back to the infinitely superior buttons-around-wheel setup.

[gekko]

First off, yes, it really is that easy. And if you're a mac user, it gets better -- I have mac OS X installed on my iPod, and can use it as a boot disk if my machine's giving me trouble. Neato! Not that I ever use this (macs never crash, after all :D), but it's neat nevertheless.

Second, the games and such. I do play solitaire occasionally, but very rarely. It's a gimmick -- while you may find some use for it, it shouldn't play a big role in your decision when considering a purchase. This is particularly true for the calender -- not only are you limited to read-only, viewing the calender is much more primitive than on even a cheap PDA. Again, while you may end up using this feature (heck, if you've got 20 or 40 gigs, why not have another copy of your calender?), but you shouldn't expect it to wow you. You're better off with even a very cheap, very old PDA for calender functions.

Finally, the newest iPods, and the click wheel -- all I can say is I can't wait to hold one of those, because I'm not yet sold on them. Plus, they're not nearly as sexy as the previous models... grey wheel... ick.

gekko

[roguebanshee]

In all fairness, the iGP-100 got good reviews by Tom's Hardware, though the mini beat it out.  I found the average cost for the iGP-100 to be $230USD (from reputable dealers).  Compared to $250 USD for the iPod Mini.

The store I bought my iGP took 1499 dkr/~$250 (big chain and currently cheapest with the iGP). The cheapest possible iPod Mini I can find is 1999 dkr/~$333 and in the store where I bought the iGP the Mini cost 2199 dkr/~$366.

Then again, I doubt I'd have picked up any iPod since I feel the design utterly bland and boring. Comparing the iGP with the iPod is IMO like comparing the previous LL forum design with the current. One looks great though it may have fewer features and the other looks bland but is comparatively feature rich.

[Munkay]

The store I bought my iGP took 1499 dkr/~$250 (big chain and currently cheapest with the iGP). The cheapest possible iPod Mini I can find is 1999 dkr/~$333 and in the store where I bought the iGP the Mini cost 2199 dkr/~$366.

Then again, I doubt I'd have picked up any iPod since I feel the design utterly bland and boring. Comparing the iGP with the iPod is IMO like comparing the previous LL forum design with the current. One looks great though it may have fewer features and the other looks bland but is comparatively feature rich.
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Form over function? Eh. I like the design of the iPod.

CNet's review says:
The good: Sturdy design; wealth of playback options; FM tuner.
The bad: Unintuitive interface; has a lower capacity than some microdrive players; doesn't play purchased WMA or AAC files."

I'm guessing the purchased WMA part will be fixed with a firmware update down the road?

Where do you live? Because the iPod Mini is $250, on Apple's website. I'm pretty sure they ship internationally as well. Not to mention Student Discounts on iPods as well (I am looking at the students page, which has the mini at $230).

[roguebanshee]

Where do you live?  Because the iPod Mini is $250, on Apple's website.  I'm pretty sure they ship internationally as well.  Not to mention Student Discounts on iPods as well (I am looking at the students page, which has the mini at $230).

Denmark. First I checked the US Apple store and found this:

U.S. SALES ONLY
The Apple Store sells and ships products only within the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. No shipments can be made to APO or FPO addresses, United States territories, or addresses outside the United States. You may not export any products purchased at the Apple Store.

Then I went to the danish version and found that they wanted 2099 dkr for a Mini (ie. more than the cheapest possible). Beyond that I can't apply for Student Discounts since I'm not studying anymore.

As for form over function, I feel that if a device like this fulfills the required roles (MP3 & OGG playback, easy file transfer & decent capacity) then I prefer that it looks cool rather than having more options that I'll never use.