Portable CD-R/RW/MP3 Player? 94
Eldie asks: "My ancient (1995) portable CD player has finally rolled over and died. I'd like to replace it, and I'm not looking for something as grand (read: expensive) as an iPod. I'd like to have something a bit more useful than the baseline -- it should at least play CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs and MP3s. It would be great if there was some sort of useful hierarchical MP3 interface so that I didn't simply end up having to skip back and forth through 100 tracks, 1 track at a time. Is there anything out there that fits the bill?" This was touched on almost 3 years ago, where quite a few of you had useful recommendations. Three years is a long time, however, and it would be interesting to note if there are any better (or cheaper!) options out there. If you were to look for such a player, today, what would you buy?
All the good resources for geeks (Score:4, Informative)
check the link
[thinkgeek.com]
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/mp3/6356/
seems like an handy device for me
if i wasn't like 12000 miles away from america
i would get this one for myself.
Some useful links (hopefully) (Score:4, Informative)
They are all Amazon "So you'd like to..." guides, but they are worth looking at, anyway.
Go with Memorex (Score:5, Informative)
Beyond the fact that they're durable, they're relatively cheap. Most of the Target stores in my area have portable Memorex players for around $40-$50, with the slightly more expensive ones including a backlit screen and a digital radio tuner. I'm not sure how much they run in other stores or online; you'll have to do a bit of research to check.
And lest I forget...they work. Very well. They have no problems with reading CDRs or playing MP3s, though I'm not sure how they handle CDR/Ws.
Hope I've helped.
well i can tell you my experience (Score:4, Informative)
The problem? Philips seem to have replaced all Expania (at least in the UK) with the Exp521. This (or the one i received) is so bad i sent it back - the disc hit the inside of the player when you shake it, the skip protection (advertised as being much longer) doesn't work if you move, half the time the buttons don't respond... i could go on. yuck. So if you can find an older model 2xx or 3xx series Expanium they're great (avoid the earliest 1xx square ones for battery life and not being able to seek in tracks.. like the 521!). It also came with all kinds of accessories, depending which pack your buy. Only the headphones needed upgrading, as per most models.
btw the Philips way of doing things is to have an extra pair of buttons to skip back and forward through folders. So you put one album per folder. It works great. I'm not sure what other makes do yet.
I've now got my eye on the new iRiver IMP-700 (75GBP) which has.. wooh just come into stock on Amazon uk! (and probably just gone out again now ;) Because i do fancy that track display that i was going for with the Exp521.
Anyway that's just my 2p.
Sony Walkman (Score:5, Informative)
Some notes: It will play on a pair of NiCD AA batteries seemingly forever, the advertised battery life is 18hrs playing MP3s, so I guess thats good enough.
Problems:
1. I've noticed skipping when playing VBR mp3s on batteries... I think the player is VBR agnostic, so it runs out of frames to play and haves to spin up the disc out of powersave to get more the track, if this bothers you, don't do VBR or something I guess.
2. Like I said, battery life is awesome, but not in -30 something degrees weather, like we had here a few weeks back, I had to do the public transportation thing, and it dropped out a few times, I had to press stop, play, stop, open the lid, close the lid, whatever to get it to work, and this meant taking off my gloves, which sucks because it's freaking cold!
Also, I must be spoilded, because I want a backlight! How can I see what track I've selected when I live in eternal darkness heh.
Good stuff:
The battery life, like I said, and those batteries are two AA's, not something wierd like a lithium ion sealed inside the case or 3 AAA's burining a hole in my wallet, because I only have AA rechargables, and throw away batteries cost less to buy, but more to use.
Damn near impossible to make it skip, you can shake it, drop it, whatever, of course I've been gentle to it, but it's nice.
Quick tip:
Name your files like this:
AlbumFolder/01Title of Song.mp3
It'l show up as 01Title or 02ABCDE, you get 7 characters in folder display, so if they all look like "08 U2 -" then that would kind of suck. It shows scroling tag info, Title, Album, Artist, Track #, Bitrate, Time played, press the display button to rotate through them.
Good lick picking your player, I really do like this player, two flaws ain't half bad.
The ATRAC support may also be a flaw, since I don't give a damn about SONY's propritary crap, but it isn't a flaw, because you don't have to use it, MP3s work just fine.
I recharge the batteries about once every two or three weeks, not bad.
When I'm not lazy, I plug it in to an ac adapter, it didn't come with one, but It's 4.5 Volts, and you can get the correct head to stick on one of those multi voltage A/C adapters from rat shack.
P.S. (Score:2, Informative)
Best feature, The Jog-Dial, I love that nobby thing, I dont know if other players have it, I'd figure they would, but it makes selecting an album or track so simple any idiot could ask me to do it for them.
My recommendations would be... (Score:5, Informative)
- Sony D-NE10 [audiocubes.com]
- iRiver iMP-550 [audiocubes.com]
- Panasonic SL-J905 [audiocubes.com]
I think the last one looks pretty geeky!iRiver (Score:3, Informative)
iRiver [iriver.com]
CD-R/RW/MP3/Ogg/WMA/FM tuner/Flash upgrades/etc....
I can tell you just which one to NOT buy (Score:3, Informative)
Yepp (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My recommendations would be... (Score:5, Informative)
I had 2 other mp3 cd players before, the thomson lyra and the napa davsomethingorother, and both of those were pretty crap. iRiver is excellent.
Daniel
Re:Sony Walkman (Score:3, Informative)
It does MP3, but they try to trick you into ripping to ATRAC so they can lock you in, typical behavior for a record company.
If I was new to computers, (Think: MY DAD), I'd use ATRAC and their stupid burning software, which I can ignore, but I don't like that they do it, I'd rather get a CDDA/MP3 Player that does just that, but everyone thinks WMA would be nice or once apon a time even Real of all things.
Most of all I don't like the idea of paying for that kind of usless junk, but I won this player in a hospital fundraiser lottery, so yay! If it was on my own dime, I'd think twice... I think it's probably inevitable, some other brand will be simillarly bundled with WMA sotware or whatever.
It used to be that you got what you paid for and paid for what you got.
In a perfect world, you would get a player that does CDDA, FLAC, APE, MusePack, MP3, Ogg and nothing else.
Re:Some useful links (hopefully) (Score:3, Informative)
iRiver iMP-550 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lame (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Go with Memorex (Score:2, Informative)
This of course is only anecdotal observation - I gave the horrid thing away eventually. Perhaps they have improved.
Re:My recommendations would be... (Score:2, Informative)
I second the Sony/Panasonic recommendation. Most of them seem pretty durable and well-made. I work at a RadioShack, and we're sticking pretty much exclusively to these two brands -- we're pretty disenchanted with no-names like Koss. (Yes, they're now a no-name brand in my opinion, just like the once-elite Jensen.)
The Sony players cost a bit more; from what I can see, you're only paying extra for the ATRAC3 compatibility and the little SONY logo. ATRAC3 is Sony's proprietary compression, and from what I've heard, it doesn't sound as good even as MP3.
Panasonic's newest players seem a little -- plasticky. But I don't think a single one has been returned by a customer, so maybe they're more durable than I think. Not all of them have ID3 support, however; displaying only the folder and track numbers. The SL-MP70, however, has a funky curved alphanumeric display for only ten dollars more than the others.
The best thing about these brands though, besides their quality, is that you can stick a set of AA alkalines in them and play music for over forty hours. My dad bought a non-MP3 Sony recently, and the same batteries lasted him through a summer of daily use. Apparently the MP3 versions are even better.
No prices, sorry; I'm in Canada and I know they sell them for much less in the US (even considering the exchange rate).
ARCHOS 20GB MP3 Recorder (Score:3, Informative)
Archos products have been known to be somewhat less reliable than the high-end stuff like iPod, but for this price you can't go wrong.
To make this player/recorder even better, simply drag-n-drop files, umount/eject and play. There is no rearranging of your music... it's there just as you placed it on the drive. Not sure about this unit, but batteries are easily changed in version 1 (which I own).
Go get one today... then load the Rockbox [rockbox.haxx.se] firmware and keep on rockin. In version 2 you can even flash-upgrade the flashrom for a 4sec bootup.
btw... I posted a review on Amazon just this week and bought the rebated unit for my neighbor to use on his bike.
Yea, this sounds like an ad... but it's not. I just want to make sure people know what kind of bs they are getting from the major 'players' out there. Make sure you check the music management issues when you do your research. Any player I will buy must be Linux compatible.
Cheers! nomasteryoda
Yeah! my first posting!
aka ...