What Is The Best Portable MP3 Player?

0rthanc asks: "Seeing all of this controversy over MP3s has left me with an urge to finally go out and buy one of these portable MP3 players. After looking around I saw a few good looking ones by Diamond and Creative Labs, however, since the Slashdot community always knows best, what MP3 player do you all suggest? "

Re:MP3 players are a joke.

[Someone]

What a load of crap.

MP3 are about the same quality as CD
(There is a small lost of quality which is why I encode at 160bit, but headphones and most speakers downgrade the quality much more an the compression)

They do this by cutting out sound you can't hear, and compressing the rest.

Pyite statement is as stupid as saying that zipping data means you lose data!

Glynn

Re:MP3 Players

[cybersquid]

I like the Lyra, but it is not an MP3 player. It will only play encrypted .mpx files. Also, each mpx is encrypted with the flash card's unique ID, so it can't be transfered to another card and played, or uploaded back to your other system and played.

You can physically access the files on the card with other readers, but the proprietary windows only software they include only uses their flash drive. If you do copy an unencrypted .mp3 to the card (I did) you will get ear-damaging garbage through the headphones.

Of course, they don't say this on the box, on their web site, in the manual on their site, or in the manual in the box. It is only on a little yellow addendum included with the manual.

Way too much hassle for me. Pity, they almost got it right. Mine went back.

Easy answer.

[MartyJG]

NONE OF THEM.

All the portable mp3 players I've seen have been 32mb standard, usually with a 64mb upgrade doubling the cost of the unit. Where's the storage?

From all the stats I've seen (and I *KNOW* you guys are going to correct me) this only works out as storing 1 album. I'm not being pesimistic, I actually want one, but I'm not shelling out for something that's not going to play more music than an old cassette walkman. Cost versus functions.

Laptops are getting smaller, palmtops are getting cooler, it makes more sense to buy one of these and a cheap set of 'phones.

Now if most mp3 players were around 250mb, and the same price region... then they'd shift a few more, and we might be able to scrap the old cassette technology for good.

(dismounting my soapbox now)

Re:Mini Disc

[[Dilbert]]

MD Computer drives are next to IMPOSSIBLE to come by in the US... One of those would be real cool, and if I could get one, it would push me FOR SURE to an MD player. See my later post (top level) for my intended solution to the "portable non-skip easily changeable" music problem.

Re:Why go dedicated when you can be MODULAR?

[[Dilbert]]

Ok, i guess the 64 meg modules aren't out yet...
But they are on their way and hopefully will be out at the time of the player itself. plus, the 32 meg ones are much cheaper than "SmartMedia" 32mb modules - SM go for about $100 a pop, while the whole MP3 package, with TWO 32 meg MMC modules is supposed to retail for $225 - subtract the 100 for the "bare" model and you have $125 for the TWO 32 meg modules, so they are much cheaper than the SM modules...

Why go dedicated when you can be MODULAR?

[[Dilbert]]

My aforementioned solution to the whole MP3 issue: the upcoming Visor Springboard module MP3 player. I just got a Visor Pro (the blue one, if you care) and i'm loving it already. There is an MP3 player being released for it this summer, i have my name on the mailinglist already for more info... What's so special about it? Two things.

1.) It uses "MMC" memory cards, not the crappy "smartmedia" that all of the Rios and their breathren use.
2.) it has NO builtin memory, but has TWO card slots.

What's good about these things? The BIGGEST good point - MMC cards come in 64 MB size. Now onto point number two. Think. 64+64 == 128 Mbytes of MP3 storage. THE LARGEST SOLID STATE SIZE ON THE MARKET, at this moment. Plus, because BOTH cards are removable, if/when a 128mb module comes out, you can stick in two of those, instead of being stuck with a base 64mb and only having the versatility of ONE addon.

The thing runs off of the batteries on the Visor, but also has a plug for an external adaptor. Est. retail price for a memory-less model: $100.

They say a 64 meg version should go for $225.

STILL cheaper than a 64 meg Rio500, and WOW, it uses USB to load (right through your handspring)... you can play the audio while using the visor too, the player has all its own DSPs and stuff, just uses the visor for batteries and (if you want) display of ID3 tags.

Yes, i have linkage. Right here. Check Innogear [innogear.com]'s "MiniJam [innogear.com]" out.
If you found this informative, well, MODERATE it!

Re:4 GB MP3 player that holds 1200 mp3s available.

[adamooo]

Suprised that most people missed this. I just
got one of these as a suprise gift, and already
I really like it. Had just been thinking about
the MP3-portable thing, and here it is.

First off, the thing's got a disk. Upside: 4.6 GB. Yeah, like 4600 megabytes or about 80 hours.
Downside: when's it going to headcrash and take
me out? Oh, and by the way, the LIon battery is
supposed to go 10 hours (the doc explains that
although running the HD is taxing, they actually
get 10 minutes of music loaded to RAM from a 10 second burst, then shut down the drive again - I guess this means they have at least 10 Mbytes of RAM in it for pre-cache).

Secondly, it's expensive (around $600-$700?), but
the price per playtime minutes - something like
$0.15 per min? Who wants to calculate out the
others? From a quick look, it looks like they're
all $3+ per minute for 1+ hour boxes (or, 1% of
the storage for around a quarter the cost).

Third: I have a very no-frills unit actually
produced by "Hy-Tek" and called the [musiccompressor.com]
"Compressor Personal Jukebox". There's
also [pjbox.com]
Personal Jukebox PJB-100", which is the
product name I remembered seeing on /. a while
back. Both are licensed from
[compaq.com]
Compaq (and Fraunhofer).

Last: the software is OK (not great), but does
support CDDB lookups of the discs you rip, and
I've had no real problems yet (like it killing
files off my HD like I've heard other one do).

Anyway, I see no other large-scale device like
this out there - what's the deal?

MP3 Players

[Fracopoli]

I like the RCA Lyra Player. It uses the sandisk smart memory cards so i can put about 5 cd's worth of music on a couple of cards. As far as Sound Quality, unless you have the audio sensitivity of a bat, you won't notice and change as to CD quality. (192K/sec 44.1KHz) I've even managed to drop the quality down to 64k/sec and when plugged into a car tape deck notice no sound degregation. On top of that I can use the memory cards in my camera. The only drawback is taht it seems as if you have to use the RCA card reader and Real Jukebox to save songs tothe player. And they change the format ofthe song to .mpx so it can only be played on a Lyra.

Re:MP3 players are a joke.

[pyite]

Not good to talk about something you aren't informed on. You said "Pyite statement is as stupid as saying that zipping data means you lose data!" That is not analogous at all to my statement. Zipping is a lossless compression algorithm so by definition you don't lose data. MP3 is a lossy algorithm so this time, by definition, you do lose data. And don't tell me its sound that I don't hear because I do hear it.

MP3 players are a joke.

[pyite]

Don't buy any of these silly little devices. Let's examine why. A) They're expensive B) They hold barely anything C) Who can stand the horrible quality of mp3 anyway? Examine this from a logical standpoint. By conventional audio storage on CD, 32MB will get you a little over 3 minutes of audio. Why? Because this is the amount needed to capture 16 bit sound at 44.1KHz samples a second! 9/10 of the music data is being cut out when you go to mp3. They sound all washed out because of this. Stay with CD. And if you dont like skipping of CDs, get a 40 second skip protector CD player. And if you still intend on shaking it for 40 seconds, get a casette player. That's right. The somewhat ancient technology has much better quality than mp3s. Stop being so trendy and go with what's best.

4 GB MP3 player that holds 1200 mp3s available...

[adze]

Hang on people...I don't like that Diamond Rio crap either...but there is a PJB100 MP3 player available from MP3 Factory Direct [mp3factorydirect.com] that holds 4 Gigabytes of data. Yes 4 gigabytes. I have like 900 mp3s on mine, all high quality. This thing rocks. Check it out. It kicks the crap out of the 64 MB ones with switchable flash cards.

Mini Disc

[foo22]

I prefer MiniDiscs personally because storage is cheap and they work through many different kinds of recorders (computer, handheld, big thing for next to the reciever). I have no idea about if the computer recorder works under unix be it would be an interesting hack. Overall I think that since they can play MP3s along with other types of media that they are much more flexible and a better investment overall.

Here's my $.02

[baelmix]

(I've never used this but it sounds cool). Check out the Genica Portable MP3/Audio CD Player (http://www .compgeeks.com/cgi-bin/details.asp?cat=MultiMedia& sku=205-3333 [compgeeks.com]). Plays both audio cds and data cds with mp3s on them, and is slated to come out in may/2000.