Anyone Here Use MP3 Players?

[Anderton]

Y'know, like the iPod, the Nomad, that sort of thing...portable dookies that handle MP3, WMA, or both. If you use one, do you like it? If not, do you want one? Is it on your holiday shopping list? Comments, anyone?

[Valkyrie Sound]

Don't have one... don't really want one. I like the idea of portability... I guess I'm really just waiting to 2 things: 1. Storage to be cheap enough and small enough to hold 1000s of 44.1/16bit WAV material. 2. For someone to include an optical or coxial digital input to one of these devices so I can also use it as a good remote recording back-up. Right now... my CD walkman works fine, is very portable, and sounds better. The smaller package of a MP3 player would be nice... but givien the current financial climate... not worth $200-$400. I'll just spend that $200 on books.... I like books...they last longer too.... :) Valky

[phaeton]

First Post! No Craig, i do not have one. I don't really plan on getting one either. Although i dig a lot of nifty gee-whiz tech toys, i'm a horrible cheapskate. I can't justify a $300 iPod when a $40 CD Walkman and an existing CD burner in my puter will take its place (and become ultimately more useful). I probably miss out on a lot of fun this way, though. No fair!! Val is closer so it took longer for my post to get there!! :(

[Valkyrie Sound]

[quote]Originally posted by phaeton: [b]First Post! No fair!! Val is closer so it took longer for my post to get there!! :( [/b][/quote]Sorry man... ladies first! :D A CD player is all I need.... if someone emails me a MP3 I still burn it to a red book CD. At this point MP3s in general are only a transmission format... not a storage/playback format... even if I have to convert... Valky

[MrLifto]

I have an iPod and love it. I'm adding a new Album to it right now. It works great for gigging. As a FOH engineer I no longer have to carry a bunch of CD's for walk-in music, test tracks... what ever. Here's a secret...I transfer my test tracks over as 16 bit AIFF files...

[Rim]

I was thinking of getting the Creative Nomad MuVo. I think I've seen the 128 MB version for $150 and the 64 MB for $100. A really cool thing about it is, you can take it apart and one part of it plugs into a USB port and doubles as a removable drive. This also makes it easy to load MP3s into it. I also really like how small it is. The only thing that's prevented me from getting one is, it doesn't remember where you were when you stop playback. This means when you press play again, it starts from the beginning and not where you left off - like the old portable CD players. I'm also not sure it has a random function for the playlist.

[Jeebus]

The Jesus uses one and loves it dearly. The Jesus refuses to pay $20 for a CD containing only one song he likes. Those industry pendejos will have to do better than that for The Jesus to part with his hard-earned pesos.

[T. Ehl]

i had one in my last car it was nice to have the option but i probably only listened to mp3 maybe a fifth of the time mp3 sounds like crap except at really high rates which no one encodes at online and takes up more space anyhow for road trips it is a great thing to have i suppose the menuing was probably responsible for me not using the unit maybe another %20 it was too kludge like to switch through directories has not dookie always been portable

[Jeebus]

Especially those pendejos at Sony. :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Anderton]

<> I found a $99 MP3 player at Circuit City for $30 after rebates (ah yes, the joys of hitting the sales the day after Thanksgiving...). I like the Creative Labs with the USB memory stick -- what a cool concept that you can store anything you want on there, not just MP3s -- but didn't want to cough up the $150. Mine's only 64 MB, but you can stick in a 128MB SmartMedia card to up the total to 192 MB...now all I have to do is find a SmartMedia card on sale. The main thing I like about the MP3 player is it's so small and so light, I can just keep it in the car and it's there whenever I want it. 12 hours from a single AA battery, too. The convert/load via USB thing is kind of a pain but once it's in there, it's set. It turns food shopping into a whole different experience to be able to drown out the muzak with "Tweakend" or something equally appropriate :) Doesn't sound as good as CD or even Minidisc, but no moving parts and lightweight has merit. I'm not ready to go for something with a hard drive in it, though, too much $$.

[KHAN]

I just picked up a Sony Discman CD/mp3 player. I use it to play tunes between sets, and the cassette adaptor works good enough for some of the long trips we go on. You can get between 100 and 150 songs on a 700mb cdr. So for about $100 and a handful of cdr's, you get similar results to a iPod for 1/4th the cost.

[Super 8]

I'd like to get one, but it's one of those things. I just know the prices are going to drop, and the memory is going to get larger. Perfect for the car! I also want it to support Ogg Vorbis -in the event that it becomes a more widely recognized format. I don't want it telling me I can't play my MP3's over some licensing issue either! That Sony Stick deal started out doing that, but I heard they changed it since nobody was going to buy it...

[Rim]

Besides, aren't you limited to the headphones you use with an MP3 player? Assuming the reason you get an MP3 player is its portability, you're not gonna use it with a high end headphone b/c they tend to be big. So isn't MP3 compression not as significant b/c the headphones you're using aren't that good anyway?

[Salyphus]

I have a Rio 500 which I received as a gift from a client a few years back. [code]cool sidenote: the client was MTVi and they preloaded it with a bunch of tunes :)[/code]At first I didn't have much use for the thing; it only came with 64MB of RAM and SmartMedia cards were relatively expensive. Between the low storage capacity and the crappy sounding headphones, I pretty much shelved it for a while. Within the past year though, it has truly redeemed itself. I picked up a 128MB SmartMedia card for $40 and got some Koss KSC-35 clip-on headphones, which were a total steal at $20, they sound great. 192MB of space is a lot more reasonable, and since the thing is solid state it is great to use when biking, hiking, etc, it never skips. I also use it in the car with a tape adapter. Also cool that iTunes supports it directly, I used to have to use my PC to interface with it. I still would like to get an iPod someday (hear that, Santa?) but I would still keep the Rio because it is so small and sturdy. Damn shame they stopped making them.

[Graham English]

I've got the Nomad and I love it. 6 gig HD holds tons of albums. I mainly keep audio books on it. I plug it into my car, use headphones at the gym, whatever. I don't go anywhere without it. I love having hundreds of albums in one place and not having to deal with carrying lots of CDs. I don't mind the quality of mp3s. I don't hear the difference in my car or anywhere there's noise around. Plus, since it's mainly audio books, quality isn't that important. Once, the thing crashed for a few days and I freaked out. So I bought a Sony CD/MP3 player. I didn't like it nearly as much. You can't create playlists and it always jumbled up the order of tracks. But it's a great idea and a great backup. What can I say other than I'm hooked and I wish I had the 20 gig version.

[vintagevibe]

I use a protable MP3/CD player. I have a RAM based MP3 player (Rage MP) but it only has 32mb and they want $100 for another 32mb. Screw that. I can have 700mb on a $0.25 CD.

[RaGe]

iPod user here. I have the 20GB version and so far I have around 9GB worth of mp3s. Like Chestnust riffing on an open fire (bro you need help ;) !) said, the quality is irrelevant since I use small in-ear headphones. Nevertheless, at 160Kbps the sound quality is quite good already and the portability and convenience of having ALL your music with you makes up for it big time. The big bonus for me: I use my iPod as a firewire hard drive to transfer projects. Ain't that kewl or what?

[doc taz]

I use a TDK Mojo, the original model from 2001. Too bad it can't play Ogg files, but my other choice of codec is the lame codec. It's opensource, too, like Ogg. It sounds just as good (perhaps better because it's under constant development) as the commercial codecs. And, yes the leme encoded files play anywhere an MP3 can be played. :)

[Mark Zeger]

[quote]Originally posted by Anderton: [b] I found a $99 MP3 player at Circuit City for $30 after rebates (ah yes, the joys of hitting the sales the day after Thanksgiving...). I like the Creative Labs with the USB memory stick -- what a cool concept that you can store anything you want on there, not just MP3s -- but didn't want to cough up the $150. Mine's only 64 MB, but you can stick in a 128MB SmartMedia card to up the total to 192 MB...now all I have to do is find a SmartMedia card on sale. [/b][/quote]I bought that same MP3 player at Circuit City as a gift for my niece, who loved it (for Hannukah...it's over). She goes to a gym and it seemed perfect for providing enough music for a workout, and no skips.

[Kendrix]

Timely post- This weekend I'll be shoppin for one form my son for Christmas. Good info. Personally I favor quality over portability - and I dont have much time to spend downloading stuff. Id rather copy a friends CD if it came to that.

[dj3]

iPod with 10 gigs. I go running with it, use a handy little guy about the size of an earphone called an iRok to broadcast it to my car radio when I'm driving. It serves as a backup hard drive for my powerbook. I NEVER listen to it at home or through any decent speakers, however. But I love the little thang...

[DC]

I've been wanting a boom box that plays mp3s. Sony has this Sports thing that has a pretty big read out and is somewhat water proof that I'm looking in to. If I can get over 100 songs on a CD, that would be great for backgroung music at work or outside working on the house and such. I don't like to fiddle with headphones. Use them for tracking and thats it.

[timrocker]

I have an RCA Kazoo that the boss gave me for my birthday. I use it while jogging and like it a lot. Need to learn how to load more tunes on to it.

[Roto]

[quote]Originally posted by KHANstantinople: [b]I just picked up a Sony Discman CD/mp3 player. I use it to play tunes between sets, and the cassette adaptor works good enough for some of the long trips we go on. You can get between 100 and 150 songs on a 700mb cdr. So for about $100 and a handful of cdr's, you get similar results to a iPod for 1/4th the cost.[/b][/quote]I've gone through my share of MP3 players and if you don't mind the size, I'd say the CD/MP3 players are the way to go. You can get near to 10 hours on one cd-r, or you can just play a regular cd. The only disadvantages to the hard drive players are the size and swapping cds. The Nomad Jukebox players have good sound and the original can record to wav files via line in, but they are just as big a cd player, and the thing that bothered me the most is having to use their software to transfer files. Seems to be the case with all of Creative's players...it's annoying. So I got an Archos Jukebox which does work as an external hard drive, but it's not built as nice as the larger companies' players and it's interface is buggy. I have tried any of the tiny players because I didn't want to spend money on flash memory, but the Muvo doesn't look too bad. I think you still have to use Creatives software to put music on it even though it also works as a removable drive. I think they keep those functions seperate for the sake of copy protection.

[AudioMaverick]

I put a Kenwood car deck in during the summer that plays MP3 CDs. I've enjoyed cramming several hours of my favorite similar-style tracks on one disc. It is worth while at the higher rates (192kHz and up). Also came in handy when I had a 110 minute live session that mixed down to a single disc and unbroken. The downside has been the unit sometimes skipping back to the beginning of the track. It was very annoying when I was 102 minutes into a 110 minute track. The fast forward is only at 3-times normal speed. Converting all my CDs from the DJ days to a single 30GB HDD a couple years was very cool. The CDs were getting too big and heavy to keep carting around. Plus, there were those DJs where a disc or two would mysteriously vanish before the night were through.

[Botch.]

We use a portable CD/MP3 player for music during breaks, works well but I wish the owner would normalize the MP3 files, the difference in volume between different songs keeps the poor sound man hopping even during breaks!

[randy clay]

[quote]Originally posted by Mr. Botch: [b]We use a portable CD/MP3 player for music during breaks, works well but I wish the owner would normalize the MP3 files, the difference in volume between different songs keeps the poor sound man hopping even during breaks![/b][/quote]I would love to get a IPOD with a 20 gig drive, but Botch posed a question I have to, can you normalize the volume of MP3 files? I have about 6 gigs of MP3 on my computer at work, and I'm feeling kinda guilty about taking all that space for music on the company computer. When I recorded this music from CD's with RealPlayer, I couldn't normalize the cuts, and go from loud CD's to soft ones. Do I need software to do this?

[Rog]

[quote]Originally posted by randy clay: [b] [quote]Originally posted by Mr. Botch: [b]We use a portable CD/MP3 player for music during breaks, works well but I wish the owner would normalize the MP3 files, the difference in volume between different songs keeps the poor sound man hopping even during breaks![/b][/quote]I would love to get a IPOD with a 20 gig drive, but Botch posed a question I have to, can you normalize the volume of MP3 files? I have about 6 gigs of MP3 on my computer at work, and I'm feeling kinda guilty about taking all that space for music on the company computer. When I recorded this music from CD's with RealPlayer, I couldn't normalize the cuts, and go from loud CD's to soft ones. Do I need software to do this?[/b][/quote]iTunes can do this automatically. I'm giving serious thought to getting an iPod ... do stuff in the studio at work then transfer the Nuendo folder to the iPod and work from home :) All I'm saying is that I can't smoke dope at work :D

[Salyphus]

The problem I see with the hard drive-based MP3 players (except the iPod) is that they use USB for file transfer :confused: :confused: :confused: Sure it may be great to have 5, 10, or 20GB, but are you really going to transfer that over USB?? :eek: Already with my Rio, 192MB seems to take forever. That's why I'd say if you want a HD-based player the iPod is really the only way to go.

[Valkyrie Sound]

I see a lot of folks like MP3 players for their workouts... which makes perfect sense.... if I were doing some sort of workout that I could use one I'd probably want one too.... Right now.... I'm doing Taekwondo...I think a MP3 player would be too much of a distraction when some big guy's kick is coming straight for my headphones! :D Valky