If you had to recommend an MP3 player that wasn't an Ipod?...

[Enablingwolf]

When it comes to a good payer that suites a user. The name matters hardly at all. Just in a sense of knowing what it is and does.

Of all the players I have or had. There was something I did not like or did. It was a balance of what I could stand and suited me.

Like for example. My taste leans towards compact flash players. it has to be UMS and work in Linux. Also have a higher quality sound output for my cans. So I am stuck with only a few options. To have options. I open my tastes up to allow the needs in. Like for a PMP, I have to be able to have space and easy to use conversion. So a player that is HD based and works in Windows is a trade off.

Long as a product suites me. The brand does not matter.

Few questions to ask yourself..

Cost
Storage size
Storage type <flash..w/SD expansion option.. Hard drive..>
UMS or DTS
Styling
Power output
Aftermarket goodies
Does it marr easy or malfunction often <firmware updates and upgrades:rockbox>

There is other questions you might ask. This covers the basics, and may not be in order for you.

 

[MadMan007]

Your use of iTunes may limit you. Is iTunes even usable with other brands of players? I am 99% that DRM'd AAC tracks are not compatible with non-apple players, if you can strip the DRM lots of players do AAC but if not you're stuck with Apple if you want to play DRM'd AAC tracks.

Enablingwolf has a good list of further details you could consider. I'd add battery life to that as well as supported formats especially if you have AAC or other non-MP3 formats. My modern mp3 player experience is small, I have a Cowon D2 and tried an Insignia (Best Buy) Pilot 8GB hoping for a cheaper option since it plays .ogg and has an SDHC expansion slot too. It's sound quality was just not as good as the Cowon, whether flat or tweaked, for sound quality I think I started at or near the top with the D2 heh. I am however considering replacing it just because the coolness of the touchscreen wears out over time and becomes awkwardness at times and it's more expensive than similar capacity players there just isn't another with wide format compatability and an expansion slot. Given Cowon's SQ record I'm looking at an 8GB iAudio 7, ~$150 from Amazon, or a Dane-Elec aka Meizu M6 4GB for a lower price point. I wanted to use the expansion slot on the D2 but I'd need multiple 16GB flash cards to hold everything even compressed so that became less of a feature than it was at first. My priorities are SQ, a wide range of playable formats, battery life, non-proprietary software and this pushes me toward non-mainstream flash players.

One you might want to consider on the cheap, given the rate at which these things change, is a 4GB Sansa Clip. It's due out soon and the Clip's SQ is said to be very good, it keeps tempting me but it doesn't play the less common formats. www.dapreview.new is a good place to start

 

[Enablingwolf]

While the D2 is a nice player. The semantics of not being able to use one hand (easy) for it becomes a drag rather fast.

The Meizu is not so much like this. It is tricky to get used to the quirky controls. That touch pad can go bonkers and seem extra sensitive. The screen size versus unit size is rather nice. The 8gig version falls well under the $200 price point. Plus it has some sweet aftermarket items. I seen a a custom skin kit that was kind of dandy.
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2007/06/beautiful-meizu-m6-custom-skin.php
the Miezu/Dane-Elec 4 gig sells on newegg for about $100. Actually it is a pretty good deal if you like vids and compact flash players. The 8 gig is not much more for twice the storage. The battery life is so-so but good.

 

[iamcanadian7]

Die hard creative fan here, just replaced my zen micro photo with a 30g zen vision w, the vision has a nice large bright screen, plays just about anything and will hold a ton. Also acts like a portable hard drive which is nice. In the 6 years ive owned a creative mp3 player ive only had 1 problem and that was the audio jeck malfunctioning but i sent it back to creative and the sent me a new replacement at no cost to me. Only brand of mp3 player i will buy.

 

[David_N]

I ordered a Cowon D2 for my friend and played around with it for a bit, and I loved it. He told me that in the week he's had it, he's logged over 60 hours on it already and he just loves it.

The cowon D2 gets a thumbs up from me.

 

[MadMan007]

While the D2 is a nice player. The semantics of not being able to use one hand (easy) for it becomes a drag rather fast.

The Meizu is not so much like this. It is tricky to get used to the quirky controls. That touch pad can go bonkers and seem extra sensitive. The screen size versus unit size is rather nice. The 8gig version falls well under the $200 price point. Plus it has some sweet aftermarket items. I seen a a custom skin kit that was kind of dandy.
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2007/06/beautiful-meizu-m6-custom-skin.php
the Miezu/Dane-Elec 4 gig sells on newegg for about $100. Actually it is a pretty good deal if you like vids and compact flash players. The 8 gig is not much more for twice the storage. The battery life is so-so but good.

Yea to be honest there's a few things about the D2 that frustrates me every once in a while. The biggest one is that it has a pre-set timer which can't be changed, just about the only thing on the player without a setting, so that if you don't do anything for ten seconds it goes all the way back to the Now Playing screen. To get back to where you were is a good 4-5 taps on the screen, it gets old really fast if you're trying to change music. Some basic functions (volume, track, play/pause) can be controlled by the buttons however but they are tiny. I read that the controls on the Meizu are quirky, the competing Cowon 7 has it's own issues though like lack of proper playlisting. The Meizus have MIRs right now as well. Another player that gets great comments are the Sony A610 and S810 series, the downside for me is they just have standard codec playback.

The D2 is a very good player, and if you want the combination of great SQ, flash player battery life, wide range of codecs and expansion slot then it's worth it. If all those are not priorities then there are better bang for buck options. Also with CES there were a bunch of new announcements, they may take a while to come to market but some of those new players look sweet.

 

[Enablingwolf]

When I got my first player. I paid no mind to having a diverse codec option. One seemed fine. .. That was before my high grade headphones and amps. Byte for byte .. ogg just works nice. FLAC just kicks butt, large size though.

Another slick thing - having diversity in a player. Not just video. Being able to read txt. Or view pictures.

I have used my player for shopping list and model details, also images of what stuff looks like. The whole time rocking out shopping. If I need to take notes on the fly, I use my cell. If I want to store data, I use the space not used by media on my player.

Each player I own and headphone has something that lured me to it. So far the U3 has served me the best out of all the players I have owned. Trust me, I have owned more than a few over the decades. it is not all that great either.I have yet to find the perfect player.
I have so much extra portable audio stuff. For simple FM. Nothing beats out my old trusty, but broken SR-49. That thing had an amazing tuner in it. Tweaked some. The SQ was rather nice and mellow. Even my Sony Walkman (yes the model D6P) Did not have the nice balanced sound of the SR-49 tweaked up.

 

[MadMan007]

Yes ogg is a near requirement for me in a flash player, because with the smaller capacities the equivalent-sounding MP3 uses more space. It just limits the choices quite a bit.

 

[Enablingwolf]

That is one thing that boggles me... ogg is free and open.. and works great. I am not going to mention to far the symantics of how good it is audio wise. Compared to the mp3, wma or aac. When I look at a review of a player. If it does not support ogg. I shrug and move along. Though I have a fondness for mp3's. Though 320bit songs are not all that small. I feel pain under 190bit. lol

I can see not tossing in FLAC, the file sizes are huge and not very appealing to a sub-4gig player user. I admit, some of my favorite tracks are in FLAC. Hearing a full symphony without loss is amazing.

One thing you notice moving up the food chain in audio stuff. The lower bitrate really shows itself. What sounded good or great on a common Sansa and a nice set of Koss 75's (nice phones for the money btw) You start to notice how dull the music sounds.you want options and higher sampling rates. Then that 4 gigs gets eaten up really fast doing this. So you need a way for close to lossless as you can and smaller sizes. This is where ogg fills that right nicely.
To my ear. Ogg @ 128bit is as good as 190bit mp3. Having the much smaller file size is nice and keeping some quality. A sweet trade off. Plus you can transcode mp3 to the same sound quality ogg and get smaller file sizes for your player.

Off topic.. When you hear the term. Near CD quality.. Does that mean is only has a little loss? Since 128bit is not even close to 320bit(still lossy). For CD quality you need lossless formats, like FLAC.

 

[MadMan007]

Transcoding!? Should never do that if possible, going lossy-lossy means you're starting out without the full information.

 

[Tim4rd2000]

dunno how much it is but look at the samsun P2/P10 beautiful mp3 players

 

[petteyg359]

Lots of players will do mp3 ogg/flac/wavpack/ac3/aac/mp4/alac/wma if you put Rockbox on them. Stick it on a Sansa e280 (8GB) and you have room for 20 or so FLAC albums.

 

[Tim4rd2000]

Lots of players will do mp3 ogg/flac/wavpack/ac3/aac/mp4/alac/wma if you put Rockbox on them. Stick it on a Sansa e280 (8GB) and you have room for 20 or so FLAC albums.

FLAC?

 

[petteyg359]

FLAC = Free Lossless Audio Codec

 

[Roofles]

The new sansa clip looks pretty good for being 4gb at $80. I think I'll have to wait around for that to come out to see if its any good.

I only have one CD that I actually listen to in aac. Thankfully everything else is in mp3 for the pmp and then ripped in FLAC otherwise.

My sister had her old 20gb iPod that I'm using now as she gave it to my mother but she doesn't use it. The more important thing in iTunes was the playlist creation, drag and drop is fine but it would just be a little time consuming for me as I don't have many full albums in said playlist (ie the more common songs I listen to).

 

[Enablingwolf]

Transcoding!? Should never do that if possible, going lossy-lossy means you're starting out without the full information.

Transcoding is not all that great. If you have good source. like 320bit mp3. Then turn it into 128 or 160bit ogg vorbis. I see no issue. Not the best option, but beats the 30-50meg file size of a longer song in FLAC. Or 20 in 320bit VBR. Gotta love vbr.

Going mp32flac, I even turn my ear in detest at. Going from higher to a little lower is not all that bad. Heck most do not even notice. I do, but it is a trade off.
Do I want 400 songs in ok quality on my player or 70 in the best I can get? Leaving the original rip alone.

 

[MadMan007]

Did you mean it's not all that bad in your first sentence? I guess it's ok if that's the only choice but otherwise ideally it should be avoided. Archiving in FLAC then encoding to whatever other format you want is the way to go imo. It still does take up quite a bit of HD space to archive that way, but for portable aside from 80GB+ players the size vs quality compromise will have to be made.

Since we've semi-threadjacked here but its still on topic, I'd like to ask you something Enablingwolf. When I encoded in ogg q4 I get ~128kbps, but when I used q5 it gave ~195kbps. Shouldn't q5 be ~160kbps? I usualy use q4 for portable as a size vs quality tradeoff anyway.

 

[Enablingwolf]

It is very on topic. Since the OP Roofles might want to know the what and why of things. It helps understand why the audio nuts mentions things. When he makes his purchase, he will know why he bought it.

When it comes to ogg. Anything past 128 is ok for medium sized players. Once you start moving past 128 you eat up space. So if you do not care about the top most your ears get. With a trade off of a smidge larger files. Do not worry about it. 191.7bit files will show as 192... I have ogg that are 190 and sound just fine.. Some players will round and show odd results. Go by your ear and file size. The 190 show as 192 in one of my players and Windows. Linux shows the true bitrate.

When I am at home with no cars, busses and folks talking loud. I want FLAC. On the go. The SQ is not all that and it matters more for how many I can skip past or select.

 

[MadMan007]

Well, I agree with what you said but you didn't really answer my question about q5 size, or at least not clearly and I missed it. q5 should show up as 160kbps right? Maybe you're saying to check the filesize to verify it?

 

[Enablingwolf]

Yes it should be 160 for -q5. It can aproximate the output though. Some of the codecs are not explicit bitset. it is an average overall. that is what some players show wrong output numbers. Just make sure what you using to create the ogg(container) is set right and the level you want, not variable. 192 is -q6, -q8 is 224. It scales to each step upwards to -q10, 500kb/s output.

The ear being happy, and file size is what your after.