People are idiots (or... "why portable music players suck")

[autopilot]

I use my PDA (T-Mobile MDA - which was free) as a portable MP3 player. I have this program called Conduits Pocket Player. Plays just about every format out there (inc OGG and FLAC) and does gapless. I can also stream my entire music collection over WiFi which i can either listen to over my Shure headphones outside while i am gardening/chillin in my hamock, store for use out away from home, or use a phono cable to link to my hifi (although i have a squeezebox 3 so dont do it that often).

I have been doing this for months, yet there seems to still be no sign of a decent player from he likes of apple which is anywhere near as good a solution. I can't understand why this is - i think if creative could impliment the features so many of us want they will finally start to make a real dent in apples market share. Much of my life revolves around music and i am a huge digital music fan, yet there is not one mp3 player i actually want. i think thats bizzare.

If i wanted a device with multi-gig storage and had the money spare, i would still opt for a PDA with a hardrive (even if the DAC is not that amazing).

[MiLaMber]

pdas with hardrives arent exactly portable...
Admittedly ipods (using default firmware) dont play ogg/flac etc, however you can always download rockbox to the ipod to enable that functionality...I have but dont use it now as prefer the apple gui.

Personally Im happy with my ipod video 5g. I like having all my music (over 50 gigs worth) on it. Plus I kinda ran out of space on my pc so it helped to clear space off it.
I also have a pda, but I use it mainly for watching videos using tmp media player.

Good thing tho is that sd card prices have really come down, with 2gig sds costing 24 quid from amazon, its a steal.

[autopilot]

pdas with hardrives arent exactly portable...

PDA's with built in HDD's are taking off now (will be commonplace in a year or so), the Palm life drive for example has been out for ages, and they are not that much bigger than iPod videos (bit fatter admitedly).

Even if they are slightly bigger, you cant say they are not portable and it's nicer to carry just one device.

[99Flake]

Hmmm this makes very interesting reading. I think I differ slightly with my criterea:-

1) Good Codec :- A MUST! It is a music player, the most important function is accurate sound reproduction
2) Long battery life :- A player that only lasts a few hours is pointless, I want something to last me well over 20

That is it, couldn't care less about a radio as I hate it. All the other bits are just gimmicks IMO. That is why I own an MD player (HiMD mind). I know you have to do conversion to ATRAC but really does that matter? It doesn't take long, also I tend to go straight from CD so that I lose as little as possible. For some of my albums I use PCM if I really like them. Only problem is carrying the disks around if I do that but they are only little.

[mallett]

iv got the nw-a3000 and it does everything i want a music player to do, has very long battery life, iv got 20+hours out of it, search by atrist or album or find track name, easy to usvery good DAC, imo, and as far as i can tell gapless, but im not sure on that and it looks good again imo
it also has a line out function which is very inportant to me as i use it to play through my souround speakers when at home, and the quality is very good, far better then iv had from a jack on my comp

however i do have some issues with it, for a start the sony connect player is the only way to get tracks on it and its the biggest pile of pooh its sooo slow and just kills my comp when i try and do anything, grrrrrrr
also sometimes it has to have a really good think about what its doing before it does anything, but i think it only needs to have a fireware update as i havent done it in a long time

[RedPutty]

I don't think there is a problem with selling DAPs with non core music features but what is simply mind boggling is that, as directhex says, there isn't one that concentrates on it.

If I want something that can do all those other things my mobile does it (spv c500), however most mobiles are poor for music playback starting with fundamental things like either a 2.5mm socket or needing an adaptor for their connector.

[alterion]

i have a sony HD5 its could have been that perfect player (sans FM) but sony crippled it with thier proprietery crap .. still was the best on the market when i bought it IMHO

[99Flake]

AAAAAARRRGHHH, I now have to eat my words, my HiMD player has packed up. Just looking on the net at iRiver H10's. They are 6GB and Dabs have them at £82 (damn you Scan for not stocking them) are these any good or should I look elsewhere?

[chrestomanci]

p.s. how about DAB instead of FM? it didn't occur to me at the time - mostly because i was looking up random players on the intarweb to compile my list, and none of them do DAB

The Pure Pocket DAB 2000 Is a DAB radio and will also play MP3 files from an SD card, so I guess that would fit. It is quite large though, and at abou £175 it is not cheap.

[tfboy]

iv got the nw-a3000 and it does everything i want a music player to do, has very long battery life, iv got 20+hours out of it, search by atrist or album or find track name, easy to usvery good DAC, imo, and as far as i can tell gapless, but im not sure on that and it looks good again imo
it also has a line out function which is very inportant to me as i use it to play through my souround speakers when at home, and the quality is very good, far better then iv had from a jack on my comp

however i do have some issues with it, for a start the sony connect player is the only way to get tracks on it and its the biggest pile of pooh its sooo slow and just kills my comp when i try and do anything, grrrrrrr
also sometimes it has to have a really good think about what its doing before it does anything, but i think it only needs to have a fireware update as i havent done it in a long time

I'm with you on this one. I have the smaller 5GB one which is really nice to play around with. If only you could drag and drop without having to use proprietary metadata systems.
But, Sonicstage works well with it, far better than Connect and is a lot more stable. It's not ideal, and you do lose things like Artist Link features, but at least it's reliable.
From a sound quality point of view, I think it's fantastic and I agree that good quality DACs are a must. OK, I do sometimes listen to music on the bus / train / in a noisy environment, but then again, sometimes I'm away on business in my hotel room chilling out and I really value fine music reproduction then! It's nearly gapless - closer to gapless with mp3 than with wma files, although the mp3 performance may improve if you have constant bit rate (all the music on mine is variable so that may have a negative influence).

My old man's after a new MP3 player, and it was searching for info that I came across this thread. He has a Karma and his biggest pet hate is the requirement of using rio manager to transfer stuff, although I did read a java applet thingy and came across red chair manager which I'll take a look at.

I don't have anything against proprietary transfer programs, as I can appreciate certain benefits of handling metadata and keeping a database for fancy linking like the sony player does with Connect. BUT IMHO it's just unreasonable to expect someone who's very carefully spent multiple hours organising his entire music storage system using directory structure on a PC to then just trash that away because you HAVE to use a manufacturer's own software... That's just lame and poop!

As for other features, I'm not bothered. They can stay providing they don't hinder battery life or cripple the device / slow it down when you just want it for music playback.

[directhex]

I'm with you on this one. I have the smaller 5GB one which is really nice to play around with. If only you could drag and drop without having to use proprietary metadata systems.
But, Sonicstage works well with it, far better than Connect and is a lot more stable. It's not ideal, and you do lose things like Artist Link features, but at least it's reliable.
From a sound quality point of view, I think it's fantastic and I agree that good quality DACs are a must. OK, I do sometimes listen to music on the bus / train / in a noisy environment, but then again, sometimes I'm away on business in my hotel room chilling out and I really value fine music reproduction then! It's nearly gapless - closer to gapless with mp3 than with wma files, although the mp3 performance may improve if you have constant bit rate (all the music on mine is variable so that may have a negative influence).

My old man's after a new MP3 player, and it was searching for info that I came across this thread. He has a Karma and his biggest pet hate is the requirement of using rio manager to transfer stuff, although I did read a java applet thingy and came across red chair manager which I'll take a look at.

I don't have anything against proprietary transfer programs, as I can appreciate certain benefits of handling metadata and keeping a database for fancy linking like the sony player does with Connect. BUT IMHO it's just unreasonable to expect someone who's very carefully spent multiple hours organising his entire music storage system using directory structure on a PC to then just trash that away because you HAVE to use a manufacturer's own software... That's just lame and poop!

As for other features, I'm not bothered. They can stay providing they don't hinder battery life or cripple the device / slow it down when you just want it for music playback.

linux users can now access the karma file system "normally", and copy files on/off

as for players, i'm currently considering an iRiver H10 - can be used as a normal mass-storage device, has both directory and databse modes, okay quality, and supports ogg. shame about gapless, but my options are limited

[tfboy]

linux users can now access the karma file system "normally", and copy files on/off

Ooooh does that mean that if I can find a Windows plug in / app that allows you to view linux ext2 or ext3 partitions, I can then access the Karma as another drive?

[fathazza]

im also in the market for a new mp3 player...

my cowon x5l just broke... :@ damn tile floors...

the x5l id argue fits most of the criteria in question, especially regarding battery life with it coming in at 35 hours.

id argue that you dont need metadata based browsing as if your folder system is set up right you can find everything very easily...
eg. driveletter:/artist/album/track...

This is also helpful so you dont get the problems when you have no id3 tags on downloaded/old music or from mixes/bootlegs etc when the tracks dont have names making the metadata stuff a bit useless. + no problems with compilation/soundtrack albums adding lots of extra artists with one track to your list and just causing it to bloat so much that stuff gets difficult to find...

my priorites for a player are :-

1. battery life -20 hrs min
2. must be a removeable drive in windows. i dont want to use itunes, sonicstage, musicsource or any of the countless others.
3. DAC
4. Codecs, ogg and flac for me
5. large 40gb+ hdd
6.gapless
7. usb otg

the cowon x5l was the closest thing to my criteria so i bought that and loved it, then broke it and found out that there is no way to get it repaired in the uk by cowon. Their european repair centre doesnt accept repairs from the uk and there isnt a uk repair centre or even a uk distributor at the moment....

incidentally, apples revised ipod of this week now has gapless. so i guess they must be listening, or just needed something to say in their press release to actually make it seem like an upgrade...

[autopilot]

1. battery life -20 hrs min
2. must be a removeable drive in windows. i dont want to use itunes, sonicstage, musicsource or any of the countless others.
3. DAC
4. Codecs, ogg and flac for me
5. large 40gb+ hdd
6.gapless
7. usb otg

Sounds like you just decribed the perfect DAP. Unfortunatly, i dont think it actually exists

BTW, 3. DAC - all mp3 players have a DAC, i guess you mean a high quality one.

[directhex]

holy thread resurrection, batman!

by me, of all people.

my karma finally died this week, forcing my hand at a replacement

irritatingly, since posting this, there have been NO players to meet my main criteria (transfer from linux, gapless, database, ogg)

howEVER, the land of open source strikes again, and my new portable player is... a rockbox.

rockbox is an open-source firmware replacement originally developed for the old archos recorders, then moved to other systems. it has decent codec support (excluding DRM formats and Windows Media, but including Ogg and FLAC), gapless playback, works as mass storage but ALSO has a full database, full parametric equaliser, plus the usual crap like games.

it even enhances the battery life on some players as compared to the stock firmware

so, at the recommendation of the rockbox cogniscenti, i bought a hardware platform regarded as the "best" host - a toshiba gigabeat.

the basic firmware, ironically, is both a poster child for windows-onlyness (you MUST use the Gigabeat Room app to transfer, which encrypts files, and services like Napster are supported and advertised) and the reverse (the basic firmware runs Linux). it's also pretty crappy. so, i stuck on rockbox -a custom compile with album art support added. lo and behold, it worked first try! music & album covers transferred, database enabled, and...



that's a nicked screenshot from the rockbox website. i'll take some photos tomorrow.

but i'm happy - everything i could want in a portable player provided by the community because corporations are ****

[directhex]

it seems i can't photograph the screen, but here's a shot anyway: