MP3 Players

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

Whats the price of freedom ?

79p a track on Itunes

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by gettin2dizzy

79p a track on Itunes

I find www.thepiratebay.org can beat that price hands-down

Gotta agree with you there Dave!

BTW Did you like your new "name"?

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by Ceri JC

Once you've used one of those for a few years you'll find 1GB more than adequate.

not when you have ~60GB of music and another 20 of video that you like to carry with you

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by Jester666

BTW Did you like your new "name"?

That was a new name?

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

not when you have ~60GB of music and another 20 of video that you like to carry with you

Out of interest, what quality/format is most of your 60GB of music in and how many times would you say you've listened to the average (not your favourite) album on it? I'm not criticising, I'm genuinely interested: I'm really into music and have a reasonably large vinyl collection and an above average sized CD collection, but even if I MP3'd all of that at 320kbps VBR, I'd probably only have about 30GB. Do you just download/add albums that you only like/listen to one or two tracks from for completeness' sake, or add stuff that you only think is 'okay' rather than that you really like?

I tend to only use my mp3 player when walking, so video is no use to me; if I'm in an airport or on a train (God forbid), I'll have my netbook with me and use that for video.

I have a 80gb iplop which replaced the 30gb Creative Zen I dropped in the gym.

The hardware is quite nice, although any function requiring the rotational part of the button doesn't work if you are wearing gloves. The use of a bespoke connector also ties you to a limited accesory range.

The software on the other hand is a different matter. I have found it to be buggy, clunky and resource-raping.
It is basically a shop-front to sell music, video and ringtones rather than an organisational tool. It also installs Quicktime on every upgrade - and that is NOT optional.
The reliance on Gracenote for album artwork is also twitchy, and sometimes forgets or changes the applied artwork - even for mainstream recordings. The way round it is to have locally stored artwork, but it takes a little effort to do this.

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by Ceri JC

Out of interest, what quality/format is most of your 60GB of music in and how many times would you say you've listened to the average (not your favourite) album on it?

not a lot, probably 30% i've not listened to yet, another 60% i've listened to when i got the album and filed for when i just fancy listening to a complete album from a perticular artist, the remaing 10% is stuff that i regularly listen to, ie: stuff that's in my "Music I like" playslist that gets fired up when i just want something like my own personal radio station, that playlist has about 6GB of music in it now, no idea how mnay days worth but it means there's always something to listen to that i like

I normally tend to gather music by hearing one track, or a snippet, on TV or the radio, and then finding out who they are and downloading an album, if i like it i'll find some more stuff by them, everything in the collectino is there because they've done at least one song i like, i don't download stuff or the sake of haveing all the "Now" albums ever made or anything - it's only my favourite artists, dire straits for example, where i've downloaded their entire discography straight off the bat (that's about 1.2GB in itself!) - but then i also have albums i got hold of because of the genre, i've got about 25 user generated albums of music from american blues festivals, cause i love genre of music - i use 320kbps, or as close as i can possibly find, because 1TB hard drives are dirt cheap - on computer speakers or normal headphones that get chucked in with the ipod or zune you won't notice much difference, but i bought a pair of sennheiser (sp?) earphones and the difference between 128 and 320 is night and day, and the difference between 192 and 320 is noticable if the original source was good

[jamesterror]

I had a Creative Zen when they came out, well had 2, then a refund. First one died after 6 months, second one wasn't used as much died after about 8 months, I got it from Boots who have a good returns policy, so they gave me a full refund. Now I have an iPod Nano, only problem I've had is its froze, and just had to drain battery and charge it up again. Its just headphones which continually **** up but its probably how they great treated, and there only a fiver.

You don't need mass storage in my opinion, 2 - 8GB is fine, and you can just switch and add songs easily.....

You want something with flash memory not a hard-drive as hard-drives are easier damaged and don't have as longer life span.

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

not a lot, probably 30% i've not listened to yet, another 60% i've listened to when i got the album and filed for when i just fancy listening to a complete album from a perticular artist, the remaing 10% is stuff that i regularly listen to, ie: stuff that's in my "Music I like" playslist that gets fired up when i just want something like my own personal radio station, that playlist has about 6GB of music in it now, no idea how mnay days worth but it means there's always something to listen to that i like

I normally tend to gather music by hearing one track, or a snippet, on TV or the radio, and then finding out who they are and downloading an album, if i like it i'll find some more stuff by them, everything in the collectino is there because they've done at least one song i like, i don't download stuff or the sake of haveing all the "Now" albums ever made or anything - it's only my favourite artists, dire straits for example, where i've downloaded their entire discography straight off the bat (that's about 1.2GB in itself!) - but then i also have albums i got hold of because of the genre, i've got about 25 user generated albums of music from american blues festivals, cause i love genre of music - i use 320kbps, or as close as i can possibly find, because 1TB hard drives are dirt cheap - on computer speakers or normal headphones that get chucked in with the ipod or zune you won't notice much difference, but i bought a pair of sennheiser (sp?) earphones and the difference between 128 and 320 is night and day, and the difference between 192 and 320 is noticable if the original source was good

You should look at Cowon - forget your 320kbps - flac encoding is where its at, and most (if not all) of the Cowons do Flac out of the box.