Help Needed! MP3 Players...
 

Help! Yes, I've googled. No, I can't find answers. My 14 year-old son wants an MP3 player for Christmas and I don't know anything about them. What is a good price? What, exactly, are they? Do you have to subscribe to a music network to get songs? I know all of you know this--I just happen to be monumentally "out" of it and electronically challenged, to boot.

Thanks!

iPods are the standard bearer at the moment. You have to sign up for their service, but you only have to pay when you buy music - it's free to put mp3's you've already got or to rip CDs you've got.

Of course, iPods are more expensive than others.

Here's the sum total of what I've learned about mp3 players so far:

1. Cheap mp3 players usually suck in most important ways such as build quality, features and capacity. That said, the most affordable mp3 players are the solid-state/memory card-using varieties, typically with a capacity ranging from 128 megs to 512 megs as a built in base. Nicer ones will allow the use of a memory card, and one gig cards can be had right now for around $60, give or take. A decent basic player of such a variety will cost you between $80 and $120 if you buy well.
2. HD based varieties offer both vastly increased storage (typically from 4 megs up to 60 megs, with price increasing proportionally as storage increases). Typically, features and usability are also proportional to price. I am using a Creative Labs Zen Touch 40 gig. It performs well, has a nice big mono LCD screen and an interesting, if not always precise, touch-control surface. Disadvantage? This particular model has no bookmarking feature, making audiobooks basically inconvenient, if not outright impossible to deal with. User software to load it up is great, and USB 2 is blazingly fast for the transfer of files. Full album of mp3's at 128k sample rate takes about 25 seconds to load. Ripping takes longer, but that's a different subject.
3. IPODS are awesome, but comparable Creative units can be had for about 25% less money, along with other brands. Creative seems to have the best competition out there among major players, but there are literally dozens of other manufacturers doing a fine job. Archos comes to mind, but their stuff is also pricey. Excellent quality used units can be found on Ebay (that's where I got mine, and it was virtually unused. I purchased it for $70 under best retail price I could find, shipping included).

Bottom line? Research online. Set a budget for the purchase, then go hunting on the Web. Virtually all units will come with their own software for handling the files. Some of that software will rip CD's, some will not, but there are lots of excellent standalone apps out there, the best ones are actually free through Sourceforge public license software sources. Some units will function as a direct "extra drive" with Win XP, some won't, so if stupidly simple ease of use is important, make sure you check that aspect in advance. My new one does not appear as an extra Windows drive, but my old ones did. No big deal in my case, but it might be in yours.

Good luck!

MP3 is a music compression and file format standard. MP3 players can store and convert MP3 files to music. The player consists of some file storage mechanism, mp3 conversion firmware, and an amplifier.

The main difference between the players is the storage mechanism. The great majority of the players use either flash memory for storage or a very tiny hard drive. The flash storage models range from a few MB to 2GB of storage. The hard drive models are generally 5-40GB. The flash versions are cheaper and fewer moving parts - so less to go wrong. The hard drive versions can hold a lot more songs.

Another major difference is how the music gets from your computer to the player. The easiest method (I think) is the sort that acts as a usb removable drive. Then it's just a matter of plugging the thing in and dragging and dropping the songs from the computer hard drive to the player. Some players use proprietary software to get the music from the PC to the player.

The ipods are well thought of, but I'd avoid the shuffle models. I think it's daft that you can't choose what to play. ipod is not the only viable choice.

99.9% of my mp3s come from converting music from my cd collection. There are also lots of free mp3s out there from bands just getting started - and a lot of podcasts as well.

If you do want to get music from a service - itunes etc. beware that they are generally in a DRM format. You're player has to be able to read that format in order to play those files.

Good luck

HD vs. flash memory.... you are generally paying more per unit of storage with the flash devices. This may be an acceptable tradeoff depending on use... flash memory is solid state and essentially immune to being jostled around. While you won't have to leave a hard drive unit sitting on your mantel for fear of upsetting it, the chances of hard drive failure are higher than memory failure. (My 40GB ipod's drive died about 13 months after I got it... it's currently out being fixed courtesy of the Best Buy service plan I bought on it.)

Also, it's ipod vs. the rest. ipod is really the fashion leader (although after digging around I decided it was the best bet for me, and I'm as unfashionable as they come), so if your kid has his heart set on an ipod, he might rather have a cheap ipod shuffle than a Creative unit with more capacity.

No matter what brand you buy, you will be able to copy existing CDs to it, and/or buy music online. I still find my best bang for the buck is to buy CDs, used wherever possible, but then, your son probably doesn't listen to the same music I do! ;)

get him the ipod mini. in pink if he's been bad.

edit: looks like they stopped selling those now that the nano is out. oh well. the nano looks good too.

You guys are great! Bri, they really know their stuff, but only SteveDallas hinted at my main contribution: style. I am sometimes asked if I dress in the dark, my fashion sense is so retarded. But I am (a little more) in tune with the vibe I get from my kids. They asked for iPods. Even my "pre-teen" (he boasts, now that he's in double digits :snicker: ). I immediately made the mistake of talking technology with them about capacity, software, compression, bit rates, file sizes...you can imagine the result. :yawn:

*Best* deal? Entirely subjective, and only partly based on specs and capacity and price. No wonder I killed the conversation. There are two questions here. The technical one: what is the best player? And the emotional one: What do I want to feel like when I have this thing.

The emotional question has to be answered first, and the good news is you get to contribute. Does he want to be seen wearing those iconic white headphones? Does he want to carry around a lot of music, thousands of songs, or will mere hundreds suffice? Does he have a computer already? What's your budget? What's your opinion on copyright wrt music file sharing? How strenuously do you wish to impose that view on your son? Is the music more important than everything else, or does the gadget matter in some way? Is he able to ...

timeout. I can see I've blended the two thoughts. What I hoped to convey is that the questions are what do you want to accomplish, and then track down the hardware that helps your achieve that goal. That's the way to get to the *best choice*.

I'll save my wind for another argument.

Thanks! You all are awesome! :love:

i really appreciate it!

iPod nano will cause much son-mother loveness this christmas. iPod nano cases, popularity they will have. Long must one ponder, apple sells iPods for less to students via it's education website.

Short i mourn the death of my original 20G iPod, hard concrete it hath felt one time too many for the 60G iPod a natural replacement is. Joyous this is, for it bringeth more space and pointless little videos!

jag--are you drunk? :)

That or maybe channeling Yoda - or both.

My daughter prefers "tween".

The only one I ever hear is "practically an adult!!" And she's not even in the double-digits yet.

There are many mp3 players out there.

The one that people really want is the iPod. Kids don't want Zips when they can have Nike :).

Here's my ratings:

1. Creative - garbage software needed to load music on. However, you can drag music on like a hard drive, which makes up for it.
2. Sony - the worst possible software you can use. Period.
3. Dell - uses MusicMatch Jukebox to load music on. This software is more than likely the reason why Dell sells so many P4-class machines, as it's a complete hog on system resources.
4. Apple iPod - iTunes isn't that bad. They must have ported a good chunk of MacOS over to get this to run on PCs. Is significantly improved since their first versions. iTunes Music Store supported here :).
5. iRiver - very nice device, however uses Windows Media Player to load music on.
6. Archos - build quality leaves a LOT to be desired. User interface has issues. This is for techs.

You may want a device that is easy to configure, doesn't use buggy software like MusicMatch, Sony, or Creative software, and is the popular device out there.

You can also get iTunes gift cards in almost any major store.

In short - the iPod right now is the best-supported device out there. When you can buy iTunes cards at Walgreen's or CVS, it's popular :).

HELP hubby wants an MP3 player!!

Everyones :2cents: appreciated!!

Do these recommendations still stand? Bri, what did you end up getting your son? I'm out to Google for awhile. Be back soon...

The Zen (Creative) is the only way to go. I have done a ton of research and messed with other's quite a bit.
I don't use their software to burn or load... I have always preferred Windows Media and other, free, jukebox software... though I don't think the Creative software is that bad. I just prefer others. Mostly I just burn from Windows Media Player or download direct from online and drag-n'-drop. It is too easy.
I have the 3g model now, but have had others in the past.
You could not give me an iPlod now.

I got the ipod video last Christmas. 30G I think. Anyway, as good as it is, there are some things I HATE about it. The track wheel is too sensitive, so it's hard to select a track without it jumping at the last instant to a neighboring track and playing what you don't want. Imagine a sticky mouse, and how annoying that would be. The track wheel is like that. Also, the finish scratches FAR to easily. It's unforgivable really, how easily it scratches. I got a Blackberry at around the same time, and the Blackberry rides around in my pocket with change and other stuff constantly rubbing against it. The Blackberry still looks almost as good as new. The ipod has been babied by me and it looks like crap now. Other than that, I like the ipod a lot.

I have no experience with the other stuff out there, but there is a lot of other stuff out there for less than the ipod.

I may have to take back my compliment Flint...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...RobsBeGood.jpg

What's your budget?

Our kids were asking for ipods, but the cheapest non-shuffle ipod is more than we're willing to spend, and none of us like the whole shuffle concept. It was telling, though, to compare the kids--it's was very clear that with our daughter (6th grade) it's a fashion/status issue, while with our son (2nd grade) it's a listening to music he wants to listen to issue.

We're getting the kids these, but then again our main criterion was "cheap enough so we won't scream too loudly if they lose it/step on it/decide to trade it to their 'best friend' for a pack of chewing gum." (I hope this isn't a consideration for Mr. Rat. :angel: )

A lot of the models have changed, but I think you still have to do some thinking on the flash vs. hard disk issue--it's almost pointless to compare between the two categories.

Oh, and I came awfully damned close to getting these. I may still order one just to see how they are. (Yes, I know there's no memory, but 1GB SD cards are going for a song these days.)

many cell phones now include MP3 players, I've got the LG VX8100 and like it a lot.

An advantage of working at the university is that we get elinks to journals/magazines. But for consumer reports, there is an embargo on this until the issue is 3 monthes old. I found out that CR just did an article last month comparing MP£ players. I know TW quotes them all the time. I don't suppose anyone has a subscription and would get this article and email it to me? I#ll check the library for the hard copy. What I am interested in is the little red/black circle chart.

He wants to get a dock so that he can listen to it in his office. Ideally it would be able to also fit onto the arm so that it could be worn for workouts.

I don't care about coolness, I want good quality without getting my pocketbook raped. Because we would share it, and use it for working out, I would likely get an extended warranty if there was one available.

I didn't even know there were 2 storage types, and as of now, have no preference. Prolly whatever seems like it will hold up better. The flash drive type likely would handle running better than the hard drive type, yes?

Title:Portable digital players.
Source: Consumer Reports; Nov2006, Vol. 71 Issue 11, p38-39, 2p, 6c
Document Type: Product Review
Subject Terms: *HEADPHONES
*EVALUATION
*MULTIMEDIA systems
*MP3 players
*DIGITAL music players
*IPOD (Digital music player)
Abstract: This article evaluates portable digital music players. Apple iPods are compared to other brands, including Creative Zen Vision M and SanDisk e270. Headphones are discussed.
ISSN: 0010-7174
Accession Number: 22832976
Persistent link to this record: http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url...ite=ehost-live
Database Academic Search Elite

I respect your technical chops, SD, and your family situation resembles my own. So naturally I wanted to see what tempted you. Alas.

Please fix the link.

Hmmmmmm....

Don't care about the color screen, won't be playing videos. Really like the rechargable batteries, can you buy a second set so you always have some charged? (Like I do for my dig. cam.) Also like it has a radio option, but I guess most do these days, yes? What is a microSD slot?

Sansa c240 MP3 Player 1GB

Price: $79.99

Features

Plays MP3, WMA, WAV and protected WMA DRM
By capacity, holds large number of MP3/WMA songs and hours of playback (see above capacity matrix)
Affordable, compact MP3 Player with color screen
- Color screen (up to 64,000 colors) displays cover art and photo thumbnails
Easy-to-use interface for sorting and playing back your music
Digital FM tuner with 20 preset stations
FM ‘on the fly’ recording and voice recording
Supports Subscription Music Stores
High-speed USB2.0 for fast and easy file transfer
Rechargeable & Removeable Battery
MicroSD™ Slot

A slot to hold an extra memory card of the microSD variety.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...icrosd1024.jpg

BigV, thanks for the heads-up... try it again!

LR, the MicroSD slot lets you add a memory card for more capacity. MicroSD refers to the type of memory card it takes. They also make a model with 2GB builtin.

Disclaimer: I bought this on the basis of reviews & price. I still haven't tried it out yet. We're planning to wrap them up fully charged and pre-loaded with some music, so I'll post my impressions after I get around to that--though it may not be until late next week!

I am checking out the accessories. Did you get any? They don't have an arm band though. Damnit.

When you 'compare retailers' several come up, all below SanDisk's listed retail price on the website. Where did you buy yours?

Best Buy--they have it for $70 this week. And I had a 12% off coupon that they emailed me which I'd be happy to to pass on, but you have to sign up for their Reward Zone to use it. (Yes, I drank the Best Buy kool aid.) I didn't buy any accessories.

I like the touchpad on the Zen Micro. We joined reward zone when we bought our TV eons ago. Huh. I'll have to go to BB to check them out. Thanks for the savings offer, I might take you up on it. Back to researching...

SD, we do indeed think alike. :) I got one of these. From the pawnshop, the red model, 256MB for $25. You can't beat this little unit. It works great, really great. I think the one you linked to is the newer model of the same basic device. They seem to have replaced the mono screen for color and the joystick for a dpad. Otherwise, the look the same.

On a different note, I had seen the $14 unit before and would urge you to post your review when you get it. I want one for the same reason. I'll only have to cry $14 worth of tears (plus memory card) when it makes that (inevitable) voyage to the island of lost toys. Plus, I feel like I'm making my older smaller SD cards live out their low capacity lives in some sort of useful service.

By the way, the Sandisk unit works great (I know I already said that) with iTunes. Just make your playlist, then drag the playlist onto the device. Boom. I make sure I "unwrap" all my songs, the vast majority of which are ripped from cd and never encumbered in the first place.

LabRat: This thing will fit in your pocket. Or anywhere else you could stash a pack of gum. We're talking a volume approximately the size and shape of my thumb. You could mcgyver an armband if you had to, or use a generic-ish one.

OK, this is what I got. A Sansa (Scandisk) e200 2G Player. Best price, $99.99 from Amazon. Beat everywhere else by $20-$50, plus I got free shipping, and paid no tax!!

I also got a set there that included an armband, beltclip and skin, for $21 including shipping. Saved $20-30+ over buying these items separately. I chose the dark grey skin.

Then, I knew he needed a charger and something to play it thru his car radio, since he spends quite a bit of time in his truck. This dual function thingie was $69.99 +tax at Best Buy, but I found it for $43 including shipping at B & H Photo Video online.

Lastly, I got him a second set of earphones, in case he didn't lke the bud things, which I don't think he will. Also, a small set of speakers for his office so he can listen there is he wants. If he doesn't like those, he gets $$ from his parents, he can buy a docking type set that probably will have better sound quality. I just need to get a cable so that we can plug it into our stereo at home and we'll be all set.

I am totally pumped!

Thanks for all of your help, I'll let you know hao everything works out.

Well, this was fun.

These seemed like nice little players. In fact, I'm sure they are. However there must have been a bad batch of them. By Dec. 28 both players were missing audio in one channel (one completely, one partially). I have not seen a batch of disgruntled Sandisk users showing up on product review boards (though I may have missed them), so I just have to assume we got a couple lemons.

So, no biggie, just return them, right? Well, turns out Best Buy is completely stripped of all sub-$150 MP3 players. So we couldn't really exchange them. "We'll be happy to give you a refund." "Well I appreciate that, but these were on sale and I had a 10% off coupon on top of that when I bought them. I don't want to get my money back and then have to buy them at full price later." "Oh, well I don't know if we can give you a raincheck or not. You'd have to wait in that other line with about 15 people in it to find out." (OK, that's not an exact quote.)

After much flailing about, we finally ended up ordering two refurbed ipod nanos from Apple. It's a bit more than we planned to spend, but they're more of a known quantity. Hopefully the kids will like them more than a pack of gum! :D

As a stopgap, while we figured out what the heck we were going to do, I ordered two of these. (They were on sale for $10 when I ordered, but back to $14 now.) They came yesterday and I tried one out.

First of all, they are smaller than I expected--about 2 inches square. I had a lot of trouble getting started. I currently have four SD cards, a 2GB, two 1GB, and a 512MB. I just grabbed a 1GB card and started trying to get it set up. No dice; it kept saying it wanted me to insert a disk. If I copied files directly to the card (without having it in the player) the player wouldn't recognize that there was anything there. I then established that it worked just fine with all three other cards. Since the "bad" card works fine in two different card readers as well as my camera, I have to assume there's some kind of weird incompatibility going on.

So I solved that problem, got some files copied over... how is it? The sound quality is fine--I don't exactly have audiophile ears, though. The navigation take a bit to get used to, with the little white button in the center. The manual says that folder names do not show on the unit--not true, I found. You can go through the menu and go into a specific folder so you can keep your stuff organized. On the other hand you will have trouble finding stuff if you don't name your files well. It does not show ID3 tag info, but only the file name. This in spite of the fact that the manual said it would scroll ID3 across the screen.

Bottom line: It's worth $15, but not much more. The interface takes getting used to. If you are still a bit confused as to where MP3 files come from and you can't copy files on your computer (there is no software as such; you just copy the files onto the memory card, either directly or while it's in the player), this is a bad choice for you. You're better off with one that will make use of itunes or Windows Media Player to simplify the process of getting music off a CD (or wherever) and into your player.

However, if you've got an SD card or two lying around that you aren't using, and you have a need for a cheap, small player, and you don't mind the almost complete lack of user interface amenities, it might be worth a buy.

I got one of the teensy new iPod shuffles for Christmas, plus this FM broadcaster, which declared on the box "compatible with all iPods!" The box is slightly older than the newest iPods, however, and their website reveals what we discovered once we opened it, that it is not actually directly compatible with the new teensiest iPod.

Further examination proved that it was compatible, it just didn't know it--a standard eighth-inch "mini" cable will go from the headphone jack of the iPod into the "Aux In" of the FM transmitter, and now it works just fine. The bonus is that my husband can plug his random cheap off-brand mp3 player into the transmitter in the same way, so now either player can be brought along in the car with us. I love it!

Is it necessary to get a transmitter specifically for iPods? I would assume that any FM transmitter would work since (most) simply plug into the headphone jack.

Any transmitter that plugs into the headphone jack will work with the ipod or any other mp3 player. The ones made specifically for ipods plug into the ipod's proprietary connection on the bottom.
I use this from Belkin with my ipod.

I'm running Windows XP professional. Internet Explorer. My player is a Sansa e250 2Gb. I have been trying to use the Rhapsody site to download my supposedly free downloads and I can't get past the error "can't locate the device's certificate" 2 hours on the phone with Rhapsody's tech support did no good. Updating the sansa's firmware did no good. So, I come to you, my friends.

What program do you use to rip your CD's to your player? (Rhapsody worked for this, but now I'm pissed off and don't want to use it)

If you buy music, what site do you use?

Do you have an idea WTF I'm doing/not doing?

Windows Media Player should do the trick for getting your CDs to your computer and then to your player.

I get 99+% of my stuff from either a) emusic.com or b) ripping CDs.

Try this. (Yuck.)

http://real.lithium.com/real/board/m...essage.id=1978

*sigh*

iTunes is the best overall product out there for maintaining your catalog of music. I *do not* have an ipod, but I'm a happy iTunes user.

I get much of my digital music from my own collection of cds. I rip my own tracks and let iTunes deal with the librarian work. When the time comes to copy the songs to my device (a little sandisk unit), I create a playlist with the desired songs, then drag the playlist from iTunes to Windows Explorer and over the "removable drive" that is the music player and drop it. The files are all copied to the music player, I disconnect and rock out.

You should try it. Seriously. What have you got to lose? iTunes is free, you already have the music player. For your own ripped/locally ripped mp3 files, there is no DRM b*llsh*t to manage. Point click and ship. Easy as pie.

Well, I like iTunes too, mostly--I didn't realize it would work that well with a non-ipod player.

But remember that the default itunes import format is AAC--you need to change it to MP3 if you want to use it on your Sandisk player.

Merci beaucoup. Just wondered what the experts were using.

The only reason I started with the Rhapsody service was we were supposed to be able to download as many of their songs for free as we wanted for a month before we got charged a subscription fee. I didn't have any trouble ripping a couple practice CD's that I had here at work.