minidisc
 

Okay so I'm looking for something portable to play mp3's on. I want something I can take with me when I go somewhere to study and something that can handle it if I ever decide to take up running. I was thinking of buying an mp3 player, probably one that's flash based, but then decided maybe I would check out minidisc players. Just wondering if anyone had any experience with them, and what they thought. And if anyone had any recommendations that would be great.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2050

http://www.minidisc.org/

I have a flash player, but I just don't like it as much as my mp3-cd player. Flash players are expensive, and don't hold very much music compared to other solutions. It's just not comparable to having a 700 meg cd full of mp3s, IMO. I also find the transfer software for my flash player to be very buggy. Some songs will transfer, some won't. No explanation as to why. It really pisses me off. Granted, not all players may have buggy software, but mine did.

I agree with juju. I have a flash player as well and until there is 512MB of memory in them for under $100, they aren't as useful as you want them to be. On my Vegas trip I left mine at home because the 1 1/2 hours of music wouldn't last one plane trip and there was no way to easily reload the player on the road. It's very useful for loading up for daily exercise (and won't skip, so it's perfect for that) but isn't everything you want in a player right now.

I know I sound like a broken record, but...

<a href="http://www.apple.com/ipod">iPod</a> is your friend.

Words cannot describe how great they are. You owe it to yourself to go to Target and play with one.

That simile is an anachronism in this thread. :) not a smilie.

How does a broken record sound? There are probably readers of this thread who've never heard a broken record. ;)

For those unaware: the phrase "broken record" came about when the needle would continually play the same groove (for whatever reason), thus inducing a repetition of the audio included on that groove. "Broken record" == repetetive and redundant and repetetive and redundant.

Can you believe they actually read an analog signal embedded in a disk of plastic, with a diamond? It all seems so ridiculous.

I have a flash-based player that does a pretty decent job. You can get 380 MB of flash for $100 on eBay, or 512 MB for $120-160.

Definitely doesn't hold as much as an iPod, but I never have that much music I need to take. 380MB is good for several hours.

If you go flash-based, be sure to get Compact Flash. It's the cheapest and holds the most, as well as being the closest to an industry standard there is.

And if you have a laptop (or a desktop with a PCMCIA reader), you can get a $10 adapter and read the CF card just like a hard drive (they use FAT16, after all.)

My MP3 player, camera, and PocketPC all use CompactFlash, and it's wonderful to be able to use the same memory in all of 'em.

The diamond came later. When I was a kid we had to do it by hand.

Oh wait, no we didn't.

Anyway, technology is too young today to meet all your requirements. I have a RIO MP3-CD player which works great - 12 hours of music, or 50 hours of audio book on one disk. Works well on a bicycle, but will probably skip if you're jogging. Latest versions have an 8 MB buffer, good for 5-8 minutes of skip-proofing, but you might need to pause every 5-8 minutes to let the reader catch up.

A couple companies have small versions that take 3-inch disks.

Minidisc is small and skip-resistent, but expensive, and has lots of copy restrictions.

Now who can tell me where "groovy" came from?

This is a similar unit that even burns cds
 

The Samsung MCD-SM60 Yepp is a great portable audio device. It plays not only your favorite CDs but also MP3 files you own.
The MCD-SM60 also features ESP for skip protection. In regular Audio CD Mode you get 45 seconds of protection & in MP3 CD Mode you get 120 seconds of protection.


Title Display
8, 12CM MP3 Disc and CD Playback
CD-R/CD-RW/MP3 CD Compatible
ESP (CD: 45 sec., MP3: 120 sec.)
CD Repeat/Random Play
Super Bass Sound
LCD Display
AA Battery Powered

I do believe that means that it reads CD-RW discs, not burns them.

Yepp ... my bad.

Dave, I got a question, does your Ipod ever seem like it's unmanagable. What I mean is does it seem like you have too many files to keep track of or does the playlist function work really well? Just a concern of mine and I have no way to play with one, Target up here doesn't seem to have them.

Nope. I have about 1,700 songs on it right now (10 GB model, before the introduction of the solid state wheel) and I have no problem getting around it or finding exactly what I want. Here's how you break it down, by menu on the first screen:

<ul><li>Playlists
<ul><li>Playlist 1 - manually created, has whatever you put on it
<li>Playlist 2 - smart playlist - automatically updates itself to have, say, every song with the word "love" in the title... or every song where the artist is "Tool"... or 25 random songs where the artist is "Tool"... pretty flexible
</ul><li>Browse
<ul><li>Artist - browse by artist
<ul><li>All - shows all songs by all artists
<li>Artist 1
<ul><li>All - shows all songs by that artist
<li>Album name - all songs on that particular album
<li>Album name 2 - all songs on that particular album
</ul><li>Artist 2
<li>Artist 3</ul><li>Album - browse by album name
<ul><li>Album 1<li>Album 2<li>Album 3</ul><li>Songs - shows all songs on unit<li>Genres - sort by Genre<ul><li>Genre 1<li>Genre 2</ul><li>Composers - sort by composer (for example, composer is Beethoven, artist is Bob's Orchestra)<ul><li>Composer 1<li>Composer2</ul></ul></ul>

The wheel and the few buttons (five total) make it super easy to get around. The wheel supports acceleration, so if you're scrolling through 2,000 songs to get to Z, well, the faster you turn it, the more songs it will fly through on each turn. It's really a great design, and if you had one, you would love it. Apple pretty much thought of everything, and it shows.

Where are you located? There might be an Apple store nearby. Check out http://www.apple.com/retail to find one. If you're serious about finding a good portable music player, you owe it to yourself to look at an iPod.