Gaming World Forums
General Category => Technology and Programming => Topic started by: Evangel on July 08, 2010, 04:33:32 pm
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I'm looking for some advice on what MP3 players on the market right now are worth purchasing. I'm trying to avoid iPod, because I hate interfacing with iTunes. I also want to avoid machines cluttered with useless features. My MP3 player is strictly for music. I don't need games, camera, or other peripheral features. I'd also like something durable and of a small size because I like to take it outside for a run. Thanks in advance.
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i think you should get a mobile with a mp3 player
otherwise just get creative zen. they're cheap and work well enough.
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How quickly do you need it? Because if you wait around a bit I'm sure one will come up on Woot and you can get it hella cheaper. There's constantly simple mp3 players on there, just check it for a bit if you aren't in a big hurry, and Woot tends to sell quality stuff so you're not gonna get some sharper image mp3 player that breaks two seconds in (my mom actually got one of these free with some thing she bought and I honestly did break it within 10 minutes of trying it out. it had some simple game on it and that made it lock up but there was no way to manually restart it so i just put it in a drawer and haven't thought about it again until now)
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i think you should get a mobile with a mp3 player
otherwise just get creative zen. they're cheap and work well enough.
That's what I avoid as a rule. My mobile is only for communications, my MP3 player is only for music, my camera is simply a camera. I was looking at Creative's Zen, and its reviews appear positive.
How quickly do you need it? Because if you wait around a bit I'm sure one will come up on Woot and you can get it hella cheaper. There's constantly simple mp3 players on there, just check it for a bit if you aren't in a big hurry, and Woot tends to sell quality stuff so you're not gonna get some sharper image mp3 player that breaks two seconds in (my mom actually got one of these free with some thing she bought and I honestly did break it within 10 minutes of trying it out.
I've never been to this site, so I'll check this out.
A question: When connecting an MP3 device into speakers, does the basic audio jack provide optimum sound quality? I'm looking into buying some speakers that would play primarily from my MP3 player.
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why is it so bad to have the mp3 player in your mobile? that means you only need to carry one device with you instead of two.
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If I have the device connected to speakers in my room or someone's car, I'll have to interrupt music just to take a call.
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If I have the device connected to speakers in my room or someone's car, I'll have to interrupt music just to take a call.
Why are you listening to music during a phone call anyway? That's rude.
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Maybe I am hosting a party!
Anyway, audio quality is another issue. I'm not quite an audiophile, but I think I'm getting there. Is there a huge difference in audio quality among today's MP3 players?
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Maybe I am hosting a party!
If you're hosting a party you have a computer which probably has a better sound card than an Mp3 player
Anyway, audio quality is another issue. I'm not quite an audiophile, but I think I'm getting there. Is there a huge difference in audio quality among today's MP3 players?
Yeah cheaper mp3 players tend to sound worse.
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I definitely recommend 5th generation ipod classics. As far as sound quality goes, they have a wolfson DACs in them which are used in a lot of high end audio equipment and if you're hooking it up through the line-out(through the docking port) to a nice hifi stereo or a good headphone amp you'll get awesome sound quality if your files are encoded right.
I know you said you were avoiding ipod because of the software but I'd definitely recommend giving it a second chance and let it handle your music library. itunes is actually a pretty convenient and sophisticated piece of software for media management if you know how to use it.
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I'm starting to see a trend in good reviews for the latest iPod classic. I think iTunes just pissed me off because I was using it on my parents' extremely slow PC. I'm going to look around to see what's good for me.
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I agree that iTunes is pretty dang nice. It's hell on an old PC though. On a current machine however it works just fine, and I'd probably still be using it even if I no longer owned an iPod.
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iTunes is terrible. Like if there were really any decent music players for OSX that existed I would drop iTunes for them in a heartbeat. iTunes has been nothing but constant spinning beachballs and lack of decent tagging for the last 2 years for me.
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I've never cared about tagging and I've never had it lag or freeze or anything like that for me at all :/
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I dunno I feel that being able to actually organize my music is a nice feature, and if the tagging system in iTunes was anything less than clunky and terrible (seriously, winamp has had an auto-tag feature for years) that would be fantastic. And I have been getting iTunes freezeups pretty frequently. My iTunes also tends to freeze up during the tagging process too.
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sony used to sell nearly-perfect-in-every-way mp3 players, but they were not popular enough and they don't make them anymore :(
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I dunno I feel that being able to actually organize my music is a nice feature, and if the tagging system in iTunes was anything less than clunky and terrible (seriously, winamp has had an auto-tag feature for years) that would be fantastic. And I have been getting iTunes freezeups pretty frequently. My iTunes also tends to freeze up during the tagging process too.
I organize my music into playlists, that's all I need really :/
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doesn't change the fact itunes fucking blows. it's also slow and uses way too much resources. there are simply way better alternatives to it (on windows at least).
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winamp has had an auto-tag feature for years
shame it's unreliable / full of horrible errors so i would end up retagging anyway
p.s. i've also never had itunes freeze or do anything slowly. what's going on with you guys?
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p.s. i've also never had itunes freeze or do anything slowly. what's going on with you guys?
Me neither.
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I have 4gb of ram in my PC which is pretty standard nowadays and I've never had to ever really worry about itunes taking up too much resources while I word process or browse the web. I guess if you're rendering or needing to compile something huge with a lotta linking you probably shouldn't have music programs running in the background but really any computer made in the last three or four years should be able to handle itunes fairly easily.
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4gb on my laptop too. Also never had a problem with winamp auto-tag before?
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I haven't had any problems with itunes I just prefer to use media players that are just media players and organize my shit in the file system. Same reason I don't use windows media player. It takes longer to load the gui and all the library shit when I could just open the file in VLC or media player classic and have it playing immediately. That's just preference though and itunes isn't really as bad as it used to be from a crashing/burning standpoint.
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Why talk about ipod/itunes? Evangel has said he's not interested.
If you live in the UK check out your local sainsburys I got a Sony NWZ-A728 8gb for £30. If not you can get one from amazon/ebay for about £50-£60
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/i18.photobucket.com/albums/b116/c0nfu53d/NWZ-A728-2.webp)
http://www.zdnet.com/reviews/product/mp3-players/sony-walkman-nwz-a728-8gb-black/32893466
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I'm actually leaning toward iPod Classic after DietCoke's comment on sound quality. I'll try running iTunes on my laptop here and see how it runs. Now that I think about it, it really couldn't run much slower than WMP does on here.
Thanks for the input, guys. Any other thoughts would be much appreciated.
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The sound on the ipod classic is great, my friend has one, but to be honest any decent mp3 player will have good sound as long as the headphones are decent. Unfortunatly a lot of mp3 players have shite headphones. Any good brand eg ipod/sony/archos will be ok.
I cant stand ipods cause of the wheel control method. I hate it and would never buy one. ipod touch is another matter but they are expensive and if you want it for music only it's a bit of a waste.
Good luck.
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I have 4gb of ram in my PC which is pretty standard nowadays and I've never had to ever really worry about itunes taking up too much resources while I word process or browse the web. I guess if you're rendering or needing to compile something huge with a lotta linking you probably shouldn't have music programs running in the background but really any computer made in the last three or four years should be able to handle itunes fairly easily.
I suppose there's a platform divide here. I'm on Mac OS X, playing music on iTunes (from an iPod), and it's using only 60 MB RAM and 2-3% CPU. And I have about 30 playlists and maybe 10 auto-updated smart playlists running in it too.
Maybe 60 MB is a lot for a music program, but it's not very lightweight anyway (https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/wedemandhtml.com/tmp/itunescrap.png).