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Are There MP3/CD Player Combinations?
This is a two-fold question. Someone asked me a while ago if combination MP3/CD Players existed. I haven't heard of any, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out there. Now there are portable CD players and portable MP3 players, but has someone out there actually put the two together in a nice affordable unit? Who makes it? Where can I find them? How much do they cost? Here's a slightly related question from JDALaRose: "I'm interested in the opinions of fellow Slashdotters as regards which of the portable MP3 players are the best in terms of not being SDMI compliant, or at least not restrictively so. Thoughts?"
http://www.livedaily.com/archive/2000/2k01/wk3/Ame ndmentToCopyrightActCo.html
Hell, they're lucky people aren't throwing bombs instead of quietly and stubbornly refusing to pay a single penny to support the corporate rape of generations of helpless artists. I am a musician and have music out there (mp3.com/ChrisJ, natch) and have CDs which can be bought. I don't pressure anybody to do this, but one day it'll be nice to sell a few of those- but I would rather NEVER sell a single CD or make a single dime off my music, if it meant I had to support a system so utterly corrupt that it beggars the imagination. Owning the artist's work outright for 35 years isn't ENOUGH? Apparently not.I see no particularly feasible way to get around this corrupt, evil system other than mp3s. I personally am putting lots of totally legitimate mp3s out there, but I can't muster up even the smallest condemnation for the biggest most blatant copyrighted-music pirate in the world (currently, mp3.com itself ;) ). If that means musicians generally are not paid, fine: that's the way it is NOW, plus you sign away your life's work to the labels- formerly for 35 years, now FOREVER. Who can justify that, or participate in it even passively? Did you know that the labels and the RIAA are changing the rules as we speak so that musicians can only sign away their own ARTWORK to their corporate masters forever? Is this retroactive, do you suppose, as it is a reclassification of existing contract terms? Is it right for musicians to lose the rights to their music forever? What are you, the music consumer, going to do about this?
I am doing this: mp3.com/ChrisJ. Whatever you do, please do _something_: at this point, not only is it the unsigned artists needing a chance, the _signed_ artists are starting to be abused worse than you would possibly imagine. Please spread the word and do something, anything, to resist. Maybe you'd prefer to ignore the indie guys and send mainstream chart-topping musicians $10 in the mail. God knows they could probably use it. It will soothe their feelings some tiny amount as they consider the way in which they have just lost ownership of their own music forever (and are likely forbidden from doing any music other than for the label in their contract).
If there is a combined CDPlayer and MP3 unit, the logical feature would be to ripping from the CDRom and play tracks as MP3. This not only saves power, but prevents skipping.
I may be misunderstanding you (and oh Lord, please say that I am), but that is the most illogical thing I have ever heard. You want to do this?
CD->Encoder->Save->Decoder->Audio
How does this save power? You still have to spin up the CD but now you have to take the time to encode the file, save it to memory, in addition to decode and play it. As I see it, you're using more power in the encoding and saving portions, not saving. And as for preventing skips, maybe. More likely, it's going to have to account for skips during the encoding process, which, honestly, isn't that what shock protection is for?
No, the logical feature in an MP3/CD player is to play the MP3s off of a CD. Yes, you might get skipping, but for me anyway, the benefits of having 10 hours of music on a handily transported medium that can be used in a player that will also play my other handily transported mediums far outweight issues of power (of which these devices probably don't use much more than regular CD players) and skipping.
David E. Weekly
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
What people are talking about here is a device that will play a cd of burned MP3s - so you could have 650 megs of MP3s (about 10-11 hours of music) on a single CD. This would beat the heck out of current mp3 players for capacity, and conceivably could be as small as a discman.
The concept is awesome - the only problem I can see is that discman-style players are notoriously power-hungry - and the extra processing required to decode the mp3 audio might make the battery time low enough to be a nuisance. (I get about 6-8 hours out of a set of batteries on my current player - I'd expect this to drop to 5-7 if the player has to do extra processing - a hardware decoder could help out here, but would probably make the player a bit more expensive)
I'd still buy one in a second though =)
I picked up one of these a little over a month ago. It's got some good parts and some bad parts. Here's the rundown.
:) The tray is really cheap plastic. I feel like it's going to break soon. The LED display has already crapped out.
Good Parts:
It's loaded on features. The Raite AVPhile 715 can read DVDs, VCDs, MP3 CDs, and standard audio CDs.
It reads ISO9660 formatted CDs with MP3s on them. It can recurse subdirectories, so it's easy to organize your music.
It can read Romeo formatted CDs for 15 character filenames.
It can show BMP pictures for each song.
It can display a "lyrics" file for each song.
You can hack it to take out the Macrovision protection or the country codes by playing with the remote.
The on-panel controls (not remote) are well done.
It's cheap (I paid $179 @ Fry's)
Bad Parts:
It's cheap
It takes FOREVER to load the CD
You can't flip through the songs on the CD without actually changing which is playing. You can't switch the display mode without stopping the music.
It doesn't support Joliet or Rock Ridge filesystems. Linux doesn't write Romeo fileystems. You can get around the 8.3 filename limitation by including a lyrics file.
The lyrics file only shows the 1st 15 characters of each line. That's how many fit on the screen, but it doesn't do wrap-around. I wrote a small perl script to do the wrap-around, but it's a hassle, and I wasted a number of CDs experimenting.
The BMP format is really strange. As far as I can tell, they're 1 frame DVD (MPEG-2) files. I don't know why they didn't just use MS-BMP or GIF. They have a closed-source DOS program on their web site. I haven't tried this through dosemu, but I can't imagine it not working. I haven't been able to find any Linux programs to make these files.
No local storage. This means all your MP3 files have to be burnt onto CD.
The remote is confusing, with redundant buttons (forward, fast forward and skip forward, only two of which will work at any given time, depending on media).
DVDs suck. The whole DeCSS thing turned me off them. There's no Jurassic Park, no Star Wars, no good movies. There's the Matrix, but I thought that movie sucked on the silver screen. I've never actually seen a VCD.
-Dave
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Yes, but those are high end geek devices...I'm talking about a DISCMAN that plays MP3s, something everyone can afford....you won't see it happen...at least not for a while...
Oy..I knew that too....thanks....ETLA can be so hard to keep track of anymore *L*
guess what? it may exist, but only as much as the pine d'music and the mambox--the review you cite is nice and apparently by a third party, but clicking on the manufacturer link from that page shows that you can "reserve" your unit this week, but they won't ship til may. while it's the cheapest (and has the biggest anti-skip buffer) of any of the 3 products, i refuse to call it other than vaporware/hypeware until i can go "click" and have one shipping to me within 24 hours.
Apparently, the Director of Product Marketing has been getting floods of E-Mail from users who want to know when the product will be released.
There is no shipping date on the site, or in his letter.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Not the most illogical, but close.
To do this would require a very large memory buffer -- probably at least 4 MB. And more software (and thus more ROM) for encoding MP3s. That can significantly raise the cost of producing a unit.
If you just want to prevent skipping a smaller, read ahead buffer should be sufficient.
If you want to listen to one track over and over again . . . why would anyone want to listen to the same track over and over again? I can't imagine that this is a very common request from anyone over 6 years old who isn't a big Barney the Purple Dinosaur fan. I don't think I've ever used the single track repeat option on my stereo or on WinAmp.
/peter
That's just not true. There are plenty of product announcements that you can read available, but the announced products themselves are not physically available. You can't actually buy one and hold it in your hands and listen to music come out of it. The closest one can come is to load a web page and look at pictures and read specs and imagine how cool it will be.
Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad business model in general. It worked fabulously for the sex industry, resulting in the tried and true line of products that we call pr0n. But for music-playing devices, I dunno. Call me an unimaginative old fart who won't embrace modern technology, but I just don't enjoy imagining music as much as I enjoy actually hearing it. Oh, and another thing: I don't think that just showing us pictures and specs, where we use out imaginations, is going to be a good business plan for the long-term, because they aren't charging for it! Anyone can go to Pine's page and read about the vaporous product, and Pine doesn't make a dime off it. It didn't even ask for my credit card number.
No, I think they only way they're going to make money is if they actually ship a product to end users in exchange for money. Some of us have been waiting for quite some time to buy one, but it seems that no one wants our money.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While all these products seem to be great, (including this one), they're all about the size of actual CD players. Now, I assume what people are trying to accomplish is to be able to walk around with hours upon hours of music with them. But a bulky CD-player still isn't all that ideal.
What I've always wondered is, why doesn't someone put this concept together with a mini-disc setup? Small disc, with less chance for shock, and still high capacity. (shrug)
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Flaming the /. authors aside, from what I can tell, the Apex will play DVDs and CDs of mp3s, but not traditional CDs (CDDA format). That is what the question is asking about. I for one am glad to see all the links to CD/mp3-CD players. Me want!
Eric
OK... Yes there is a $80 difference, but from what I can tell, the pine player (if it ever comes out) is a little better too.
For one, looking at Mambo's web site it seems that their LCD display doesn't show the track name for the mp3 you're playing. The pine does. When you have a CDR with hundreds of songs on it, it would be nice to know what you're playing. I think I would pay $80 for that feature, but that's just me!
A few weeks ago I went to Circuit City and paid my $179. There weren't any units in the state, so they promised to order one and get it to me in "7 - 10 days". After a week, I looked on the web site which said "Out of Stock". Aparently they were putting huge ads in the newspaper even though there were vitually no units in stock in the country. Anyway, this is the description currently listed on www.circuitcity.com:
DVD: APEX AD600A We are aware from media reports that initial production of the Apex AD600A had secret menus which allowed some users to bypass copyright protections built in to all DVD players. These menus have now been deleted from this player in recent production and our present stock reflects this fact. We purchased the AD600A based on its full array of legitimate features, quality construction and a most attractive price. It remains an outstanding value today!
Oh well, I guess I can live without the hidden menu. As long as I can play MP3s in my living room.
-B
The CD BlastIt! with a built in 25GB hard drive for storage of MP3s. Sells for $595. From Corporate Systems Center, who specializes in duplication equipment these days.
There is one which claims to be the worlds first, its at www.mambox.com and looks pretty cool.. It seems it may be shipping soon even, and has links to sites which will sell it.
-- iCEBaLM
Actually, the RIAA has some 500 members, so they are not all internationals. Nonetheless, the big boys are the ones that actually control the RIAA.
Although sony is a member of the MPAA, it's not the MPAA that is concerned about MP3s. The MPAA is concerned about DeCSS. You're thinking of the RIAA, a different group of corporate bastards. I can see how you'd get confused though, as Sony is a member of both.
MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America
Sure, Sony doesn't make MP3/CD combos, but they do sell a couple (pricey) MP3 players, so they can't be too morally opposed to the MP3 format. I'm sure Sony, being a member of the RIAA, will continue to bitch about pirating while making profits off their MP3 players.
The MP3/CD combo probably won't be picked up by Sony until there are more CD burners in the homes of music listeners. They tend to produce on a mass scale, so don't hold your breath. Maybe they're still waiting for their Minidisc to catch on.
I know WinAmp for Windows does CD's and MP3 (among others), and I know XMMS and WinAmp are virtually identical. I seems almost logical that all XMMS would need is a CDRom plugin....
Ozwald
You know the really funny thing about this is, it was featured here on Slashdot last September... Here
News review DMusic
Have a look and order here Kiwi-computers
There are quite a few MP3/CD player combinations in development though none have actually shipped to date. Here is a list of a few of them and a link to where a small review about each one can be read. This is just a few prospective MP3 CD players that have been extracted from an article that Dimension Music just recently wrote regarding the portable MP3 CD player race. These players, with the exception of the Kiwi player, have been known about for quite some time now to those of us who closely follow the MP3 scene:
I wonder what the RIAA would say about it.
Fight Spammers!
There's always the non-portable Apex DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 player which pretty much does anything you would want it to do for about $200. It has a relatively rough user interface and remote, but it's still godly cool.
A choice of masters is not freedom
There are a bunch of Mp3/CD portable player combos. In fact, it's funny you should ask as the first that is acually into production is the Mambo-X and it started Shipping on Friday. It's made by Tagram and has the best features of any of the dual-compliant format players I've seen yet.
For the full low-down on portable players and their support/features go here. Another place to check is Mp3.com's Portable players page. You might find out a little more about some of the players there (especially Mp3 ports.).
the Genica Portable MP3/Audio CD Player. It costs $99. Buy it here. It doesn't go on sale for a few days, however.
Here you can find Voquette's Netlink for MD players... It may only work with these sharp model, but I'm unsure. The original review I read makes it sound that way but the Voquette site makes it sound like any MD can use the netlink. Amusingly enough they also make a MP3 player that will work with any cassette walkman, and even record MP3s to a walkman, if it has a record function.
There is the $179 MAMBOx. I don't think it's out yet, however, it looks cool.
Of course, there is Pine's Player.
There are more of these out there... These are just some of the ones that spring to mind, and all portable. I love my Apex, though... $160 and it plays any disc I own... MP3, DVD, CD, VCD... I use portable music so little that my Rio is fine for my purposes...
Josh Sisk
When I attended MacWorld this past January at Moscone, the Iomega had several Zip Disk prototype devices. There was a digital camera that wrote to Zip Disk (by Canon I think..) but most impressive was a deck sized player that played MP3s off of said Zip Disk. I bet that a portable wouldn't be far off if/when (the Iomega guy was remarkably tight-lipped about development time/stage) they release the deck version. I was very impressed, it had both digital and analog outs...sounded to me like it was close to primetime...
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
I know the main reason that people want a cd mp3 player is for space. There is an mp3 player, though expensive, looks nice in contrast to those small crappy mp3 players that only home 32 or 64 megs of music. It has an internal 4 gig Hard drive that holds some 100 cd's (100 full cd's,not just 100 songs). It's called the PJ-mp3 player and i think compaq makes it. Check it out at Pjbox.com Who knows, maybe you can replace the harddrive with say a 40 gig maxtor and hold 1000 cd's. At the present time it's only windows compatible.
"Your just jealous because the voices only talk to me"
I wanted to be able to have 100's of CDs in my car without having them roll around and get scratched too. I just stuck an old 3.2 gig hard drive in a case with a cheap motherboard and hooked it up to my stereo. I wrote a little linux interface to xaudio that controls it via a keypad between the front seats. It really turned out nice for me, holds 650 or so so tracks, only cost about $400, and it only takes about 35 seconds to start up. Check it out!
Ever since I got my CD Burner, i wondered why no one has a CD/MP3 CD Player....once I hard Sony was considering it ( anyone got a link ), and after the Apex DVD player came out I /really/ started to wonder. Why hasn't this been done yet? Legal issues? Probably. Lack of sellablity? Hell no... here's a scary thought...Sony makes CD player...Sony Entertainment is a member of the MPAA....Sony does NOT make MP3 CD Players...coincedence? I think not...
PS: I want a portable MP3 ZipDisk player...sure it's only 100 megs...but still...portable has hell...no?
check out the brujo from Netdrives.
Although the title of the article did not make it clear, from reading the body of the article it seemed pretty clear he wants a portable MP3 CD/player... I'd like one too, but all of the ones mentioned so far seem to not be out just yet.
I think an important feature of any of these players will be how easy the browsing interface is, and I sure hope I can add playlists to the CD's!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
mambox
Yes, there is one for your car.. Check it out at http://www.carplayer.com. Here are some of the specs (pulled from thier site):
:o)
1. Runs with any ATAPI device i.e. CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW or even DVD-ROM. (required)
2. Full support for MPEG1, MPEG2 Audio Layer III, MP3 files (except 256+Kbits).
3. Multiple CD file formats: ISO-9660, Joliet, Romeo and most others.
4. Auto switch play mode between CD-DA (audio CD) or MP3 Disk.
5. Supports CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-ROM media.
6. Can have up to 2200 files per cd.
7. Accepts 63 play list numbers in user programmable memory and has Single, Shuffle, Repeat, 10 second scan and more.
8. 31 Key Remote Control
9. Output level for headphones, speakers, tape adapter (for car), and stereo amps.
I didn't see a price on thier site, but you can be sure it isn't cheap. But then again, geek toys rarely are
segfault@bellatlantic.net
It's a little homebrew, but you cant beat the price:
;-)
www.carmp3player.com
I have one of these things, and it's quite possibly the best 150 bucks i've every spent. Plays mp3 cd's and audio cd's and comes with a remote control! Amazing. Not too fancy, not too aesthetic, but it's perfect for the geek with less 'discriminating' tastes (and a very empty wallet
-bugbbq
Instead of talking nonsense like this you should start becoming part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Please go to my mp3.com site and then don't even necessarily hang around listening to my music- I mean, it's fine and people have been writing and saying they liked it but you should go ON from there, even skipping my stuff, and begin exploring and downloading some of the other artists there. There's an american Tuvan Throat-Singer (nominated for most unusual vocalist!), Steve Sklar, who plays with Big Sky. There's a rap act ("G-spot") who put together phenomenal backing tracks that groove like P-Funk. I've taught myself what Trance and Drum+Bass really are entirely from mp3.com acts and reading the message boards, it's an amazing resource. There's a huge amount of stuff out there and it's ALL legitimate uses of the format. Please stop misleading and start being part of the solution! It's really important! Thank you.
Back in September, Pine announced their MP3/CD player (link). It seemed pretty cool at the time. I thouht it was a Slashdot story, in fact, that brought this to my attention. They listed a pretty reasonable price, too, $280, and you can pre-order it at Outpost.com.
On jan 14, 2000, this article was posted about the Apex player. There have since been several followup articles posted about the legality of the Apex, and there are about a bazillion other web sites with info about it. Heck Circuit City now even advertises that this thing plays MP3s
Even earilier than that, back on Sep 9, 1999, slashdot posted this story on the Pine unit. Now, the Pine unit has not hit the market yet, but it any many similar units can be found in the MP3 hardware section on mp3.com
There are now probably about a half dozen other units similar to the Pine unit (their names and URLs have already been posted by people more eager than myself) but also like the Pine unit none of them have actually made it to the streets yet. Had the poster asked what was actually *available* or reviews of the available units, that would have been a different story entirely.
I mean, it's bad enough when people post stupidly obvious questions to usenet or to mailing lists (questions that can be answered with a simple web search or by looking in very obvious locations) but when these things start getting posted as slashdot feature stories... sheesh...
-p.
Terratec CD/MP3 Player
Mambox portable MP3/CD Player
Pine Technology (MP3 Audio): D'music SM-200C Portable MP3/Audio CD Player
netDrives CD/MP3 player Brujo
Check it out ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/000227-000009.html Featured @ CeBIT -- looks promising -arbi.