Where are the non-SDMI MP3 Players?

alen asks: "I'm in the market for an MP3 player. I've been looking at various models and they all seem to be SDMI ready or compliant. Looking at customer reviews on Amazon confirms this as you'll find at least one person saying you can't transfer the music from the MP3 player to your PC. At least on the newer players you do." I've been resisting the urge to get an MP3 player for precisely this reason, opting to use my laptop and a cassette adaptor for those long driving trips, but this is hardly affordable or efficient. Handhelds might work, but memory is a problem here. Are there any players out there that haven't forgotten the "fair" part in "fair-use"?

"So far I have narrowed my search to 3 choices. I want it to sound very good and be able to play music encoded at 128kb or higher.

The Rio Volt 250 is a CD based player so the SDMI thing doesn't really apply. The Creative Labs Nomad II" proudly displays this as a feature. The Samsung Yepp doesn't use SDMI, but something called SecuMax as stated in the Nomad II technical specs on Amazon. And this little tid bit on the Samsung Yepp homepage confirms that SecuMax is just like SDMI.

Now I'm not looking to download any illegal music from the Internet. I simply want to listen to my CD collection on the train to work or while working out. And there is freely downloadable music out there. If I were to download a song at work or a friend's house, put it in my MP3 player I then wouldn't be able to transfer it back to my PC at home to add to my collection. Where is 'fair use' when the artist is giving away their music for free? And I don't have the link, but what of the recent surges in so called 'secure' CD's that one can't rip into MP3's? Where is the 'fair use' there? Or are we supposed to purchase multiple copies of the same music in different formats?"

Comments

archos jukebox

[theridersofrohan]

Try the archos jukebox (http://www.archos.com )

A hard drive based solution, comes at 6GB-20GB flavors, works under Linux (I'm using it with the usb-storage module), and I got it for around £150 (british pounds).

Great for transfering data as well: Windows finds it as a normal drive, and I can mount it under linux (vfat).

Cheers,
Stefanos

Re:archos jukebox

[Quaryon]

I second this - I'm listening to my jukebox 6000 as I write. I've ripped out the original 6Gb hard disk (you can now get a 20Gb version too, called the "studio 20") and inserted a 30Gb one - since it takes standard 9.5mm height 2.5" drives this is quite a simple operation, and it uses a normal FAT filesystem so you can use all the normal tools on it (defrag, scandisk, whatever..) The PC sees it as an extra drive using the standard USB hard disk mechanism so it works under Windows or Linux, and I believe Mac as well (I don't have a Mac so I can't test it..)

It has a few idiosyncrasies so it's well worth reading the list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archosjukebox6000 (requires registration) to pick up all the necessary hints and tips - the support there is probably better than you will get from Archos themselves.

The JB6K has the advantage that you can copy whatever files you want onto it - if they're MP3 format it will play them, if not it will ignore them so you can use it just as an external portable hard disk. It'll cope with MP3's encoded up to 320kbit/s CBR or VBR. It also has upgradable firmware so theoretically it could be made to support other sound formats although there doesn't seem to be any sign that Archos are moving towards this.

Q.

iPod

[Green Light]

For the FireWire-equipped PeeCee (or Mac, obviously), you can not only carry your music collection (or at least a large percentage of it) around with you, but can transfer the files to any suitably equipped machine. The music files are in an invisible directory on the iPod, and are easy to find.

Rio 500

[Bullschmidt]

Its old, so you probably can't buy it new, but the RIO 500 rocks. It uses SmartMedia, has no copy protection, and came with 64MB built in. The smartmedia cards are now pretty cheap, so its not too bad to buy lots of these tiny cards. It has pretty good battery life (a little less than 10 hours if you are actively - triggering the backlite - using it). It runs on a single AA, is rugged, and light. It has nice sound quality (the earphones that come with it suck though). I recommend one if you can find it.

Re:Rio 500

[furiousgeorge]

another vote for the R500 - i've got one and it's great. The only caveats:

-the off/lock/on switch. When trying to lock the player it's TOO easy to turn it off. And it doesn't remember the place in the song you were - only what song. It's stupid, but i hit this all the time and it's annoying. The switch should be off/on/lock, or put lock on another switch.

-the supplied headphones are sucky. Spend $15 and get another set.

-i get a min of 10hours out of a single AA battery. Kickass.

-i don't think it takes >64MB smartmedia cards (i may be wrong). I always downsample the stuff to the portable at 96Kbs, so that gets me a good 2 hours with minimal glitches.

-it may be just my player, but it's not very shock resistant. i use it at the gym, and if it gets tapped with even more than a slight touch it jumps songs and stops playing (even when locked). Maybe a lose wire somewhere, but it's always done it.

otherwise - highly recommended.

Apple iPod

[Josuah]

The Apple iPod does not have any "anti-piracy" features built in. Specifically, it states something to the effect of "Piracy is a social issue, not a technological one" on the packaging. You can use it with Windows (via Mediafour's XPod) or Macs, and probably soon with Linux. If you use the iPod as a portable drive on a Mac, you can simply copy files back and forth at will. But if you use iTunes to sync, the MP3 files are invisible. Some information on this is available here, and here's a simple utility to access the invisible MP3 files.

Also, the iPod supports a variety of encodings. It should support up to 256Kbps (or is it 320Kbps?), variable bit rate, joint stereo or normal stereo, because that's what iTunes supports. The 1000 songs it advertises is for 160Kbps songs.

Re:I don't think that word means what you think...

[JASegler]

I believe the "fair" part they are talking about relates to time shifting and media conversion.
It's fair use to copy an LP to cassette so you can play it in your car.
It's fair use to copy a CD to cassette so you can play it in your car.
It's fair use to convert a CD to mp3 so you can play it in your computer/mp3 player.

The fair use part is that you bought it once. You shouldn't have to buy it for every media type on the planet.

Even under the "license" model. The person has purchased a license to listen to a piece of music. The media in which it is stored is irrelevant. Of course if the RIAA ever switched to a convoluted EULA like MS's...

-Jerry

this is a non-issue, afaik

[MoNsTeR]

If "SDMI Compliant" means "can't copy from player to PC", then this is a 100% non-issue. Even the original Rio 300 (which I have) doesn't let you do this. Furthermore, I can't really think of a reason you'd *want* to. Why would I want to move only 64MB of mp3's over a slow-ass parallel port connection, when I can download all 6GB of my mp3's from home at 128Kbps? Or just burn some favorites to a CD and bring that to work?

The only way player-to-PC-copy would be really useful is if you had a hard-drive player, and I believe some of them (Archos Jukebox?) can do that.

OTOH, if "SDMI Compliant" means something else, then it might be a bigger problem. But if the thing plays standard MP3's, I don't see how there's much to worry about, as there's no way to "trust" an mp3, and thus no way to restrict the player, IF in fact it plays standard files.

Seconded and amended - try the jukebox recorder!

[isaac]

I agree with the parent that Archos seems to have the best MP3 devices at the moment. In particular, though, I would recommend staying away from their cheaper "Jukebox 6000" and "Studio 20" products, in favor of their "Jukebox Recorder" machine.

Highlights of this thing?
- Works great on any OS that supports USB storage devices; when attached, mounts like any other USB hard disk. Will store anything you put on there.
- Hackable; will take any 9.5mm 2.5" laptop hard disk. I replaced the stock 6 GB disk with a 20 GB mechanism without any problems.
- Unlike the cheaper models, the Recorder (which goes for around $300-$350 these days) does real-time MP3 recording from analog line-in, digital SPDIF, or an onboard mic!
- Digital in doubles as digital out when not recording.
- The Recorder has a MUCH, MUCH BETTER interface than the cheaper jukeboxes, with an 8-line screen that during playback shows ID3 info (or directory info if file is untagged), elapsed/remaining/total time, left and right VU meters, and labels for the three soft-button function keys.
- Also, the recorder has greatly superior sound compared to the cheaper jukeboxes, with base/treble/loudness/balance adjustments and plenty of volume.

And of course, no SDMI anywhere in sight. The iPod looks nicer, and firewire is cool, but with a 20 gig disk in mine, I've got 4x the capacity of an iPod in a package not much bigger, with digital i/o and real-time mp3 recording abilities. Oh yeah, 10-hour battery life, too, using standard replacable NiMH AA cells.

-Isaac

Re:iPod?

[mblase]

Except you can't sync the iPod's playlists to more than one Mac. (However, you can copy it manually, which is more than these other players seem to be doing.)

Sssh.... Secret about Creative Labs SDMI support

[Dan Nolan]

I've owned a Nomad Jukebox for almost a year. When I first bought it, the firmware would not allow you to copy files from the device to you computer. But as soon as the first firmware upgrade was release, it did away with this. It claims to have support for SDMI, but only on files the are encoded in particular formats with particular digital rights management software. Mp3s are safe.

In fact, the latest firmware upgrade now allows you to move any type of file onto the Nomad and back, so you can use it as a portable harddrive!

(Let's keep Creative Labs lack of SDMI enforcement just between us. We wouldn't want certain powerful industry lobby groups *cough-RIAA* to come down on them.)

Re:iPod?

[toupsie]

I have had my iPod for a little over a week now and its very trivial to copy files from the mp3 storage area to your mac. In Mac OS X, just hop to the "Terminal" and do a "cp -R /Volumes/[iPod Name]/Music/* ~/Music" and it moves across nicely.

Consider getting a MiniDisc recorder/player

[ziffie]

MiniDisc players are a viable alternative to portable mp3 players. The ATRAC compression technology has reached a point where you can store 80/160/320 minutes on a single 80 minute minidisc.

The units themselves are tiny (most of them are in the 80x16x75mm range) and weigh almost nothing (the Sharp MD-MT770 weighs 128g). The discs are infinitely re-recordable and cost about $1.50 each.

Depending on the level of compression you record at, shock protection can be up to 160 seconds. Most units have rechargeable batteries and can also use an extra AA for backup yielding incredible battery life -- the MT770 for example can play up to 49 hours on the highest compression level (35 on the regular SP mode).

One of the coolest advantages they have over mp3 players is that you can record concerts at virtually CD quality sound. Plug a microphone into the in-jack and you can bootleg with ease. Most of the latest recorders feature manually adjustable recording levels (while recording!), automatic 3/5/10 minute timestamping, audio syncing and optical line-in (which means you can optically record mp3s from a computer equipped with optical-out). Some of the Sony recorders (MZ-R700DPC for example) ship with external D/A converter that connects the MD's digital input with your computer's USB port, which makes recording all internet audio formats quite easy.

You can shuffle tracks around on a disc on the fly, delete them, insert new ones and of course there are the usual random/repeat play modes.

You can get an entry-level MDLP (2x/4x recording) player/recorder for around $215. Compared to paying $90 for each 256mb flashcard, they are really cost efficient.

I have a Sharp MD-MT77 which I am quite happy with. I make 5 hour playlists in xmms, plug the recorder into my soundcard's line-out and make mix MDs. 5 hours is a lot of space to work with -- and the quality is quite decent. At 2x (160 minutes), recordings sound virtually like CD quality.

Check out minidisc.org for more information, or minidisco.com for a run-down on most of the available models.

Re:iPod?

[toupsie]

It takes my Archos Jukebox 6000 about 5 1/2 hours to copy over 6 gigs of data and it take my iPod only 12 minutes to copy 5 gigs over. The iPod can set individual EQ settings for each of your mp3. I can play breakout on my iPod. The iPod supports ID3v2.3 tags while the Archos supports on the 1.1 tags. The Archos only displays the song title while the iPod will display the song, artist and album.

Gay? Like in happy or your alternative lifestyle?

Re:Philips eXpanium

[Picass0]

My wife gave me a Philips Expanium recently. I'd say the pros outweigh the cons. The sound is good, I don't get too much skipping, and when I insert a disc, the scan process will look for mp3s on any disc. I have old archive discs where I have zip files and misc. data mixed with my mp3s, and I have no problems listening to these discs.

My biggest gripe is the display sucks. I would like to have a scrolling text message, but instead the display gives you a number for the directory (album) and file (song).

It's a bit bulkier than the nifty little solid state devices, but I have 301 They Might Be Giants songs on the disc in my player right now. The mini players with large memory cost more, while the Expanium sells for for only 90 US dollars.

I picked up a 20 hour rechargable lead battery at Radio Shack (part number 23-505) and replaced the headphones with a Kenwood KPM-510 headset. I usually keep the thing in a bookbag anyway, so the bulk doesn't bother me.

Re:Seconded and amended - try the jukebox recorder

[isaac]

Have you upgraded to the latest firmware (1.21d) listed on their page, yet? I'd be curious as to what, exactly, "Serial Copyright Management System", and how it affects the usefulness of this device.

I have installed 1.21d. SCMS is the bozo-bit-based copy protection scheme used by consumer digital audio recorders (DATs and CD burners, mainly; it's mandated by the Audio Home Recording Act for any digital audio recorder, and this thing qualifies). SCMS has very little practical effect on this device for 2 reasons:

- One, the SCMS system allows one digital copy from an original copyrighted digital source (e.g. a CD), which is all you really need in most cases. It just won't let you record digitally from a digital copy made with an SCMS device (e.g. it would block recording from a CDR copy of an original CD, if the CDR copy was made with a consumer standalone audio CD burner).

- Two, disabling SCMS on the Archos Jukebox Recorder is trivial, and doesn't require messing with hardware or firmware. When recording, set the "Artist Name" string to HFSCMSOFF. That's it. Re-enable with HFSCMSON, or just by resetting the device.

-Isaac

Open Source Player

[pjrc]

If your MP3 player was open source, you wouldn't have to worry about it doing undesirable things behind your back... or at the very least you could hack on it to make it do whatever you want.

There actually is an open-source MP3 player. It's not a shiny polished product like a Rio, but I can say with 100% confidence that is has absolutely no SDMI features, since I designed it!

Ok, mod me down for shameless self promotion now.