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Review: Nex II CF MP3 Player
In digital photography, I've pretty much stuck with the CF-based Nikon Coolpix series of digital cameras, so I had scads of CF memory cards lying about. I also have an IBM Microdrive which I use when taking TIFFs using the Nikon. So I wanted an MP3 player able to handle not just Compact Flash, but also the Microdrive. The Microdrive is tricky because it both consumes much more power than solid-state CF cards, but also is slower to respond and larger, demanding the taller CF-II slot.
Until the i2go ego, there wasn't a mp3 player that could handle the Microdrive. I had owned and immediately given away the original, incredibly flawed, RCA Lyra because it simply stank so much I couldn't stand to own the thing. If RCA wants to send one of the new ones, I'd be pleased to check it out, but the shoddy original made me vow never to give RCA more MP3 player money.
The i2go ego (still sold some places, although I think the company that made it is defunct, look look here to see one) wasn't all bad. It played, and it acted as a pretty basic voice recorder, and it allowed for two CF cards to be inserted, at least if you bought a funny daughter board. But its build quality was such that it would spontaneously lose power if jostled. Also, it had the most annoying bug ever: the player would remember the card's contents from before, even if you changed said card's contents. It would try to play them too. It also -- at random --wouldn't notice songs that were on the card. It was very annoying, besides which it was enormous for an MP3 player.
I had been checking out the Nex II for a few months and with a long trip coming up, I decided I needed a MP3 player for the trip. I wanted to have a player that was smartly designed and able to run the microdrive. The Nex II seemed to fit the bill, so I ordered one (with a 256mb card included) for $239 (plus $15 shipping).
It arrived promptly 3 days after order from Frontier Labs' shop in Hong Kong; I've been using it for about a week now, and I have to say it's the best player I've ever owned. The display, an LCD (the letters are not blurry on the actual display) with a blue electro-luminescent backlight, is very readable, and the interface is super easy to use, with a rocker button on the right for track control above the volume buttons and the stop and the "fn" button on the left, under the headphone jack.
Conveniently, the Nex II also acts as a plain vanilla USB drive, so I can upload and download songs (or other files) under Linux with no problem. You can chose from two types of display while the song is playing (status or spectrographic display), which is fun. I stick with the status screen, which shows all pertinent information, including track length, quality in kbps, song title and time elapsed. The player has been able to handle any data rate I've thrown at it, and the specs says it can play WMA files, but I can't verify that. Also, I was able to pass the card to the camera and back with no problem, as neither the nikon nor the player are too controlling of the disk format.
Physically about the size of thick deck of playing cards, the Nex II allows you to change the color of the area around the LCD by sliding in thin colored pieces of glossy paper. You can buy more of these skins for $10, including the unfortunately named "mutant sperm" skin. It also comes with a snappy little neoprene case which has transparent portions covering the LCD and buttons so you can see what's up.
Despite all its good points, the Nex isn't perfect, it lacks some basic features, namely any sort of external power connector. You must always run it with 2 AA batteries. Mind you, it lasts 12 hours when using solid state CF and 5 when using a microdrive, so this is less inconvenient than it sounds. Also, the included headphones are not to my taste at all. The battery cover should be redesigned completely so the latches aren't as flimsy -- every time I change the batteries, I picture scotch tape in my future. Many would probably also like to see it be able to play Ogg Vorbis files, but that wasn't a deal breaker for me.
Another quirk of the Nex II is that to play Microdrives well, you need to load the 1.4(m) firmware available from the FrontierLabs website. It's odd that they didn't make this the default firmware, as the 1.4m firmware seems to work equally well with solid state cards and microdrives, while the firmware it ships with works poorly with microdrives.
So if you're looking for a decent mp3 player, you should check it out. The Nex II is an excellent value, and it sounds terrific.
Thread predictions:
/. reader buys more CD's after using Napster/Morpheus
10 posts about how it doesn't play Ogg
14 posts about how Ogg sounds much better than MP3 or WMA.
4 posts flaming people for not reading the article
15 posts about how much better the iPod is
20 posts about how the next Nomad will be better than the iPod
12 posts about the copy protection in the
17 posts about how some
5 posts about how Kazaa isn't truly P2P
4 posts about how no other player other than the iPod uses FireWire
3 posts from some guy about how USB is fine and nobody needs FireWire
5 posts claiming that it would take "days" to transfer an x gigabyte MP3 collection.
6 replies about how the new FireWire Nomad is coming RealSoonNow.
3 posts predicting the messages in this thread
9 posts about how thread prediction posts suck
Suprised at the battery life, that is very respectable. However, if it has enough power to run a Microdrive, I think it would have enough power for an FM tuner.
I still think the Nomad II MG can not be beat for anyone who wants a small MP3 player, the ability to listen to radio, record radio, and record voice.
Tip of the day:
Ever had a problem with carrying change, keys, ID, or MP3 player while running, biking, or working out? Especially for an MP3 player without a belt clip? Click here, and then thank me.
Amphipod
I assume this can handle bitrates down to 32 kbps or lower
(pretty much all of them can) but can this play mp3s with sample rate of 22 kHz? Very few actually can for some reason, but
this is very useful if you're interested in highly compressed, low quality audio.
I've had one of these players for many months and they are good. Some other features, not mentioned are:
- graphic equalizer (handy for tuning for headphones with no bass)
- spectrum display (as an alternative to the normal track display)
- CF is the best value per megabyte of any storage
On the negative side, the slot for the CF card is too deep and you can miss the pins if not careful.
So as to play CD-Rs with MP3 on them. I assume it's no good for jogging, but it should be great for on the subway, road trips, etc. If there's some dreadful defect with them please let me know before I shell out $150 for one.
I've had one of these for quite a while, and aside from a recent firmware update to do a bit more in the power-saving department, little else has been done with this MP3 player by Hango ... and I'm yet to see anyone hack one to do something other than play MP3's...
/. - it might seem off topic, but occasionally I hear from other PJB users who'd also like to get underneath the cover and see what else can be done with their MP3 players...
Which sort of surprises me, since there's a rather hefty DSP inside this box.
Anyone hacking the PJB100 these days? I like to ask this question every time there's an MP3 article on
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Depending on the region and dispatch date of the player, NEX II(TM) player will come bundled with at least one of the following software for your complete control of your music. Windows Media Player 7(TM) for Win 98/ME/2000; Media Jukebox for Win 98/2000
NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCEEE!
Oh, wait, that's not nice!!
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
The one I could lay hands on has no "shock" memory, it blips out for 30 seconds at the slightest bump. Have to be careful where you put it in the car, even on mostly smooth roads.
OTOH, the jog button is great, battery life with MP3s is better than 10 hours (get those green and white rechargeables with the yellow charger for $15 at Wally-World), and it does a beautiful job playing CDs, much better than my Sony CD player. Note - battery life is only 3 hours when you play CDs.
Sorry, but it get's an initial 10,000 points for the fact that you dump raw mp3's onto the Cf card and it will happily play them. NO OTHER MP3 PLAYER WILL DO THIS. Everything from sony has DRM,the entire Rio line has DRM (except the pmp-300 it was out before Diamond bent over for the RIAA) and I have tried every mp3 player that was removeable flash based storage at best buy/circuit city by bringing my own cf,mmc,smartmedia,memory stick,sd (copy of the mmc with drm abilities) loaded with 3 songs on each. Nothing would play them citing a bad format telling me that you must have it re-encoded and processed by the loader software to ensure you cant swap memory cards with your buddy. (as if ANYONE would do that. removable flash media is expensive, and the chances of finding a large pool of friends with the same mp3 player is near impossible unless you coordinate the purchase)
The iPod could be better, but I also dont see the point of carrying around 65 million mp3's I am quite happy with my 2 256Merg CF cards. and many times I never listen to 1/2 the music I am carrying... but then that is just me others might like the fact that they can sit through 3 meetings, 2 lunches, 4 bitching-out's by the boss, and 2 more meetings before hearing the same song again....
Now if they would make an MP3 boom-box... that way I can annoy those around me.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is a Yahoo Group for discussion of this player at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nexiimp3/
But seriously. What are we supposed to do with an MP3 player? Almost no one is releasing their music in MP3 format, and in a short time, we'll no longer be able to put CD tracks directly into MP3 format. Yes, Morpheus and others are still out there, but truthfully, that's an illegal way to get MP3's. The only legal way was to copy them from your CD.
Yes, we have LOTS of older stuff that we can convert to MP3, but it sounds like all lawful means of converting to MP3 format are being taken from us.
So, is the message, "If you have unlawfully obtained MP3's that you want to play, we provide a nice player for you!"? Or at some point is the music industry going to embrace MP3 format (cough, cough).
The Archos MP3 player has a 6Gig hard disk, and you just dump MP3 files onto it. It's also incredibly handy as a portable storage solution, as it mounts as a drive in Windows.
It uses USB, so it's not super fast, but it's fast enough for all my uses.
My Journal
Is there anyone that has heard one of these that can give more of a description than
"and it sounds terrific.".
This review is like: "yep, found this really cool gadget, it works with Linux and....what ? you mean it plays MP3s ? Cool!"
or am I the only one that thought that ?
Learn to Improvise
Now let's compare the Nex II with the iPod.
.....I prefer iPod
The pictures are too redish, you should check the lights your are using or go outside to take the pictures!
Anyway nice article and nice player... but no power adapter or rechargable batteries, sucks!
Sony makes one, but it's CD-R/W based.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
hey, at least its cheaper than this Nex II thing chrisd is pushing. of course he probably gets one free as a kickback.
mp3playerstore
has them for cheaper and super low shipping. That's where I got mine, and I see today that they are selling it for even less than before.... my luck I bought mine a month ago.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ogg vorbis is considered superior by a lot of electronic music pundits. It is also gaining popularity in some circles.... of course, there's a long way to go before MP3 can be reckoned with in terms of pure popularity, but technically, Ogg is already superior. The open nature of the format also makes it a potentially brilliant option for artists and consumers alike. If I were a portable music device manufacturer, I would seriously look at this format as a possible option in future products.
2DUP * ;
I didn't see this mentioned anywhere in the article or in another thread, so here we go. The base price (the player+accessories but no CF card) is only $109 directly from them! You can see all of the different options at their Yahoo! Store. it looks pretty neat, and if you combine this with the seemingly endless deals on Compact Flash cards that can be found (try AnandTech's Hot Deals Forum) this could be a great player.
-OctaneZ
I have one of these as well, and on the whole, it is VERY good. Only two things I can think of is the random play seems to not be... very random. Has anyone else noticed this? Also, I get errors hooking it up to win2k so I use my win98 side to handle file transfers. Other than that, maybe a low battery warning would be nice.
Although some people might find this to be a minor flaw, I would have liked to have seen it have a Remote Control that sits between the player and the headphones. As I like to put my player (minidisc/mp3) in my jacket/backpack, it can be a royal pain having to fumble around for the player, just to change tracks. Or for example using a tape converter in car to listen to your mp3s, can become quite dangerous if you have to muck about with the player to change tracks.
I may be wrong, and perhaps there is a remote control for this product, but from looking at the pictures I could not see one...
$20? dude, when i was 7 years old i had a scooby doo record player that cost $20.
Why are they so idiotic? Why can't they supply a reasonable amount of memory? We're already in 2002, aren't we? So why do manufactorers expect us to settle with 64 megs?
There are Nomads with more memory, but they don't have an FM radio.
I'll tell you what I'm looking for:
That's it. Now, is there anything that does that? Couldn't find anything like that, yet.. the RioVolt 250 gets close to it, but it doesn't resume play.
- Bronze
I've had my player for a couple of months now and I agree with the reviewer. It's a great player. Also, it works with Mandrake Linux 8.1+ without any problems at all. Just create the mount point and go... On a side note, the headphones are very durable - I ran over them with my office chair yesterday and they just bounced back to the correct shape. :-)
Compact Flash seems to be the most available format, with lots of storage space and low cost.
:) must have an SD slot so that I can load it up from my PDA. Or maybe my PDA itself will be the MP3 players.
The fact is that all Palm devices and the new 3800 iPaqs have built-in connector for the SD card standard. I think the PDA market will pump the SD card standard to the top of the market. My next MP3 player (well okay my first mp3 player
When are we going to see car stereo decks that take some sort of memory card? That could obsolete CDs for good.
He's talking about the RioVolt, not the Nex II. The RioVolt uses CD-Rs, not CF.
Nice review, Chris.
The only problem is that every one of their players is sold out.
They sell them via a Yahoo storefront, and if you click on any of the players you'll see the following text:
Darn. And that $109 one with no memory looked like a deal!
Favorable at MP3.Com
Negative at CNET.COM
Brief at IGN FOR MEN (heh)
Mixed at Epinions
This is for all of you who don't have google-equipped browsers.
Listen to this guy list off all the expensive toys he's discarded or clearly cares little about! This guy has waaaay too much money!
Where are they? MP3 recording (mic, line, etc) would be a logical next step for these devices, ala some of the Sony portable minidisc players.
They'd be ideal for news people, taping live shows, and so on.
As cool as the iPod is, why can't it record?
I just bought an iPod, and I think Apple were so close in creating the ultimate portable player. Of course, it only works if you own a Macintosh (despite the fact that I'm using it with Windows, most non-geek Windows users wouldn't buy it if it didn't work with Windows out of the box...), but why can't we buy any iPod-type deviced that doesn't need a computer?
I showed my mother my iPod, and she said that she would love to have one, if only she could copy her CDs onto it without having to have a computer inbetween. IMHO, an iPod-type device which lets you dump CDs straight onto it would sell like hot-cakes. I find that being able to listen to pretty much any music I want to, anywhere and any time I like has changed the way I listen to music, and so much for the better.
Fiddling around with silly memory cards is annoying to me, and confusing for Joe Average. I just want a box with music in it. I'll keep my iPod thanks. :)
NO OTHER MP3 PLAYER WILL DO THIS.
... apart from those mentioned by others in this thread. To which I would like to add the "Microboss MP3 Pocket" player that I own. It's a tiny little box that takes ordinary CF cards (no microdrives, alas) onto which you can store ordinary MP3s. And at approx. $50, it's only half the price of the device from the above review.
For those who are interested (and can read German), I wrote a little review about the Microboss player.
bye, Dirk
I'm a runner, training for a marathon who presently using a MiniDisc player for entertainment on those long runs. But, having pretty much trashed one in this way, I'm pretty wary about using it, and I do worry about it.
So, what I wan't to know is: Do these, and MP3 players in general, have any moving parts, and are they very resistance to shock, vibration and continuous movement?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
If I were a portable music device manufacturer, I would seriously look at this format as a possible option in future products.
However, the current Vorbis reference decoder uses floating-point math, which isn't available on cheap DSPs. As of yet, there isn't (to my knowledge) a fixed-point decoder for any Ogg format. This is the biggest thing holding up Ogg support on portable audio players.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's clearly a throwback to the first Rio that Diamond released a few years back (which I still have in a box somewhere in the basement);
Wanna send that to me?
-B2
AFAIK, no one can make the format ... expensive to use
Not even Thomson?
but we will still have open source alternatives (such as LAME) for encoding.
Which are illegal to use in the United States and other countries where the algorithms necessary to encode MP3 are patented. Fraunhofer's patents cover more than just its codec and ISO's codec.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As cool as the iPod is, why can't it record?
Will I retire or break 10K?
but why can't we buy any iPod-type deviced that doesn't need a computer?
Have you ever looked at MiniDisc recorders? Each 6cm disc can hold five hours of audio in long-play mode, and it doesn't skip when bumped. If that isn't enough for jogging, what is?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I had owned and immediately given away the original, incredibly flawed, RCA Lyra because it simply stank so much I couldn't stand to own the thing. If RCA wants to send one of the new ones, I'd be pleased to check it out, but the shoddy original made me vow never to give RCA more MP3 player money.
RCA already has your MP3 player money, and there's little you can do about it. RCA's parent Thomson Multimedia administers the patent rights for MP3 technology and charges royalties to all manufacturers of hardware MP3 players.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why don't these units ever have a belt clip? Can you imagine the first Walkman having been released with no belt clip? It's stupid.
...about that firmware ogg upgrade?
I have one of these things as well. Have had it for more than six months now... oh wait.. now.. THIS one I have had for only about 2. You see the build quality sucks. I love it because of the same reasons stated here (ie, acts as removable drive, no DRM, small, CF format). But the build quality really bugs me. My previous player died. Just wouldn't work. Mind you their tech support was helpful and I had a new unit (from Toronto, Canada to Hong Kong and back) in a week. My friend got one when he was in Hong Kong. Died in a month. Just won't turn on. The plastic is cheap and the battery removal process is cumbersome.
Some other negatives are:
- Plan to purchase "real" headphones as well. I have no idea what those "things" are that came with it.
- Audible "processor noise". That's about the only way I can describe it. The decoding is done by Software so when I first got my unit there was actual decoding "blips" but they fixed that in the 1.4 firmware... still not happy with the audio quality.
- damn thing doesn't remember last track played.
Pros are as mentioned earlier.
- Great battery life.
- FAT formatted CF Card and Microdrive. (I use an external USB CF reader to put stuff onto the card.
- Nice clear display.
- price
- support.
I recommend this unit for no other reason then to send a clear "up yours and your DRM" to the RIAA.
--- tracer.ca
Kansas City?!
My folks bought me a NEX II player for Christmas, and it's a wonderful little gadget. The sound quality is excellent, the LCD display is very clear, and it works like a charm. Well, it worked like a charm until I decided to update the firmware. I downloaded the 1.4c version and installed it exactly as described in the README. After installing the update and transferring across some MP3s, I found that when I played a song it played nothing but a constant monotone bleep, and the player locked up, needing the batteries to be removed to reset it. I reinstalled the firmware update once again, but now it won't even boot up further than the splash screen! I emailed tech support a week ago and they still haven't got back to me... The moral of the story - if it ain't broke, don't fix it...
CF is best value? Uh...hello...128M smartmedia is cheaper than 128M of Compact flash...
No antiskip? What's that 10sec/40sec ESP switch on the back? I drove from Nashville to Houston with one of these guys and it never skipped a single time, even in the 10sec mode. I also used it on about 9 continuous days (216 hours) of flying time (~100k mi) and I've never had it skip, not even in the worst of turbulence. (Obviously, it wasn't ever on for landing, but we lost an engine once and experienced some pretty bad vibration from that).
I wouldn't train for a marathon with an MP3 CD player, because it definately does have moving parts, but the solid state stuff would be just fine.
A neat, albeit limited application, hack would be to get a cf 802.11 card running in one of these and be able to run mp3 off a fileshare.
Think of it as a wireless AudioTron. (Nearly) Infinite storage capacity with good mobility. I'd buy one.
This is insightful how?
Steve M
I had owned and immediately given away the original, incredibly flawed, RCA Lyra because it simply stank so much I couldn't stand to own the thing. If RCA wants to send one of the new ones, I'd be pleased to check it out, but the shoddy original made me vow never to give RCA more MP3 player money.
It's one thing to state the problems, or even your dislike for a product, but why would RCA decide to ship a unit to a "journalist" (heh) who claims such bias as to pre-judge all future products because of one old first-generation product.
A reviewer's bread is buttered with free toys to review. Don't pander to the company, but don't snub them with prejudice either.
[
It's half the size of a deck of cards, it runs for about ten hours on one AA battery, and it acts as a USB removeable drive just like your $239 unit.
The only difference is the price. I got mine here for $70 plus $5 shipping.
Add a 256mb flash card from Pricewatch for $80 and that brings the total to a measly $150 for a 256 MB mp3 player with zero copy protection, tiny size, and great sound.
Another kind of flashdrive MP3 player is the MelloMP3 unit. It's a little bigger and uses 2xAA batteries, but i got one for $60 for my brother for christmas.
Possibly the most interesting thing here is the compatibility of CompactFlash and IDE. If you do the wiring right you can stick a CF card straight onto an IDE cable with no other translation and it will work. So my idea for everyone, stick a hard drive under the seat of your car with a small power supply, then just hook the MP3 player to the car stereo via a Line In jack, and presto, you have a 30GB Car MP3 player for less than $200, plus you can take it with you.
Anyways, I hope someone finds this useful.
Muerte
Add an FM Tuner to this thing, and I'd buy it in a second.
SO I say again: YAAD.
bwhahahahah.. god that made me laugh.
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
For my use, I prefer the MP3-CD players. I mainly listen to my MP3-CDs during long car trips or at work. This way I just toss in a MP3-CD and I get about 10 hours of music (depending on compression). Plus I get raw MP3s without any DRM. Of course, my MP3-CD player is quite old. (It's one of the first-generation units which I got back in my Winmag days for review.) CF players do have their place in the market, but, for my uses, CD will be the best until CF cards can beat CDs in price. (And at $0.30 for a 650MB CD, CF has a long way to go.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I bought one of these and promptly traded it for an Ipod as soon as it was available.
.02,
The interface is good, the size is downright tiny, but the battery life is miserable. Perhaps the reviewer was using the 1GB microdrive, which actually has a lower RPM than the 340MB (which is what I'm using) and consequently gets a better battery life, but my NexII would last a max of 3 hours on 2 batteries.
Not only that, but when the battery starts to get low, the nex II experienced lockups and crashes. It was an extremely frustrating experience. All of this only applied to the microdrive - with a CF card, it worked great. But the whole reason I purchased it was for its microdrive support. I did everything their manuals and website suggested, but it didn't really help.
Oh, and another annoying thing - the "shuffle" feature will always sort the songs in the same order.
Just my
Matt
me@mzi.to
It's certainly true that you and your two friends could then use your .ogg files, but seriously...
Every single MP3 story has one freak that always comes up with something that says 'Ogg Vorbis is gaining ground...' 'Ogg Vorbis is considered superior'... 'In some circles, Ogg Vorbis...'
I'll tell you what circles these are. These circles in which Ogg Vorbis is 'gaining popularity' are made up of five or so freaks who consider it mandatory to make one post to Slashdot about this Ogg Vorbis shit every single time.
Whatever! It's weird, nobody supports it, so what. Five people use it, who gives a shit? I'm sure it is great but you'd be much better off expending your effort in trimming your beard, repairing your extremely old, worn out sandals, and forgetting about Ogg Vorbis.
One word: -BETAMAX- you bearded freaks!
has anyone tried the Mello MP3 player....it does CF cards tooo!!!!!!!
Cell phone belt clip that sticks on your device's casing... You can find them anywhere cell phones are sold.
You don't want a case because no one can see your groovy mp3 player at the gym.
i just went to their website and noticed that they make some pretty hefty claims in their ad. i'm just wondering if the can really get away with it...
.... the first player that can double as a portable hard disk
.... the first player with upgradeable firmware
erm... hasn't the archos jukebox been able to do this for quite awhile now? i bought the 20GB version and it's basically just a USB harddrive with an mp3 player stuck on top.
erm... again, my archos can do this. you copy the firmware to the drive when it is off and then turn it back on to activate it.
i guess these claims work for the CF world, but that's not really clarified in their statement. and it's not that i'm knocking this product. i might have actually gotten one instead of the archos if they had been available when i bought my archos. i'm just wondering if they can really make these claims...
Have you tried the firmware upgrade suggested in the review?
I hook my USB-based player up to Windows 2000 with no problems.
To summarize then, SmartMedia sucks eggs and should die.
I know a guy who did this -- IPaq + linux (I forgot which distro) + 802.11 card + NFS gives him a very portable mp3 player. (Kinda bulky for my taste, but still a neat hack...)
Simple drag & drop file transfer on Windows Explorer via ultra fast USB mode. No proprietary software needed.
Um, got oxymoron?
Thats why I use my Archos 6gb MP3 Player... Not a troll, but I HATED having to encode at SUB-AM quality to fit a decent selection of songs on my old 64MB MP3 player... So I got rid of that, and picked up the 6GB player... It's "about the size of a deck of cards" but probibly a little heavier than the one by frontier... AND if I want, I can upgrade it to 20GB or if I would have known, just bought it with the 20GB Drive... I use USB And can drag and drop MP3 files right to it... No DRM for basic MP3's. AND the price was nice... I just saw it recently for about $250 I think...
Now I Rip my CD's at 192kbps... NOT 64 or 96 that sounded horrible... Of course, thats why MP3s will NEVER replace CD's 100% -- and thats why we will always BUY a CD after hearing 1 or 2 of the horrible songs ripped at 64 or 96 kbps... IT IS A LOSSY COMPRESSION AND IT CAN BE HEARD AT THOSE LEVELS.
So I listen, then buy, and the idiots don't get it yet and close down the "easy" access points to the MP3's... So now I'm forced to go "UNDERGROUND"... Did they hurt me? now, just their pocket book because of the songs I won't hear/like and then buy... oh well.. maybe they will smarten up one day.
Oh, like I said at the start... Not trolling, I just like the brand of MP3 Player I bought, and I like the capacity offered by HD MP3 players... Your milage may vary, so do a little research of your own before taking a review as gold.
It seems to me that the editor's were completely justified in doing what they did to that thread. Like it or not, it is offtopic. And notice that they haven't really silenced anyone: all the posts are still there. They may be marked so that the average reader doesn't see them by default, but they are still there, and readable by anyone who has the interest.
For better or worse, the site is run by the editors, and they can do whatever they want. It's stated clearly that they want discussions to stay on topic, probably because that's what the average reader wants. If I'm reading an article about Oracle, I don't necessarily want to have hundreds of posts about trolls and the slashdot culture mixed in there.
On the other hand, the idea that there should be a meta-slashdot story posted, with discussion on these topics would be highly appropriate. My suggestion would be that you write a well-reasoned editorial about it... the post above, with some editing might suffice. Post it in your journal, and submit it to the editors. There are instructions on what to do with editorials in the FAQ. It seems to be more productive than just whining at -1.
I know I am offtopic, and hence not really taking my advice. So you don't need to point that out. And you can feel free to moderate me if you really want to.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. -AC
MDs suffer from the "many disks" problem again.
You don't expect to be able to take the Library of Congress with you, do you? If you want to listen to some punk music, pull out Punk Disc 3 that you made, slap it in your MD player, and go jogging. If you want to carry more music, buy clothes with bigger pockets :-)
Will I retire or break 10K?
While we're on the subject of MP3 players, did anyone else notice that Toshiba just announced plans to start manufacturing 10GB and 20GB 1.8" drives this spring. How long before someone hacks one into an iPod and posts it ;) Price might still be a concern though; the 5GB drive used in the iPod can only be gotten by buying the PC card version from Toshiba, which costs $399 ($299 for the 2GB version), or by buying an iPod, which also costs $399 ($369 for students).
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
if you want something done, do it right!
CF Rules. Nex II is a nice player. I was lucky enough to find one at CompUSA a few weeks ago for $99 with a 32MB Card....(32MB sucks for MP3 -- but it works great in my camera.) After purchasing a couple 256 Meg CF cards VIA pricewatch -- I am in good shape now.
I am an MP3 player junky and own many models ranging from MPMan, RIO500, RCA Lyra, RioVolt CD, Classic CD, Other various First gen CD's, Archos Jukebox, Etc..Etc..Etc. Bottom line:
1. The ability to use only external media is a plus. (I have fried 3 players via data transfer to internal memory. I purchased a CF reader to load data onto the cards so that the actual player never gets harmed during data transfer.)
1A. Compact Flash as the external media. (Has anyone seen Smart Media, MMC, or Sony Memory Sticks that hold 256 Meg, 512 Meg??? -- I dont think so.)
2. CD type MP3 players are nice...the riovolt is a cool player...however I have found that these type of players are 2 big, fragile, and skip prone to be of much use in most "outdoor" type situations.
3. No external program needed to copy files to memory card. Anyone who has tried to put mp3's...err...mpx's onto the RCA lyra knows what I mean...
4. Battery life must be good. 10+ hours. This excludes the "hard drive" type players. They are not only as fragile as the CD's, but they will suck batteries at a rate similar to a laptop.
So far the Nex II is the only player I have purchased that meets all the above.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
why whine for, dude, chill and wait until 1.0 comes out. I am all high end and I seriously can't see why people still use mp3. Even the philosophy behind mp3 sucks. 1.0 will kick ass and some players will support ogg once 1.0 becomes available. RC3 totally blows away any loss compression format out there. On the other hand if you really care about quality and want to shrink the files a little but I suggest you use FLAC. FLAC is da best! FLAC FLAC FLAC FLAC, dude you are getting a DELL with Windows XP Home Edition, and you are using mp3?!
When this new mp3 player comes out, you can listen to the new Black Label Society album 1919 Eternal On March 5th!#@ Check It Out, probably the most heavy album of theirs to date!#!@
"He Who Laughs Last, Is Just A Hand In The Bush" - Ozzy Osbourne
I bought the same NexII MP3 player a couple months ago from mydigitaldiscount.com. They sell the player with various sizes of RiData 20x CF memory cards. Player+256MB was $199, with Free Shipping.
www.mydigitaldiscount.com Nex II prices.
I mostly got the package for the RiData CF card, since it's seriously fast and works great in the digital camera.
This player is extremely popular with the Gold Wing motorcycling crowd (which I'm one of); many folks on the GL1800 list own them. Two observations come from motorcycle use:
For one, they are amazingly shock-resistant, even with the Microdrive. Be sure to get a 1G microdrive, and not a 340; the 340 pulls more power and is much less shock proof. Switching up to a 1G microdrive made all the difference; the player gets a good bouncing around in the fairing pocket, but no skips.
For two, the shuffle algorithm on this player needs help. The controls are a bit hard to operate with motorcycle gloves on, so most 'wingers just leave themselves to the mercy of the Shuffle setting. This thing likes to pick about 40% of the songs on the disk and cycle through them a few times before grabbing another 'chunk'. I'd much prefer the entire catalog be shuffled once (at the time Shuffle is selected) and then played through like a list that can be stopped and restarted. Only doing another 'shuffle' operation would change the order. Many MP3 players have this problem.
Other than those two comments, I dearly love this device. I got one w/o any CF cards for $79(!!), and threw away the headphones like everybody else. I share the Microdrives between the MP3 player and my Canon D30 digital SLR camera, and there are zero issues. It's fun being able to jam to great tunes on a ride, stop, swap to the D30 and take a few photos at a pretty vista, then put the microdrive back in the MP3 player and keep listenin'.
...any portable player capable of playing Ogg Vorbis. Is there one, and if so, what is it?
Also, here's a really cheap MP3 player...in more ways than one.
Being a smartass is a much better thing than being the alternative.
I'm surprised the reviewer didn't complain about my favorite NexII bug: It can't descend into subdirectories!
/Artist/Album/01-Song.mp3
If you store your music files on the CF card like this:
The NexII (with v1.4c firmware) CAN'T SEE any of your music. It will only search one directory level deep. So "/Album/01-Song.mp3" works fine.
It's not a big problem when you know about it, but it sucks when you forget to shuffle the files and find out only when you go to listen to them.
I've emailed Frontier Labs about this, and they are aware of the problem. I have hope that a future firmware release could do better. If it bothers you too, consider emailing them today.
That was/is probably a remote control connector.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
If you're expecting to power a small hard drive off AA batteries, you can't expect wonders for battery life. The NexII player itself doesn't use much.
I've had no problems getting 13+ hours from CompactFlash at moderate volume.
If you want extreme battery life, try the Energizer AA Lithium cells. They cost around $2 each, but they last incredibly long. They're ultra-light and work at low temperatures as well, making them a perfect match for snowboarding.
and just how come this is off topic when the parent isnt? bunch of lame ass moderators...
That actually looks pretty sweet. I hope they use a fairly standard layout on the CF card, so I can use the same card for my digital camera as for my MP3 player...
considering what has been going on here the last couple of days I thought this was damn funny... of course the moderating Nazis didnt think so...
What if 13 hours is not enough? Is there any such thing as an MP3 player that does come with an AC adapter?
at the moment, smartmedia is actually the same price as compactflash
I was considering buying the Nex II, but I did a dead stop when I saw the specs on their website.
0.5% distortion?! That is more than 10 times worse than all other MP3 players I've seen. I mean, it is really neat that I can use my Microdrive and my other CF cards, and that I can use it as a portable USB drive, but what is the point if the sound quality sucks?
A quick look at the reviews at mp3.com seems to indicate that the Nex II is OK when playing loud music, but the distortion becomes very annoying when playing more quiet music.
Did you really test this with something other than loud techno?
In fact, I bought two: one for my gf and one for me (to avoid those relationship damaging techno jealousy issues). The reviewer was right on target I think in every strength and weakness.
I've used mine with a W2K laptop as music depot and find that for reasons that may be generic to W2K or specific to my laptop, it bluescreens rather than properly dismounting the USB drive feature, but I have a CF-PCMICA adapter that works fine and is a lot faster.
I also get a lot more than 12 hours from a set of batteries: a lightly used set just lasted a 14.5 hour plane trip and are still going strong. This with the NCP 64MB flash card that came from dataviz.com (total price $99 incl. card).
Similarly I bought this player for it's CF+ (or CF type II) compatibility, and wouldn't consider any other media format.
An additional complaint I would raise is that there's no headroom to the amplifier. If you exceed the output it makes a very loud pop (for example on every drum beat). Use it with high db/mw (high efficiency) headphones if you like loud music. They should soft limit the output or use a better output amp.
Another feature would be to add a "resume play" mode so it picks up where it left off. I used it skiing and in some long lift lines it turned itself off from pause meaning I heard the first few songs of the card over and over. (Yeah, yeah, you can index through pretty easily but that's hard to do with gloves on.)
I also find the battery cover disturbingly dainty, and the case around the batteries frighteningly flexible. I'd suggest that they install a charge pump and let the thing recharge NiMh AA's off the USB source, which would take overnight.
If I'm going to buy an MP3 player it has to have a remote control, like my MD player.
Why?
(a) I like to listen to music on the tube. Hence, I often need to turn the music up when the train's moving, and sometimes even remember to turn it down again once I get off. Plus, I often need to stop it suddenly to hear an announcement. The remote means I can do this almost instantly, without having to constantly rummage in my pocket. This is a Good Thing.
Okay, many MP3 players are sufficiently small that I could carry one as if it were the remote on my MD player. But:
(b) I'm buggered if I'm going to stand on the concourse at Victoria at 1am on a Saturday morning holding a £200 device in full view while I scan through several hundred tracks in search of the one I feel like listening to.
The prosecution rests.
Dude, you fill it _once_.
I can happily leave my USB drive working for an hour while I wander off and chat, watch tv, whatever.
After that, I rarely transfer more than 3-4 albums at a time, which isn't more than a couple of minutes.
My Journal
NEX II 1GB Digital Audio MP3 Player (IBM Microdrive Bundle Pack)
Regular price US$499.00
Sale price US$439.00
isnt the ipod only $399, with all the extras?
Mind you their tech support was helpful and I had a new unit (from Toronto, Canada to Hong Kong and back) in a week. My friend got one when he was in Hong Kong. Died in a month. Just won't turn on. The plastic is cheap and the battery removal process is cumbersome.
What do you expect, dude? It's
MADE IN HONG KONG
"And like that
And notice that they haven't really silenced anyone: all the posts are still there.
Not for long. -1 posts don't get archived.
From their website:
"Q. Does DIVA mp3 player support Microdrives?
A. Compact Flash Card Type I has the same configuration as Compact Flash Card Type II and IBM Microdrive, but they are a little bit thicker, also they have higher power consumption. The current model doesn't support them.
We are under development of a new model that will support CFC II and IBM."
Plus countless other things not related to MP3 playing, and for less money than this dedicated player -- though I did pay extra for the flash card and USB flash writer. I expect (well, I HOPE) that the dedicated player would have better battery life, but otherwise, the PDA seems like a much better deal.
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!