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Portable MP3 Player w/ Unix Support?
oobeleck asks: "With my birthday just around the corner and my 8 mile runs needing music, I am thinking of asking for a portable mp3 player. What is the Slashdot community's experience with MP3 portables. What has the most support, what should I stay away from. I have been eye-balling the Diamond Rio 600/800 model. Any opinions on the Rio? I want something that works good with Linux/OpenBSD. Thanks for your help." Ask Slashdot last ran such an article back in April of 2000, I'm sure bigger and better MP3 players have been made since then. Which of today's players would you all recommend?
Looks like Archos has actually revamped this product, because mine doesn't look like the one displayed at the above link. Has anyone used one of these particular models before and can tell me if they've improved on the problem bits that I've mentioned?
If they have, I'd surely recommend this model to anyone who is in the market for an MP3 player.
Everyone should know at this point that Ogg Vorbis encoded tracks not only sound better, but the take up less disk space as well. I would hope that any "MP3" player that supports Unix also supports Ogg Vorbis.
and various in-dash car units, and after comparing the two, i would recommend a handheld cd-mp3 player.
why? they new models are fast, light, and last upwards of 15 hours on batteries (my rio even spins down the CD while playing to save juice).
CDrs are cheap, and on the average outing 650-700MB of music will last you, even if its encoded at --alt-preset extreme!
semantics are everything!
You might want to read this story...
5 22 7&mode=thread&tid=98
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/09/123
(I would have posted this 18 seconds ago... but slashdot wouldn't let me.)
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This player is one of the best CD-ROM based mp3 players out there. Third generation and it doesn't plug into your computer at all. Just burn mp3s to the CD and then play them. No way you can go wrong with that! It even has 400 second skip protection and the batteries last forever. Here's a link for a review. http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/voltsp250. html
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
I have a similar question...but I'm looking for a player that works on a 7 mile run. While everyone is busy researching 8 mile MP3 players for that dude, keep an eye-ball open for one for me, too, eh?? Thanks, because I'm too stinking lazy to do it myself.
Would like to heartily second this recommendation. I only have the 6-gig model, but having a portable FAT32 hd is incredibly convenient. If you can mount a Windows drive, you can mount this in your silly Linux thingee.
Durable: I drop this thing at least once a day, it's over a year old and still going. It recharges in ~6 hours for ~6 hours of playback. If you strap the case to your back (as opposed to keeping it on your hip), you won't have as much problem w/ skip, but you will look like a complete dork.
The problem Cliff is experiencing appears to be unintentional jostling of the stop (off) button, so careful how you position it when you run.
[o]_O
Yes, it's expensive. No there isn't Linux support. But if you've got the cash, you won't find a better player out there. The interface is seamless, the battery life is good, and if you have 20GB of music, it'll accommodate that just fine. Oh yeah, you can also store your contacts & calendar on it just for kicks.
I've had the 5GB version for about 6 months, and am constantly impressed with just how usable it is. I just wish Apple would hurry up & put out a PDA in the same vein....
--Mid
The Creative Nomad/D.A.P. jukebox is really good. I've used a 10GB version and it's easy. The new ones has got 40GB which will store any relatively large CD-collection. There is (unfortunatly) no Linux support. (One of the few times my Windows boot is used.) I really don't see the point in the small ones which use flash or even CD's. With a bigger (bit clumpy, but just hide it in a bag when walking) jukebox you have your CD collection with you everywhere, no need to chose which CD's to take along in the limited CD-compartment. And the Nomad supports surround and EAX effects.
Look a monkey!
I personally use a Panasonic portable CD player that will playback cd's with MP3's on them. With 700 megs per CD, and about 6 hours on two double AA's, it has proved portable and economical. If I want to listen to a new song a friend has on CD, I can do so without having to encode it.
I have been using mkisofs/cdrecord to burn cd's at home while at work for a while now. Just need to call my wife and ask her to put in a new CD. My kids have even got to the point they know when the CD pops out, time to put in another blank.
I suggest the iPod. With MacOS, *nix (if you can get XTunes to compile; holy crap what a nightmare), and (soon) Windows support, you can't go wrong. The price is a bit higher than other mp3 players, but you get the added bonus of having a portable hard drive for moving files around, if you need it.
On that note, are there portable players with Vorbis support?
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
I know I'm going against the flow here, but it goes anyway...
I've read this and that about Ogg being better and I want to believe it, but on the few experements I've done. Ogg ends up taking more disk space and significantly longer to encode (using CD-DA XTractor under win2ksp3).
Quality, I can't tell much difference if you force it at the same bit rate. Granted I haven't done a ton of testing, but an mp3 encoded at 160 vs an ogg file encoded at VBR160 just doesn't seem to produce much quality difference. (Maybe my altec lansing speakers aren't good enough?)
I'm sure Ogg will only improve in the future as it's still kind of a baby compared to mp3 but for right now, I'd say Ogg would be at the bottom of most people's feature list. Maybe I'm wrong.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I picked up a Diamond Rio 500 when it first became available. I really liked it at first, though the Rio Manager software (for Windows) was so gawd-awful that I bought a replacement (musicmatch). There are fairly mature drivers and software for Linux though I must admit I haven't ever played around with them. I suspect they work with the later models as well.
That said, I am now not so happy with my purchase. The RIO contains only 64 megs of memory which, in your case, would probably be fine. I wanted more. More importantly, though, I have been unimpressed with the 'customer service' for this product. At times (last month), Windows drivers were not available for download. Finding a contact email address was difficult (though this may be resolved now). But more importantly, these devices just aren't very sturdy. Mine is now unusable except when left flat on a table and NOT MOVED. If I pick it up, the thing powers down. My brother and sister both bought one as well and at least one of the two no longer works for them, either.
So what did I get? A Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. 20 gigs of storage and it works very well. I doubt this would be suitable for you, though... no good Linux support yet and it is very much overkill for 3 mile runs. :) In fact, as it is hard-drive based, I wouldn't want to run with it at all. On the other hand, it is great for a one week trip to Mexico (yay!) and for extended bus trips and the like. Heck, I have ALL my CDs ripped to MP3 and stored on the device and I still have over 1/3 of the storage available to me. Firewire and USB, oh my.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Out of all the things I have purchased and never used, my minidisk player is NOT one of them. I love that thing.
:-) ) and record and listen. I've later converted it to mp3 on my computer and have shared them with my freinds. I've done the same with SSX tricky. SSX tricky has a juke box feature where all the songs are played. The sound quality is fantastic!
They are pretty cheap now, I paid 80 bucks for my Sony MD walkman (bit of an older model now). The tapes are cheap too.
One of my favorite things to do is record video game music off the stereo. I'm able to pop in GTA 3 select Head radio (better variety of weird noises between songs
I recently purchased a really nice microphone for my MD player. Now I can sample sounds all over the place and use them on my computer to make music. Great if your into that sort of thing.
Oh plus the tape adapters for the car work great! I'll never understand why they haven't caught on more with consumers. My friends say the same thing now after they have seen all the uses I've gotten out of it.
I have a Rio 600 that I use when working out. It's nice, but with a few quirks. First, I've had it lock up with some songs. It's done it with some MP3 and some WMA. I usually down-sample them before putting them on the player. MusicMatch may be doing something odd to them that causes this. The other thing is the battery. I like the built-in battery since it makes the unit small, but make sure and charge it every day. It'll drain even when off, it seems.
What I really want is a 128MB backpack with an FM tuner. Then it would about the perfect device.
I know they don't hold as much, but when I'm running hard or boxing, it won't ever skip.
They can if you use a 1GB compact flash microdrive...
Well, it'll be a great candidate once they figure out the itunesdb and other issues. There's been some progress, though. So, the answer is no for now. Uneless you consider OS X to belong to the set {Linux, OpenBSD}, which most people do not.
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
I have a Nex II from Frontier Labs and absolutely love it.
It uses a Compact Flash slot. I've used several brands and they've all worked. It currently has a 128MB card in it, but it could take the IBM Microdrive, 1GB!!
It acts like a removable drive, attached via USB (I actually have some non-MP3 files on it and the player doesn't care). You can drag and drop (or cp) right to the NexII. You can take the NexII to another machine and drag and drop from the Nex to the machine. Lovely.
It's incredibly small and light, just a few ounces plus battery weight. Mine came with a sweet neoprene case to carry it in that has an attached belt clip. Perfect to run or bike with.
You can find it for dirt cheap brand new on eBay, about $80. This company sells them, it's where I got mine and I'll vouch for them. (I'm not associate, just a happy customer.) 128MB compact flash card go for about $40 new on ebay.
You can get "Nexkins" to change the look of the device. Pretty trivial (the machine already looks cool) but there are some neat ones you can find on ebay.
The Nex is really easy to use, and it's just so userfriendly I love it. Moving between tracks, changing the volume, adjusting the built in equalizer (it really works!), using the backlight are all very easy.
I haven't had any problems with mine and I've had it for over a year. Love it, love it, love it. It really is everything you want: light, inexpensive, n*x compatible as removable USB storage, usable, and reliable.
I really don't think you could go wrong with this.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I have a zaurus SL5500. I haven't gone jogging with it and it doesn't have any ergonomic controls like a thumb wheel to control volume. That aside, it still is unix friendly. I transfer data by two methods, put the CF card in the CompactFlash adapter and then mount that as drive on my Linux laptop - rip, copy, eject!
At home I have a 802.11b network, plug in the
CF 802.11b card and the Qtopia desktop application will work with the IP address - upload, manage, roam!
Besides that, it has a healthy developer community, Sharp supports open source efforts and it's a PDA! I'm sure that a 256MB storage card is enough for your 8-mile run! Short of a solid state device I'll only invest in an iPod.
I got a Rio 600 a couple years ago, for free thanks to PepsiStuff. In the end, I decided it was worth maybe a little more than what I paid for it, but not a lot. Avoid it if you're paying real money.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I would definitley stay away from the Lyra series from RCA. They are great players but require you to use a MusicMatch or RealPlayer plugin to encode the mp3 into another format which is not playable by computers. This formatting also makes it near impossible (unless there is a hack out there I havent found yet) to pull the files off onto the hard drive an play them. They sound all garbled.
I think if I were to get a player today I would make sure it would store the mp3s AS mp3's and that it used compact flash for the storage media. With USB 2.0 support out now for compact flash these things HAUL when copying to them and are much better than their serial (im so slow I wave to the snails as they pass me) counterparts.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
Since you're planning on using your player for running/strenous activity, be very sure that whatever you buy is well made and water-resistant!! Sounds obvious, but believe it or not this actually disqualifies at least half of the players out there.
.its VERY small and light, has 128 megs, relatively inexpensive, and I've heard good things about its durability. That might be one for you to consider.
Using myself as an example of why you might want to listen to my advice, I bought an mp3 player with more or less the same goals you did, with the addition of wanting it cheap. So, I ended up buying a jaMp3 from KBGear. One trip to the weight room was all it took. I'm a big guy and I work out hard; the sucker died the first time out from (I believe) getting sweaty.
Anyways, I'm currently looking at the Samsung YEPP-30sh. .
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
I use a Zaurus, which has been tested with up to 1GB CF cards. Since I'm ordering a 6 megapixel camera, I'm going to be needing some large (512MB) cards anyway. Nothing like dual purpose. Now if an Ipod could dock up to a digital camera for storage I would really be impressed.
You can store your contacts & calendar on it too.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
a live band following me around. the great thing is, they know exactly what kind of music to play, depending on my situation!
waaa waaa waaaaaaa
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I use my PJB100 about 4 hours a day. It has a linux kernel module available (but possibly not maintained) and a very nice open source command line tool (thanks folks!). I've never used my pjb with anything other than linux and haven't had any problems.
;-) Not that the original Compaq guys didn't do a good job, the thing NEVER crashes.
Pro's:
upgradable hard drive - I'm putting a 40 gig in this weekend, up from 20
rechargable lithium ion battery (internal)
battery lasts ~7-8 hours if you don't modify the playlist too often
sounds better than most other mp3 products I've listened too.
linux, mac, and windows clients
the firmware is very very stable
Con's
The company that makes it is almost invisible
The firmware is stable, but also never gets upgrade
(and worse) the firmware is closed source
Its not as pretty as the ipod
It does not have a regular filesystem, which limits its potential use as a usb harddrive
USB isn't as fast as firewire (ipod)
It's expensive
It could be smaller. Jogging? You would need to hold it or have a fanny pack. it's too heavy for a belt.
It comes with a car cigarette adaptor
The table of contents is constrained by a max size, which makes multiple playlists impossible when you've got 20 gigs worth of songs.
All in all, I love my pjb100. I use it almost every single day on the bus and at work and it boosts the quality of life much more than any other gadget I can think of. Still, I wish the firmware was OS so that somebody smarter than me could add features
You can purchase it at http://www.mp3factorydirect.com
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Does such a beast exist? I switched over to OGG a few weeks ago and I'm glad I did...it's just a shame that I have to invest the extra time converting to MP3s in order to reload my Rio One.
I suggest you get a player that uses a flash chip format: CompactFlash, MMC / SD, SmartMedia, or Memory Stick. Then get one of those USB chip read/write drives for your desktop computer.
With a laptop, you can either use a USB drive, or you can get a PC Card adapter that lets you plug in the chip directly.
This is how I manage my digital photos from my digital camera: I never plug in the camera, and haven't installed the special camera software. I just slot the chip into the drive, and treat it as just another "disk".
If you do this with a Mac, it will stick Mac junk on the chip ("finder.dat" files and such) but it will work. On Windows or Linux, it will just work.
I will not ever buy a player that requires me to use a special version of MusicMatch Jukebox to transfer files. Ever.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Seriously... why look for a UNIX-compatible MP3 player when you can have an MP3 + Ogg + MOD player that *runs* UNIX?
I've been using my iPAQ (with Linux) as a portable music player for a while, and it works extremely well. Capacity is not enormous, but you can add compact flash cards (or even PCMCIA hard drives if you don't mind the bulk).
-John
Here's what I suggest. Go to eBay and get a rio 500. They're going for $50. Here are some of the reasons why...
1) Full VBR and all bitrate MP3 support
2) Great command line linux utilities to transfer mp3s. Fast and easy to use.
3) upgradable firmware (the latest versions add some great features)
4) SmartMedia support
5) Long battery life
6) it's $50
7) lasts forever
8) never skips or fades
9) fast USB transfer. It only takes 2-3 minutes to change music with the linux utilities.
I put a 64 meg card in mine (giving me 128 megs of space), and with a good encoder (such as LAME ABR) 3 cds worth of music will sound just fine.
I've used mine for running and working out for years and it's showing signs of wear, but still working great and it's still as solid as the day I bought it.
Ogg is inherently a better-designed format than MP3 (MP3 has a few major flaws, first among them the lack of an independent scalefactor for frequencies over 16 kHz), so all other things equal Ogg would sound better at the same bitrate (or equal at lower bitrates). But all other things aren't equal -- MP3 has a very highly tuned encoder in LAME, when used with the --alt-preset command line options ("lame --alt-preset standard file.wav file.mp3" is the command-line most people should use, and ends up with files averaging in the 190-200 kbps range). The Ogg encoder hasn't been nearly as well tuned, and most listening tests seem to indicate that to match --alt-preset standard's quality, you need to use -q6 with Ogg, which averages around 192 kbps -- the same bitrate as with MP3. So your Ogg files will sound about the same at the same bitrate as your (well-encoded) MP3 files.
Ogg does have a few other advantages, including its ReplayGain support and its lack of patents. And since the format itself is inherently better, it should beat MP3's quality eventually (though it may take a while, as most Ogg development is currently focused on low-bitrate encoding for streaming, not high-quality encoding for archival).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
2) The screen is kinda small
3) It crashes on VBR MP3s sometime. Not too often but enough to notice
4) Turning it on is irritatingly long. You'd think it's just a few seconds, but...
You need RockBox. The purpose of this project is to write an Open Source replacement firmware for the Archos Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio and Recorder MP3 players.
Get it now. It, um, rocks. Really.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
The diamond rio had some support but it was shaky and anything but user-friendly. I was also not impressed with the 64 mb of space either.
The portable hard drive options looked good, lots of space and easy to configure Linux to mount the thing. I was a little worried about how long it would take to move a gb of stuff through USB.
I eventually decided to get a sony diskman with mp3 support. This allowed me to play existing cds, or burn cdrw in mp3 mode. The cd burning utilities were more advanced than the rio tools and I could burn different disks with different stuff and then easily switch out the disks. The thing runs for many hours on a set of batteries, at least 10h. Its not as portable as the rio, but not much bigger than an Archos.
Buy an iPod. Apple so squarely has the rest of the market beat, that it's worth installing a windows partition just to interface with the unit.
I've owned a Nomad Jukebox and used an Archos model, and they're both horribly inferior to the Apple unit.
Note that it's somewhat easy to scratch the exterior, but the new iPods come with a decent carrying case, so that's mostly irrelevent.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
I know your first thought is to say why would you want a cd mp3 player for jogging, but I have one, take it jogging, and have zero problems with skipping. and this is with CDRW and 192 kbps files. Its sturdy, fits well in my hand and has the best interface I've seen in an mp3 player besides the iPod.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
I snagged a NomadII MG from Ebay and slapped a 128Mb card (also from ebay) into it. 192MB total.. enough for ~40 songs (Rush-type songs... 5-8 mins per) @112kbps. I use it when riding the motorcycle and it's great for having about 3-5 hours of non-repeating music. I think the entire bundle cost less than $250..
It's been great. And though I've only tinkered with the linux tools for the thing, they seem to tranfer stuff well & easily. All they really require is USB device filesystem compiled into the kernel.. at this point there's not even a kernel module needed. Plus, there's an FM tuner on the thing.. not nearly as good as my Walkman AM/FM radio, but it's nice to have handy. The only complaint are the buttons.. it's way to easy to bump it when in my riding jacket and pause/switch mode/delete. Otherwise, it performs excellent. Quite pleased.
-'fester
I bought a Creative Labs Nomad II refurbed from Creatives website (no memory included). Plugged in a 128 MB CF Card. (Bought from pricewatch) Plugged the USB cable in. Loaded the software (command line only but a GUI is beta) get it here: http://nomadii.sourceforge.net/ And I was done! Couldn't be easier. Dare I say easier than windows? Bought it for jogging as well, must've dropped it half a dozen times. NO scratches and still works like it was new. Couldn't be happier. Good Luck!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
You're stuck with realtime speeds loading music on the media. It takes 74 minutes to fill up a disk with 74 minutes worth of tunes. The other problem is that I have home mp3 server with my entire collection on it. No batch copy, no drag 'n' drop just a phono plug. Try me again when I can do a :
/dev/minidisc /mnt/minidisc /mnt/minidisc
mount -t vfat
cp -r tunes/
and fill a disc up in 5 minutes or less.
If I could sell my puke for cash, I'd buy three.
I have a archos recorder 20G - I love it. But...
The guy talks about a 8 mile run. The archos is slightly heavy for that. it will not be comftarble while jogging, at all.
A solid state device looks like a better option then a HD based device.
No seriously, I bought one of these Nex II players (w/ a 265 meg card). I have used mine extensively on runs. Even long runs. *pause* Very long runs. I once took mine on a 50-miler. It worked great. (Of course, I swapped out the batteries and listened to all the music about 3 or 4 times). I want to get another compact flash card, but haven't been able to scrap together the dough.
The real silver bullet to good programs is caffeine; lots and lots of caffeine! *twitch, twitch*
Is nobody else here a runner? I run 7.5 miles a day so I can tell you that you can't use an Archos Jukebox Studio 20 for that. It's super nice MP3 player but it's too WAY to heavy and it would be almost impossible to control without having to stop. You need something super light (Like a flash memory player) that you can strap or clip onto your arm or the small of your back. If it slaps against you you're going to get sore after a couple miles. I have a Samsung YEP YP-NDU (about a year old) It's got a remote I clip on my shoulder and the player I put in the small of my back, makes it real easy to control and I don't even feel it.
I too am a very very satisfied NEX II owner...Bought largely based on the rave reviews here in the 2000 Ask Slashdot article, and just read the rave reviews at cnet.com. 92% approval! Including some idiot who put his pan of the Rio 800 in the Nex II review section! For exercise especially, where weight is a concern, the NEX II is a champ. I convinced my girlfriend and two other friends to buy one and they love it.
.m3u playlists which would be wonderful. And, there is a bug (Frontier Labs has told me they know about it) in the unit's display when playing VBR mp3s. Namely, it uses the instantaneous bit rate and the size of the file to estimate how much play time is left for a song. This means the display is always wildly changing while a song is playing, giving you no useful info about play time for VBR tunes. Note, however, VBR songs still play just fine. The NEX II always sounds great...the equalizer is very functional and completely customizable.
And Frontier Labs are a nice, decent company to deal with. About 2 months into my NEX II ownership, I yanked the thing off an exercise machine and it took a hard fall...the LCD screen stopped working. Shipped it off to Frontier Labs, they sent it back w/in 3 days of receipt good as new, no questions. The largest delay factor was simply the unfortunate fact that Frontier Labs is based in Hong Kong.
Which brings me to some questions about this device perhaps the savvy Slashdot community will know. What is up with Frontier Labs?! Why are they not marketing the heck out of the NEX II? You really have to dig to find one of these...buy.com occasionally carries it, but certainly none of the big consumer retail outlets do. I got mine via Ebay from Choke Slam Media, a little mom'n'pop reseller, hilariously endorsed by Frontier Labs themselves.
And why is support for the NEX II at an apparent stand-still since like 1999 or 2000? There have been zero firmware upgrades since then, and there are some obvious bug fixes/feature additions. The one-level-deep directory structure has been mentioned. There is no support for
The last question is...have any NEX II users found an armband style case that fits the NEX II? I run with mine, and though the factory case is highly funtional, and the belt clip quite sturdy, it chafes after a reasonable run. Last time MP3 players were discussed, somebody mentioned the Amphipod which is an ergonomic, "chafe-less" waist pack that looks awesome, but I wonder if their Micropack Landsport fits the NEX II. Any suggestions in this regard?
My NEXII is currently in the posession of my brother who is carrying it with him as he hikes the Appalachian trail. He has it to listen to the Lord of the Rings a few hours a day while he hikes.
The fact that it only uses Compact Flash cards (no internal memory) allows me to mail him more cards and let him listen to new content without having to mail the player back home to be re-filled.
<freedom rant>
Because this player takes CF cards and behaves like a external drive it does not have any SDMI/DRM trappings of other players, allowing me to put whatever I want on the player from whatever computer I choose. Plus it works great with my linux box as a removable drive (no dumb special purpose drivers or reverse engineered hacks).
</freedom rant>
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
OK....this has bugged for years....
"Minidiscs never caught on because they use a lossy compression algorhythm"
I wonder how MP3 caught on then...
I mean if all that people cared about was sound quality,
I think I would have a 1/2 inch reel-to-reel in my car by now.
(analog tapes are lossy, yet they are everywhere...why is that??)
There are different uses for different technologies.
CONVENIENCE VS. QUALITY.
Scenario 1.
Quality.
I really like the sound quality of DAT.
It's sampling rate is higher than that of cd (48Khz).
I also have -all the time in the world- to fast forward and rewind what are essentially cassette tapes 2.0.
I can overlook such things as bulky players, delicate internal mechinisms,
and fragile tapes.... for some of the best quality possible.
Scenario 2.
Convenience.
"I'm usually on the go when i listen to music.
I really like being able to throw my MD in my pocket with a couple of discs and go.
I can overlook things like "lossless" recording, higher frequencies i can't hear,
and the ability to trade DAT GD/Phish/DMB shows
for the versitiliy and convenience of minidisc."
Now this is a little silly...people don't talk like this...but they do SHOP like this.
HOW and WHERE do you do your listening?
In the car?
In a private listening room with headphones?
In a subway train?
Is space limited?
Is there a lot of background noise?
All of these things must be factored before a decision can be made on the appropriate format for the occasion.
FYI, I personally use...
MD when biking, walking around,
DAT when mastering/archiving studio tracks,
CD when in the shower,
Vinyl in a quiet room and headphones,
Car-MP3CD when driving,
HD-MP3 for my main jukebox,
MD-Data for recording OUT of the studio,
ADAT for recording IN the studio,
and old analog tapes for mixes for my not-so-high tech friends.
Everything has it's place.
I've been using a Nomad IIc for the last 6-8 months whilst working out at the gym. The Linux command-line app I use is pretty straight forward, you can even batch upload a playlist via it's FTP-like commands. Since the app uses the Linux USB file system, I don't think it's portable to other *NIX platforms at the moment (but I may be wrong).
Since I use a treadmill or cross-country simulator as part of the workout, I like the light weight and smallish size (clips nicely on the hip or on an arm band) since it doesn't bounce around much. The Smartmedia cards are pretty cheap right now (I bought a batch of 3 128MB cards for ~$40/each at my local Fry's), so I can have different music for different days without having to remember to re-upload a new list.
The only complaint I have is the headphones are a little on the cheap side, and will need to be replaced soon thanks to the decomposing foam pads (though that's mainly thanks to regular use and a genetic pre-disposition to sweating while exerting myself, I think). Other than that, I'd vouch for it, and I seem to recall it was pretty cheap at Tiger and a few other online outlets.
Good luck finding the right fit!
--
-- "I have a great faith in fools. Self-confidence, some call it..."
The PJB100 was the first harddrive mp3 player to market (with 4G drive!), and is still going strong now. In fact, many of the original models now have up to 40G drives, and are still going themselves!
it has a open-source linux SDK and many tools (linux, win32, mac os and OSX). 10-12 hours battery life - i use it 10 hours a day, every day. it recharges in under 3 hours. the firmware hasn't been upgraded in a year, but it's stable and mature. it has a gorgeous large screen. and built-in games! it also supports gapless encoding (either directly or with exact audio copy's audio image/cue file ripping), which is great for live recordings, dance or classical.
it's also pretty large compared to the others (about the size of a not-so-modern cassette walkman), although it comes with belt buckle etc, i'd stick it in a bag on my back instead for jogging etc. also, usb is much slower than firewire, but this unit is almost 3 years old. you can buy them from thinkgeek, mp3factorydirect.com or many other providers, in up to 40G sizes, though 60G is just around the corner! (the drives just got released in japan last month)
if you're looking to upgrade an existing PJB, you need a 9.5mm high 2.5" laptop harddrive. the best are the toshiba GAS/GAP units, which give the best performance as the PJB is able to use a sneaky way to conserve power between reads.
also on the horizon is the PJB-300, though this will just be issued by the same marketing company, not manufactured by the same people (which was compaq, in this case).
no details have been released yet, though the company has been taking ideas from the PJB100's userlist, so it should hopefully be better than the pjb100!
hope this helps,
fross
I have an Archos jukebox as well and love it. However, I remember reading somewhere that they are not recommended for joggers as the constant movement can damage the hard drive inside. This would probably not be a good suggestion here as he is asking for something to use during 8 mile runs.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
"They" have figured it out, assuming they is Tex9. http://www.tex9.com/software/xtunes.php
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
I have a Rio 500 and I haven't heard of any linux support for it? Could you give us the webpage for this stuff? I like my rio other then the fact that the 128mb card I bought doesn't work in it, and would like to get it to talk to my linux box.
iPod, plain and simple. Yes, you may find similar devices with large capacities for less money. But you will also find yourself with an ugly headache. And its Unix compatible :)
http://www.apple.com/ipod
actually for less money you can get a solid state 1GB CF card that will drain your batteries at least 40-50% slower. It also has 0% chance of being ruined by mechanical shock. After seeing those pictures of the guy from ground 0's D30 and then seeing the pictures recovered from his CF card I have figured out that CF is basically indistructable.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Everything you need to know about getting the iPod to work under linux.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
this is the route i went because i couldn't afford an iPod. I have a Rio Volt player, and I LOVE the thing. ID3 2.x support, never skips, terrific battery life... all around an excellent player, and only $60 after rebates. ;)
interesting that you should say "to boot" as the iPod can also be used to boot your Mac
Though I haven't tried myself (no need), I'm almost positive that there was an ability to import winamp lists in iTunes
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Info on the Frontier Labs Nex II here
Quick reasons why:
1. CF and Microdrive support
2. No proprietary software, just drag and drop files
3. Works on windows and Linux
4. Cheap
5. Great battery life
6. No DRM crap
7. Customer service that actually writes back (unlike SonicBlueBalls)
Just got one myself. $80 at overstock.com, includes 16MB of compact flash. 128 MB is $35 on PriceWatch.com, and (apparantly) $40 on eBay. Oh, you wanna know what it does? =^)
It plays MP3s, plus records movies, plus takes pictures. Color LCD shows ID3 tags, and can play back the movies and pictures. Movies can be as long as will fit in the card. Technically does well at everything, except that the sensor is crap, so the movies are low quality. On the other hand, they're recorded at 20 fps (very smooth) and it's cool to be able to listen to music, then switch over and grab a movie clip. You can delete one to make room for the other.
Uses standard Type I compact flash. It's too small for IBM's micro drive, but flash is cheap nowadays. And if you have a notebook, you can get a PCMCIA adapter, and move stuff on and off very fast, and drivers are already built into everything. If not, you can prolly get a PCMCIA reader cheap that works with Linux.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
I've had the archos jukebox (6000) for about 8 months now. and i must say that thought it is not without flaw, it has fulfilled all my expectations.
first of all... 6 gigabytes... of course you can swap out the included hdd and replace it (but not without voiding the warranty).
second of all.. it's a simple USB hard drive. so it'll work on just about any OS you can toss at it. newer models have usb 2.0, and recording features. but I have been very happy with mine. and since it's a simple usb hard drive, you can store anything u want on it, not just audio. keep a copy of your favorite linux distro on it. backup yer system. whatever
the batteries tend to last me about 5 hours on the average, and i've never had to change them.
of course if u wanna go apeshit there's this thing.
Agreed - my Nomad is history too and has been replaced by a 10GB iPod (ooooh! 20GB? I should have waited a month!). The size and weight are the key issues - I have to occasionally find the pod in my clothing (certainly not something I could say for the Nomad). Size matters. I also prefer the playlist and eq features of the iPod (but then again I run mostly on OS X now, with my only SuSEs being a pair of Sun 5s in the corner of the house...
I'm a bit confused. You say you run 8 miles each day, and then you also say that you use Unix? I think I must be reading something wrong.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
Running familiar-gpe + 1gb udrive for tunes. :-)
Using my developing version of scream (c-lang version). supports streaming and soon, ogg for the Fraunhofer(sp?) freaks. No, it doesn't cram 20gb into it but you can get a 5gb card at a decent price (rumors of 1gb pcmcia hd's this xmas abound.. based on ipod's use of them). But can you scp your tunes into a ipod/rio/etc. or listen to Radio Paradise
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
But it was more difficult with the Rio 800. Things weren't quite as good back then when I bought the player. There's a program called Unix Rio Utillity which uses is a commandline interface to the Rio. It has matured a lot and is now working perfectly.
There's no good GUI available though so I created the Perl Rio Util (prioutil) with Perl and GTK. Works kinda nice, but I haven't had time to update it for some time now.
Ciryon
Use this mobile phone Sony Ericsson p800.
Sure it's not unix, but then you won't have to carry around an extra device, either!
Runs mp3 player, has symbian OS, java, mms, has GPRS, GSM ,Tri Band, 12MB ram and memory stick upgradeable, bluetooth and built in camera.
yeah!
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I picked up for 80 USD a portable CD player made by Emerson. In addition to playing CD-Audio, it plays Mp3 as well as the audio track on AVI and MPEG video. Nice unit, it can handle multiple directories and multiple levels of subdirectories, you can program play order, it scrolls the song title(for Mp3) across the LCD screen... Other Mp3 players may well be better at just playing Mp3s, but this unit is a solid one purchase item for CD and Mp3. It has all the standard ports of a portable CD player such as external power and line out. The one failing though is especially in Mp3 mode it chews through batteries really fast. Other than that, its a great unit. Just look on store shelves where portable CD players are, and look for one made by emerson with a red trimmed top cover.
There is a sourceforge project devoted to it, as well as people gathering information.
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
Looooaaads of space on the 256Mb cards I use. It can take the IBM 1Gb drives, but the battery suffers massively if you do and the USB connection is slow and also sucks loads of battery power, it's definitely worth getting a separate CF reader and using that.
Sometimes you have to re-format new CF disks when you initially get them, apparently some manuacturers don't format them properly.
Oh, the battery compartment sucks. But that's about my only complaint.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
How is this news for nerds?
and my 8 mile runs
Hardly your sterotypical 250lb slob in the basement is it?@
>Is anyone working on this?
They already exist a few months...
--
GCP
indeed they are.
between the GAS and GAP, one is slightly quieter than the other, i do not remember which. whichever has the ball bearings.
fwiw these drives should work in the archos afaik, too.
fross
dude, you're going to make yourself sick. that's too much unless you're training for some type of competition.
I don't know of a good linux mp3 player but would advise you to run a bit less, about 1/2 of that should keep you in fine shape. I've know of "distance runners" who developed heart problems fro it.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
The frame still has a constant rate, it just allows some of the data to be re-used, reducing IO, not bit rate.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Actually, that's same quality at lower bitrates, or better quality at same bitrates. This is a good thing. Lower sizes for the space impaired, and better sound for the audiophiles.
Now, if something portable could play it...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I own a CD player, CD/MP3 player, tape player, and an MP3 player (Archos 6000, ~2 years now).
For working out, especially outdoor running, stick with the good old-fashioned tape player. I haven't found anything that works as well, has the same battery life, and is as cheap. Overall, the tape player *is* the best value.
Having said that, second place goes to the Archos, though I still can't take it for runs outside (it will skip after a while). Also, my Archos tends to incur buffer underrun because I use 320kb/s MP3's.
The Pros:
The Cons:
To summarize, if you are looking to purchase an MP3 player for your runs, I would not recommend the HipZip. Other players are lighter, smaller, and offer more storage than this unit.
I imagine they use the same technology, if my memory serves me, the copyright notice says its licenced in the PS2 version. I don't think it would be economical to use a differant compression technology for the same game on a differant platform.
Yes it would. If Sony is willing to license its ATRAC3 codec (used in MiniDisc LP decks) to PS2 game developers cheaper than Thomson Multimedia is willing to license MP3 technology for a video game, but Sony is not willing to license ATRAC3 for use in PC software, then you bet developers will re-encode their wav files into ATRAC3 for the PS2 version and MP3 for the PC version.
In addition, platform limitations may come into play. The NES supported only one codec for samples, a simple predictive codec, at a few specific bitrates. The GBA is more flexible (with ability to play PCM from RAM; thus, ability to decompress in real time), but it still has only a 16 MHz processor. I've read that ATRAC and ATRAC3 are less complex to decode than MP3, which could conceivably free the PS2's vector units to process more triangles instead of audio samples.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Am I the only one here that likes the RioOne? It's cheap, it's easily expandible using SmartMedia Flash memory (currently using 128MB Flash ROM), and it is a USB mass storage device using VFAT file system -- load the USB mass storage and appropriate SCSI drivers in your kernel, just mount the thing as another device on your filesystem, and use your favorite file manage to move MP3 files back and forth.
Simple... BUT THIS INFORMATION WAS A DOUBLE-BITCH TO FIND IN THE FIRST PLACE! Why isn't there easy-to-find documentation on how to hook up various MP3 players to Linux? You'd think it was a deep, dark secret known only to '3l33t haX0rs' or something!
---dragoness
--r3mix has been proven to be far inferior to --alt-preset standard under nearly all types of music by double-blind testing both by the folks at hydrogenaudio.org and ff123.net. It used to be a pretty good preset, but there's no reason to use it anymore. Part of the reason is that --r3mix is just a preset for a bunch of command-line switches, whereas --alt-preset has code-level tweaks to optimize things like joint-stereo handling.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10