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60G Nomad Zen vs. The iPod

Posted by timothy on from the ipod-wins-on-visual-appeal dept.

war3rd writes "According to an article in BetaNews, Creative is going to be releasing an upgraded Nomad Zen at the end of the month that is not only larger than the iPod, but cheaper too. At $400 for 60G ($100 less than the 30G iPod), the new Zen will sport more features, although it may be slightly larger than the newer generation of iPods. I have been putting off buying an MP3 player until I felt that the arms race was settling down, but the new Zen is making my mouth water. So what does the /. community think, are Creative and Apple going to be the top players in this arena? Is it time I jumped onto the bandwagon? One thing is for certain, I am going to be watching the reviews closely."

2 of 649 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Viva la Zen!!! by questionlp · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The only gripe I have with the Jukebox line of players is not the hardware but rather the bloated and buggy Creative PlayCenter software. It's no where as clean as iTunes... but Red Chair Software has a kick-ass program that replaces PlayCenter and has some additional capabilities like viewing and streaming files over a Web-based interface and SQL-like queries on your MP3 files. The program is Notmad Explorer and is available in freeware (limited functionality) and payware... (sorry, not free as in libre either).

    Also the Nomad Jukebox 3 (not the current Zen) has optical-in recording to MP3 or wave. It's not as simple as pressing record on a portable MiniDisc recorder, but it works in a pinch.

  2. Re:right on the money by gig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You know what's funny is that I was shocked to read above that a top guy at Creative wouldn't know what is up with MPEG-4 and especially AAC, and not even know that everything Apple (Mac OS X, QuickTime, all Mac apps, iPod, iTunes) are all fully MPEG-4 and AAC.

    Then the next question the Creative guy goes to is about 48kHz sample rates! The CEO of Creative wants you to use Windows Media and he doesn't even realize that 48kHz is itself like the Windows Media format of the 1980's.

    The 48kHz sample rate was chosen by the RIAA for "consumer" digital audio recording (DAT, MiniDisc, Hi8) so as to make it harder to make CD's from those recordings.

    The small increase in quality you get by sampling at 48kHz instead of 44.1kHz does not pay for the HUGE decrease in audio quality you get by a Sample Rate Reduction from 48kHz to 44.1kHz. It's more destructive than converting to analog and then back to digital with good converters.

    To still be talking 48kHz in 2003 is abysmal. The next rate that's useful above 44.1 is 96kHz, which is high up enough and done at 24-bit or 32-bit and gains you so much quality that you can then come down to 44.1 right at the end and you're better than if you stayed there through the whole process.

    Creative's stuff is sub-par. It's good PC gear but it's not good audio gear. iPod is both good PC gear and good audio gear.

    In short, iPod and Apple are MUSICAL ALREADY. Creative are not as creative as Apple.