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Portable CD-R/RW/MP3 Player?
Eldie asks: "My ancient (1995) portable CD player has finally rolled over and died. I'd like to replace it, and I'm not looking for something as grand (read: expensive) as an iPod. I'd like to have something a bit more useful than the baseline -- it should at least play CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs and MP3s. It would be great if there was some sort of useful hierarchical MP3 interface so that I didn't simply end up having to skip back and forth through 100 tracks, 1 track at a time. Is there anything out there that fits the bill?" This was touched on almost 3 years ago, where quite a few of you had useful recommendations. Three years is a long time, however, and it would be interesting to note if there are any better (or cheaper!) options out there. If you were to look for such a player, today, what would you buy?
are mostly on thinkgeek
:)
check the link
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/mp3/6356/
seems like an handy device for me
if i wasn't like 12000 miles away from america
i would get this one for myself.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
They are all Amazon "So you'd like to..." guides, but they are worth looking at, anyway.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
Beyond the fact that they're durable, they're relatively cheap. Most of the Target stores in my area have portable Memorex players for around $40-$50, with the slightly more expensive ones including a backlit screen and a digital radio tuner. I'm not sure how much they run in other stores or online; you'll have to do a bit of research to check.
And lest I forget...they work. Very well. They have no problems with reading CDRs or playing MP3s, though I'm not sure how they handle CDR/Ws.
Hope I've helped.
Goo goo g'joob.
The problem? Philips seem to have replaced all Expania (at least in the UK) with the Exp521. This (or the one i received) is so bad i sent it back - the disc hit the inside of the player when you shake it, the skip protection (advertised as being much longer) doesn't work if you move, half the time the buttons don't respond... i could go on. yuck. So if you can find an older model 2xx or 3xx series Expanium they're great (avoid the earliest 1xx square ones for battery life and not being able to seek in tracks.. like the 521!). It also came with all kinds of accessories, depending which pack your buy. Only the headphones needed upgrading, as per most models.
btw the Philips way of doing things is to have an extra pair of buttons to skip back and forward through folders. So you put one album per folder. It works great. I'm not sure what other makes do yet.
I've now got my eye on the new iRiver IMP-700 (75GBP) which has.. wooh just come into stock on Amazon uk! (and probably just gone out again now ;) Because i do fancy that track display that i was going for with the Exp521.
Anyway that's just my 2p.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I have a Sony CD Walkman D-NE510 here in my hand, it works well, plop your mp3s on a cd in a folder all to themselves, stick it in, and close the lid.
Some notes: It will play on a pair of NiCD AA batteries seemingly forever, the advertised battery life is 18hrs playing MP3s, so I guess thats good enough.
Problems:
1. I've noticed skipping when playing VBR mp3s on batteries... I think the player is VBR agnostic, so it runs out of frames to play and haves to spin up the disc out of powersave to get more the track, if this bothers you, don't do VBR or something I guess.
2. Like I said, battery life is awesome, but not in -30 something degrees weather, like we had here a few weeks back, I had to do the public transportation thing, and it dropped out a few times, I had to press stop, play, stop, open the lid, close the lid, whatever to get it to work, and this meant taking off my gloves, which sucks because it's freaking cold!
Also, I must be spoilded, because I want a backlight! How can I see what track I've selected when I live in eternal darkness heh.
Good stuff:
The battery life, like I said, and those batteries are two AA's, not something wierd like a lithium ion sealed inside the case or 3 AAA's burining a hole in my wallet, because I only have AA rechargables, and throw away batteries cost less to buy, but more to use.
Damn near impossible to make it skip, you can shake it, drop it, whatever, of course I've been gentle to it, but it's nice.
Quick tip:
Name your files like this:
AlbumFolder/01Title of Song.mp3
It'l show up as 01Title or 02ABCDE, you get 7 characters in folder display, so if they all look like "08 U2 -" then that would kind of suck. It shows scroling tag info, Title, Album, Artist, Track #, Bitrate, Time played, press the display button to rotate through them.
Good lick picking your player, I really do like this player, two flaws ain't half bad.
The ATRAC support may also be a flaw, since I don't give a damn about SONY's propritary crap, but it isn't a flaw, because you don't have to use it, MP3s work just fine.
I recharge the batteries about once every two or three weeks, not bad.
When I'm not lazy, I plug it in to an ac adapter, it didn't come with one, but It's 4.5 Volts, and you can get the correct head to stick on one of those multi voltage A/C adapters from rat shack.
Did I mention it does multi-session like a charm, that way all my scuffed up old 4x cdrw dics can stay on the shelf, I can burn a CDR up to 200 MB and go back to it later to fill the rest up.
Best feature, The Jog-Dial, I love that nobby thing, I dont know if other players have it, I'd figure they would, but it makes selecting an album or track so simple any idiot could ask me to do it for them.
- Sony D-NE10
- iRiver iMP-550
- Panasonic SL-J905
I think the last one looks pretty geeky!Simply the best out there, I love mine:
iRiver
CD-R/RW/MP3/Ogg/WMA/FM tuner/Flash upgrades/etc....
Do not buy a MP3/CD-R/CDRW player by Emerson. I bought one about five months ago, and it was one of the worst purchases I ever made. First and foremost, it didn't always (actually, seldomly) would play my home-brewn CDs. Also, it claimed support for ID3 tag reading (for mp3s, that is) but it would only display the tag if you had skipped from the previous song to that song.(although, even when it did, it scrolled very slowly) Another really annoying thing was that it claimed CD-RW compatibility, but it would only play CD-RWs on every other burn, (which is a real pain when you're burning at 4x speed) Seriously, they do not manufacture a good portable CD player.
I love NetHack.
Back in September I got a Samsung Yepp, and I have to say that I like it. It plays just about any bitrate (incl. vcr) mp3 I've thrown at it. The interface is pretty sparse, but if you organize your files on the CD right it's not bad. It treats directories as albums, basically, so you can just go to the 'album' you want simply enough. Battery life is better than I expected and it hasn't just up-and-died on me yet...
Blech. Signatures.
The iRiver SlimX iMP-550 is a fantastic player. I just got one a few months ago because my little 256MB flash-based player just didn't hold enough music for a long day of studying, working out a the gym, etc. The SlimX has a great interface, it really is extremely slim (surprise), and has upgradable firmware which means that it will support Ogg Vorbis Real Soon Now(tm). It also looks sexy in its slim, cold metal body. (No plastic here!!)
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
Do you buy software based solely on what the box claims? I've bought a bunch of CD/MP3 players for myself and family. Several Phillips players have worked well, lasted a long time and done what they claimed. Koss and RCA were inexpensive, made the same claims on the box as the Phillips players. I strongly recommend the Phillips over the others I've tried. Also bought a Sony Net MD player. Technically it does what the box claims (if you read carefully), and it's decent once you get the music recorded on the minidisk, but the method of getting the music on disk is so convoluted and buggy that the player is too much trouble to use.
Archos products have been known to be somewhat less reliable than the high-end stuff like iPod, but for this price you can't go wrong.
To make this player/recorder even better, simply drag-n-drop files, umount/eject and play. There is no rearranging of your music... it's there just as you placed it on the drive. Not sure about this unit, but batteries are easily changed in version 1 (which I own).
Go get one today... then load the Rockbox firmware and keep on rockin. In version 2 you can even flash-upgrade the flashrom for a 4sec bootup.
btw... I posted a review on Amazon just this week and bought the rebated unit for my neighbor to use on his bike.
Yea, this sounds like an ad... but it's not. I just want to make sure people know what kind of bs they are getting from the major 'players' out there. Make sure you check the music management issues when you do your research. Any player I will buy must be Linux compatible.
Cheers! nomasteryoda
Yeah! my first posting!
aka ...
koolaid