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?

Comments

Portable DVD-R

[or_smth]

Sorry to latch on to your question, but I've been wondering...

Personally, I need more music than a CD-R player can offer. Currently, I have an iPod and find it great, other than the fact that it was overpriced and a little bit fragile (AA batteries would be nice, though I can live without them). DVD burners are gaining marketshare quickly. Why don't we have some portable DVD-R mp3/ogg/FLAC/yatta players? I think most of the geeks here could use a player that had removable 4.7gig storage, and it would eliminate the worry of a head crash (which is why I'm paranoid of snowboarding with my iPod).

Anyone heard of anything?

AVC Soul player!

[fist_187]

check out the AVC Soul Player! the one i own just died after 4 years of abuse -- i always had it plugged into my car stereo (i bought it for $120 when low-end in-dash mp3 players were $450) and i guess it just couldnt take another winter with -30F nights.

anyway- if you can get one of these, definitely do it!

• they play CD-Rs and CD-RWs no problem.
• they support mp3 and wma (up to pretty high bitrates and VBR)
• 120 second skip buffer, which saves a lot of batteries
• you can skip ahead by song, by 10 songs, or BY DIRECTORY
• THIS THING UNDERSTANDS DIRECTORY STRUCTURE! you can naviate alphabetically sorted folders AND SUBFOLDERS and see their names while a song is playing. this is infinitely awesome!
• you can change the fastforward/rewind speed, up to 6x
• automatically resumes where it left off on the cd, not just on the current cd but on any of the last 10 cds it played. you can turn that option off if you want.
• supports ID3 tags, but there is the option to turn them off too
• has a wired remote and a line out, which makes it great for your car (i clip the remote to an easy-to-reach part of the dashboard)

this player is great for long road trips, because not only does it save a lot of shuffling cds in and out of the player, your friends can browse what else is on the cd while a song is playing. its also better than USB/flash media players when you're on the road, because its so much easier and cheaper to bring a stack of mp3 cds instead of a laptop and/or memory sticks.

its the little things about this player that make it great... and there are SO DAMN MANY of them.