Fourteen Digital Music Players Reviewed

prostoalex writes "The PC Magazine reviews 14 digital music players that can play MP3, WMA or AAC files. The editor's choice among the models compared includes Apple iPod Mini and iRiver iFP-390T. The editors decided to conduct a single review of both Flash- and HDD-based music players. Of special interest is the battery life test as well as sound quality test. Even though the entire article is published online in HTML, the summary of the features is available in PDF only."

Comments

I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

From article:

"so simple even a frog could use this."

Why must article discrimenate againt the French ? We are good people. Too much now in the US is anti-French feelings, like "freedom fries". We helped US defeat Hitler, and France is a leads computer industry.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you also a French grandmother?

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so the people who died working for the French Resistance were just messing around then?

Interesting ...

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice revisionist history. I don't think there is one historian out there who would agree with you but nice anti-US sentiment. Without the help of the US the UK would have become one big V2 parking lot of rubble.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

So we should thank the French for assisting us in removing the Germans from their country? That sounds about right.

Re:I am French

[__aambat2633]

exactly, Hitler striked againt sovjet, and he i didn't brake the sovjet army line, he lost too many soldiers and at the same time he fought war in other directions. Bad strategy I say, and 20milion sovjets lost there lives but they stopped him. But that is just my view of it all. And I am a Swede, I stand natural in this ;)

Re:I am French

[lederhosen]

Thats right, it is what I tried to say.

I would order it the other way around though,
i.e. Soviet, UK and then US (where does Canada
fit in)?

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no organized french resistance.

I love the french, but please don't defend your actions during WWII. You really can't.

French Resistance was an idea concocted by DeGaulle after WWII to build his political party based on French Nationalism.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you consider not that great? The number of men we sent to Europe? The amount of supplies and equipment we provided? The incredible attack on Omaha Beach during D-Day?

Please. Take your bullshit to somebody who doesn't know better. Most people argue that we should have entered earlier and that own neutrality cost thousands of lives.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think an appropriate punishment for German was that they continued to own France. Nope can't give that back. Give every other country you invaded back but for punishment you get to keep the French.

Re:I am French

[DAldredge]

And the very large amount of weapons/ammo that the USA produced don't count? Nor do all the men that died making Normandy happen?

Re:I am French

[Moofie]

You can't be serious. Are you really saying that the American involvement in World War II was insignificant?

Winston Churchill disagreed with you. Vehemently. I bet Herr Hitler would have something to say on the subject as well.

Roosevelt drew a foul in the Pacific in order to get into the war in Europe. We (America) turned the tide there, and then proceeded to disarm another imperialist power on the other side of the planet.

More Russians died, more French territory was conquered, but anybody who says that the US was not responsible for containing the Axis is on crack.

Re:I am French

[DebianRcksLindowsLie]

And once again - we get /. posts dealing with politics instead of the actual topic at hand.

Let's attack something that NEEDS attacking. Click the link in my sig and you'll see how one company promotes PORN IN THE NAME OF LINUX. THAT, my friends, is something worth getting upset over.

Re:I am French

[lederhosen]

Are you really saying that the American involvement in World War II was insignificant?

No, where did I say that???

I say UK and Soviet did more, it is that easy.
Most people don't seam to know it, and from what I have seen today many don't want to know.

I can not understand why people take it as an insult, WHY? My contry did nothing, and if someone
makes a point out of it i relly do not care.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I have to disagree. The original story had some clear anti-French bullshit in it, and it defnitely needed to be called out.

Re:I am French

[lederhosen]

And the very large amount of weapons/ammo that the USA produced don't count? Nor do all the men that died making Normandy happen?

I did not say it did not count, where, where have i said anything of that???

America did a lot of good things, and helped alot.
I was *just* explaning that it was not US that
did everything. The original post kind of said that when the french pussies did nothing, US saved
europe from the nazis.

Re:I am French

[ElGuapoGolf]

Please.

Without US involvement, the UK would would have been slightly more battered than it was, but Germany would have still lost the war.

The UK suvived and stopped the threat of Germany invasion *before* the US entered the war. Without US help, the war would have taken longer, and most of Europe would have fallen under the control of the Soviet Union. And the Russians never really benefited that heavily from lend lease.

US involvement helped to secure a democratic europe. A democratic UK was never in doubt, with or without US involvement.

FYI - I'm not european, I'm american. I happen to have a history degree, and a bit more knowledge than most armchair historians who get their facts from Rush and Sean.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm British. My grandmother worked during WW-II as a spy who entered France on a regular basis and kept communication lines open between the resistance and the UK, so I'm pretty sure it existed...

Ok, IHBT, etc. But in case someone out there believes what you've written...

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly said that "...US
involvment was not that great." You didn't say that the UK and Soviet Union did more. That is a comparative. You said that US involvement wasn't that great. I don't think anyone would argue that the UK and Soviet Union gave more lives and had cities absolutely devastated but value in a war is not measure by casualties alone.

We take insult because you are espousing typical anti-American hate rhetoric.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew you were stupid, DAldredge, but until I read your comment I never suspected just how stupid. Of course America sacrificed a lot to help the Allies win. The person to whom you replied was suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, other countries sacrificed more. Do you get it now, or are you still too dense?

Re:I am French

[MattyCobb]

America did a lot of good things, and helped alot. I was *just* explaning that it was not US that did everything. The original post kind of said that when the french pussies did nothing, US saved europe from the nazis.

In many ways they did. I mean the British were almost ready to surrender and the Soviets were content to just take over where the Nazis left off. So its all in how you look at it. But yeah it wasnt just the US. Lots of countries helped. I think Canada even provided syrup for pankakes or something!

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that the Battle of Britain broke the German air offensive against England, and the unbelievably heroic actions of the British pilots saved uncountable lives, but...

Are you really telling me that after consolidating his hold on France, Austria, Poland, Netherlands, etc., etc. and the industrial capabilities of the aforementioned countries, Hitler would have left the British Isles alone because they kicked his ass in a big air battle?

I am NOT an historian, nor do I claim to be. However, it does not seem likely to me that Hitler would have simply given up on Britain. It seems more likely to me that he would have saved up some spit and come back out swinging. Note also that Germany were on the brink of having decent jet fighters, usable rockets, and nuclear weaponry.

Again, I'm not a historian - but I think your analysis is rather narrow-sighted. I think that if the war had been allowed to continue for an additional 5 years that the British Isles would have been like the rest of Europe - German, and shiny and glassy in spots.

Re:I am French

[ElGuapoGolf]

What about the russian juggernaut? Did you read my previous post?

Re:I am French

[Ummon_i]

Judging from Monty's clear lack of military skills I doubt that Germany's Demise was a forgone conclusion. I doubt Britain could have mounted any credible invasion of the mainland without the US.

As for the Russians, you could argue that they would have eventually won. Though I think the higher likelyhood that it would have ended up a bloody stalemate in east europe.

Re:I am French

[Pieroxy]

Maginal Line

Notice how by removing the two legs from the M, you get Vaginal Line.

More seriously though, it is the Maginot Line. That way, not only you get your facts straight, but you also avoid bad jokes such as the one above.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

You did not help and not US! First of all USSR and Stalin defeated Hitler, than USA and the rest.
Tell us better how Hitler defeated France in 1940.
It took him like 2 weeks or 10 days to beat frogs :) haha.

Re:I am French

[trudyscousin]

Give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they really were talking about our li'l amphibian buddies.

(In which case, perhaps I should write the PC Magazine staff and ask what sort of hallucinogens they're taking...)

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Their dump. Led's ignor tem.

Re:I am French

[Myridon]

(...and ask what sort of hallucinogens they're taking...)

Obviously, they've been licking toads...

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think Canada even provided syrup for pankakes or something!"

Bullshit, Canada was only a country of a 11 million at the time and would place 1,090,762 soldiers in combat, almost entirely WITHOUT CONSCRIPTION. I'll due the math for you, thats practically 10% of the ENTIRE population. While the UK and US were off glory hunting in Market Garden, they were opening up all the ports along the North Sea, including the Scheldt Estuary (aka "Scheldt Fortress", which the German's were holding at all costs), so supplies could get into Antwerp (Only the biggest port on the North Sea) to continue the advance on Berlin. Ask the Dutch how much they feel Canada contributed to the war.

Not to mention that it was the Canadians that held off the the 12th SS Panzer division at Caen in the weeks following DDay as Kurt Meyer tried to "throw the little fish back into the sea."

Re:I am French

[Moofie]

"But the fact is that the US
involvment was not that great."

Now, we may be running into a language barrier here, but "not that great" and "insignificant" are synonyms.

It's an insult to be told that the sacrifices made by your countrymen to defend the freedoms of other people are insignificant.

Vietnam and Korea were ill-advised wars, but the Americans who went there and didn't come back are heroes. Dying for your own freedom is one thing. Dying for somebody else's, well, that's something Americans seem more willing to do than any other nation in history.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen.

Canada is never given proper credit for its contribution to both world wars. Considering its small population compared to some of the other allies, it made an amazing contribution to the war effort.

Saying things like, "I think Canada even provided syrup for pankakes or something!" or "Oh, you guys were in that war?" is a huge insult to their war veterans, joking or not.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you should give your history degree back. The Russians didn't benefit from the BILLIONS of dollars and equipment we gave them? That's a crock. The Brits were isolated and being fed by the US. Had the US not invaded and started the 2 front war The Russians wouldn't have had the benefit of a split German force and Stalingrad would have collapsed. Heck...if Hitler hadn't foolishly lauched Barbarosa the the US would have met a German death machine on the beaches of Normandy.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the United States was built by Europeans, you would expect something going the other way.

Re:I am French

[Anonymous Coward]

To someone who thinks that the US did very little, yes, France did nothing.

I agree that the Soviets did more than any other country in terms of winning the war. They also lost the most people. On the other hand, they gots lots of territory in WWII which I guess makes up the fact that they did more.

Re:I am French

[soft_guy]

If the US hadn't been involved, maybe the british army would have been forced to find a commander who could win. (Or maybe the Soviets would have liberated France.)

Re:I am French

[soft_guy]

Not only that, but don't forget that many americans are of French heritage (and proud of it!). And also the huge help that France gave to the USA during our revolution.

French has been our friend and aly since 1776 - W. has been "president" only 3.5 years.

Re:I am French

[10Ghz]

We (America) turned the tide there, and then proceeded to disarm another imperialist power on the other side of the planet.

are you talking about Europe or Pacific here? By the time USA really got involved in Europe, Germans were already withdrawing. Had there been no west-front, the war would have dragged for few months longer. But Germany's defeat was certain long before D-Day.

In the Pacific it was mostly an US show however.

Re:I am French

[lederhosen]

"not that great" and "insignificant" are synonyms

not so, and I don't even speak English that good.

It's an insult to be told that the sacrifices made by your countrymen to defend the freedoms of other people are insignificant.

I have never said so.

French beeing pussies is though, I am not French,
nor American, but I at least know ho helped liberate US from UK.

Vietnam and Korea were ill-advised wars, but the Americans who went there and didn't come back are heroes. Dying for your own freedom is one thing. Dying for somebody else's, well, that's something Americans seem more willing to do than any other nation in history.

I do not agree. Canada joined the war early and
did way more relative the size of the country.
New Zealand had Mauri troops fighting in Europe.

Your entire statement is an insult to most other countries in the world.

Re:I am French

[Moofie]

Uh huh. That whole invasion of Normandy was just us happening to run into the Wehrmacht as they were running back home from Paris, because they were le tired of conquering France.

Boy, are you ever wrong.

Re:I am French

[Moofie]

"not so, and I don't even speak English that good."

OK, English lesson.

"Not that great == not significant == insignificant".

That might not have been what you meant, but it is what you said.

And, as far as Canada and NZ, I didn't disparage either contribution to the war effort. Any soldier that goes into harm's way to defend others is a hero. Despite your revisionist tendencies, a hell of a lot of those soldiers have come from America. Never mind America's economic and materiel contribution to the war effort before the troops landed.

If other countries are insulted by the fact that America is willing to sacrifice its sons and daughters for their freedom, those countries can piss off.

Re:I am French

[lederhosen]

Main Entry: insignificant
Pronunciation: -k&nt
Function: adjective
: not significant: as a : lacking meaning or import : INCONSEQUENTIAL b : not worth considering : UNIMPORTANT c : lacking weight, position, or influence : CONTEMPTIBLE d : small in size, quantity, or number
- insignificantly adverb

It is my belive that "Not that great != not significant != insignificant" and sertenly
that "Not that great" is *far* from "insignificant".

>>Despite your revisionist tendencies
what??

I find it hard to argue when you'r constantly
attacking me on things I have not said and
most importantly not standing for, I therefore argue that we stop here!

Re:I am French

[10Ghz]

Like I said, Germany would have been defeated, with or without Normandy (or Italy for that matter). Germans were already being ripped apart in the Eastern Front, long before D-day. Hell, even after D-day something like 70-80% of Germans troops were in the Eastern Front.

The fate of Germany was decided in the East. D-Day did hasten their downfall, but their defeat was decided long before D-Day. Germans lost the initiative in ther Easter Front when they lost the Battle of Stalingrad. And that took place in late 1942! Close to 2 years before D-Day! After that, it was all downhill for them.

Please, read some history, OK?

Re:I am French

[Moofie]

So why was Churchill so desperate to get the US into the war? If the Wehrmacht was on its last legs, why did so many American soldiers die?

I've read plenty of history, and I have come to a radically different conclusion than you have.

Germany lost because they were fighting a two-front war, not just because they (stupidly) invaded Russia in the wintertime. The American army was the bulk of that second front (not all, not the only, but the bulk of that second front) and to suggest that American involvement wasn't critical to the outcome of the war is simply revisionism.

Never mind the materiel assistance provided before Roosevelt drew his foul at Pearl.

Re:I am French

[10Ghz]

So why was Churchill so desperate to get the US into the war?

So that the British wouldn't stand alone against the Germans in the west. But that doesn't change the fact that Germanys fate had already sealed.

If the Wehrmacht was on its last legs, why did so many American soldiers die?

Wehrmacht was no pushover in 1942-1944, but still they were being beaten, and they were being beaten badly.

Germany lost because they were fighting a two-front war, not just because they (stupidly) invaded Russia in the wintertime.

If you have read your history, then you should know that Germans did not invade SU in wintertime, Barbarossa started in june.

Germany really had just one front to fight during 1941 - 1944. North Africa was really just a sideshow. Italy was somewhat more important, but it too was just a secondary front. And Germans were falling back long before Western Front was created. So West Front really had very little to do with the fact that Germans started to fall back in the East. Hell, by the time D-Day took place, Soviets were close to invading Poland! They had already drivens Germans FAR back, and the Germans absolutely had NO initiative in the East. All they had left was to try to fill up the huge holes Soviets tore to their front-lines. Had D-day never happened, Germans would have been defeated. Or are you really saying that Germans could have driven the Soviets back from the gates of Warsaw, and crush their army? I _SERIOUSLY_ doubt it! Hell, had they driven the Soviets back 200 even 500 kilometers, it wouldn't have made one bit of difference in the grand scheme of things!

Like I said, they were doomed, long before D-day.

The American army was the bulk of that second front (not all, not the only, but the bulk of that second front) and to suggest that American involvement wasn't critical to the outcome of the war is simply revisionism.

Large number of those troops were in fact British and Canadiens. I don't know what % of them were from which country, but there were ALOT of non-americans there.

And I find it rather strange that you call me a revisionist, when in fact Soviets part in defeating Germany has been constantly underestimates. Let's look at the facts, shall we?

Soviets fought the Germans from summer of 1941 to the end of war. That's close to 4 years.

USA became involved in early 1942. But their real involvement started in November of that year (Operation Torch), and even then, their involvement took place in a secondary front (North Africa). So, by the time USA got involved, Soviets had been fighting the Germans for close to 1.5 years.

Italy is invaded in later half of 1943 (Sicily was taken earlier). Italy remains a more or less stagnant secondary front thorought the war. When the invasion takes place, Soviets had been fighting the Germans for over 2 years. And by the time Italy was invaded, Germans were already falling back in the East.

D-Day takes place in summer of 1944. It was not a US-only show, large number of the troops came from other countries. When D-day takes place, Soviets had been fighting the Germans for 3 years. And while D-day was taking place, Soviets were busy crushing the Germans Army Group Center, driving the Germans to the gates of Warsaw, and killing or capturing over 350.000 German troops in that operation alone!

And, even after D-day, overwhelming majority of German troops were in fact facing the Soviets, and not the Allied! Majority of German losses were in fact inflicted in the Eastern Front!

So, by the time USA really became invloved in a major fron in Europe, Soviets were already near Warsaw. Time USA fought in the Western Front? A bit under one year. Time Soviets fought in the Eastern Front? Close to 4 years. Had germans sent all their troops from Italy and Western Europe to the Eastern Front, it wouldn't have made one bit of difference. It would have just delayed the inevitable.

Who's being the revisionist here?

Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[monstroyer]

And out of the 14 that are reviewed ZERO play Ogg Vorbis.

Marketers, manufacturers, and capitalists: LISTEN UP!

* I'm 29, single, and work in the computer industry. Therefore, I like gadgets and have disposable income.

* I'm a hobbiest musician and I have been encoding everything, no exception, in OGG VORBIS since 2003. Like the teenagers say, so last year.

* It is feasible to port the Vorbis decoder/encoder to a platform without floating point support.

There's your demographic. Stop reaching for the teenagers and start making products for people who can afford them and desperately need them.

Your profit margins will thank you.

PS: I'm posting this from an iBook. I won't buy an iPod until it supports OGG!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Wizzo1138]

Two Words:
Rio Karma

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[LostCluster]

Yet OGG isn't "Where it's at" business-wise right now. Right now the handhelds are optimizing to be compatible with either Apple iTunes (FairPlay-ed AACs), RealNetworks Rhapsody (RealAudio codec), or Napster/BuyMusic/Walmart files (Microsoft WMAs).

Each manufactuer is picking exactly one to align with... and nobody's pushing OGG from that side of the business.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are lost in a totally different world. You represent less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the potential market for these things. If I walked down the hall where I work (made up almost entirely of accountants with plenty of disposable income) I bet not one of them knows Ogg but all of them knows MP3.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the slashdot population is at all representative of the real world.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note true, you can patch most iriver players to support ogg

check out this site:
http://www.millerpc.co.uk/shop/news/october /iRiver _OGG.asp

since you work in the computer industrie, you should be able to patch a mp3 player ;)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it does. Plus, you can have a smaller Vorbis file (ie 96 or 112kpbs) sound just as good as the 128kpbs mp3. That means more music in your finite storage.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[scooby111]

Since you represent less than 1/10th of 1% of the population, I'm sure they'll get right on it.

Let's face it, teenagers make up a very large percentage music consumers.
When was the last time you spent $15 on a CD? I can't remember the last time I paid for any music or even listened to a radio station that played new music. The vast majority of music listeners on any age use MP3s or CD's. Why not cater to those people first? It just doesn't make sound business sense to cater to the minority.

With that being said, I'd be much happier myself if they'd support all music formats.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ponds]

Ogg is an open format, MP3 is not.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[cmdr_beeftaco]

Fruitcake LISTEN UP! * I'm 31, single, and work in the computer industry. Therefore, I like gadgets and have disposable income. * I'm a hobbiest musician and I have never heard of OGG VORBIS and have been encoding everything, no exception in MP3 since 1999. * It is feasible to play mp3 everywhere, that's why I don't have to bitch on slashdot to get support. There's your demographic. Continue reaching for the teenagers because it makes me feel younger and hipper with my white headphones. Your profit margins will thank you. PS: I'm posting this from an XP. I won't buy anything unless it cost money.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of them know about Slashdot? A group of accountants is hardly a fair sample of the population at large.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Kenja]

"Ogg is an open format, MP3 is not."

So what? Do you realy think anyone is going to sell a music player that wont have MP3 support? And if it has MP3 support, whats the point in OGG? The market is MP3 (because everyone uses it), ACC (because you can buy songs in it) and WMA (because its smaller then MP3 and because Microsoft says so).

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ValourX]

The iRiver H120 and H140 are iPod-killers with better looks, cheaper prices, and Ogg/Vorbis support.

-Jem

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[BorisZ]

I don't know why the parent got modded Funny. He definitely has a point. Ogg Vorbis is a great codec and really should be incorporated in portable media players. Ogg Vorbis is found in an ever increasing amount on mucisian's sites and by leaving support for it out of your player, you're losing a lot of revenue. Quite a portion of the geek crowd would love to have an affordable Ogg/Vorbis portable media solution. /rant off. PS: Like my other posts this is probably getting modded down. It must be my karma or something. ;)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[American AC in Paris]

Oh, get yerself a Rio Karma and quitcher whinin'. I'm a video freak, and you don't see me bitching about how hardly any consumer TV sets support anything more exotic than RCA component in, do you?

The manufacturers have heard the Cry of the Hardcore Ogg Fan, and they've responded with a collective "meh." Most of them simply don't give a damn about your niche. Rio does. Support Rio and quit acting like you're all downtrodden.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[blackmonday]

Unfortunately, you're not the target demographic. The target is a teenager / 20 - something with disposable income. MP3 is the standard and is what 99% of people care about. I believe the Rio Karma has Vorbis, get that one. If I hear a 17 year old girl ask about Vorbis support when she's looking at the pink iPod mini, then I'll be on board with you.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[chrisgeleven]

I hate to say it, but there are what, maybe a few thousand people who even know what Ogg Vorbis is and even fewer that actually use it.

The amount of effort required to port a decoder to a particular portable music player is probably way more then the rewards of a few more people buying their product.

The amount of protential profit must be at least the amount spend on development tools, employee salaries, etc, if not more.

Trust me on this. They aren't going to go through the effort if it ends up making them lose money doing it.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[radish]

Except ogg doesn't sound any better than mp3 above 128kbps

Me thinks you need to get your ears syringed.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a hell of a lot better sample than slashdot is. Accounting - from bookkeepers to CPA's and everything in between - accounts for a very large percentage of white color jobs. Who do you think is buying mp3 players, construction workers?

Get realistic. If you want I will stand in Bryant Park and ask everybody the same question. If I get more than 10 people who know what Ogg is then I will give you my next paycheck.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please provide 5 links with Off Vorbis encoded music. You are just as delusional as he is. If they lose $10,000/yr in revenue because of not supporting Ogg I would be amazed.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iRiver iHP line of hard-disk players supports OGG.

I have a 20GB version - about 12hrs battery life with normal play, built in recording of a quality sufficient for lectures, optical + regular line-in/line-out. Natch.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mail it to:

Anonymous Coward
c/o Slashdot.org
The Internet

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hobbiest? Gosh, I'm only hobbier. What can I do to get that top-level status?

Although I suspect you meant "hobbyist".

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of surprised that people haven't gone for ogg or any number of other codecs - they are free. Mp3 is, as I understand it, owned by a company that collects a royalty every time an mp3 is used commercially. If these media players are connected to music purchasing services, why would they go for formats that cost money? Fear of using an unfamiliar codec hasn't hurt Apple...

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[nkh]

You're right about 128kbps encoded Vorbis files, but 64kbps Vorbis sounds almost as good as 128kbps MP3! Which means you can have twice more files for the same quality.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Ziviyr]

It sounds incredibly difficult to go anywhere in this market with a "RealAudia" only p[ayer.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Do you hear that rumble in the distance - the growing outcry for Ogg Vorbis support on portable music players?

No?

Well I don't hear it either. That's because ALMOST NO ONE CARES. Outside of a small minority of the Slashdot crowd, there is basically no consumer demand for Ogg Vorbis. Deal with it.

(Well, that's sure to burn some karma...)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[adamofgreyskull]

Yes! I couldn't agree with you more. But I won't hold my breath. At the moment I play oggalicious files on my Zaurus. Sucks battery, but it may suit your needs...it's also a PDA running GNU/Linux to boot... ;o)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[DigitalBubblebath]

Actually, the iFP-390T DOES support OGG Vorbis. I've been using it happily for a few months now.

See this page

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where ogg vorbis has showed up (commercially) is in games. The game makers free themselves of the mp3 licensing fees (a bit of extra profit), and they get a better quality sound in less space.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the Neuros at neurosaudio.com. I like the style and the price is reasonable. A FM transmitter is built in not a tacky, expensive, add on like the iPod. And it has ogg vorbis support and a customer service department that understands thant customer service is important. It has a list of other cool features that you can read about on the website listed.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[EpsCylonB]

I always use a program to reduce the bitrate of an audio file when i copy it over to my muvo nx, dbcpower amp can convert ogg -> mp3 as well so until ogg support is in every player you can just do that.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[mrjackson2000]

Neuros

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If by "better looks" you mean "could have come out of a cereal box in the mid-1980's when the 'Transformers' were the absolute pinnacle of industrial design for the under-12 set," then yes, better looks indeed.

Speaking solely for myself, I prefer something that doesn't look like it came out of the "open box" bin at the Fry's in Lomo Alto.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

Yet OGG isn't "Where it's at" business-wise right now.

OGG isn't "where it's at" because everybody is too afraid to "innovate" and blaze a new path by taking a chance on an unknown, even a higher-quality, less expensive one. You'd think Apple would try this, but they are heading towards DRM, rather than away from it. But there's no reason iTunes and the iPod can't support BOTH. You can have DRM for songs you buy from iTMS, and no DRM on your own CDs you burn.

Watch for "DRM Creep", just like the rumored RIAA "Price Creep" that claims that iTMS will be selling tracks for $2.99 soon.... the sky's the limit, if the market will accept it.

Once the Pandora's Box of DRM is open, it can't be shut again -- and it can only go one way. I know you all love Apple, but it's going to happen. Because if I was in power, *I'D* certainly do it, and I'm not nearly as cutthroat as the RIAA. They've already started complaining about the .99 cents a song, what can they move in their favour next? And WHEN will they be satisfied with their profits and level of control?

Once you realize you're a frog in a pot of water and the government and the big corporations have their hand on the temperature knob, the better off you'll be able to protect your own rights.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[jd142]

Not according to the email I just received from their Sales people. I've been in the market for a 256-512 meg flash based unit. Unfortunately, the Neuros only goes to 128. I emailed iRiver and their people said ogg support is not there for the flash players.

If you want a hard drive ogg player, Neuros is the obvious solution. USB 2.0 in 20-80 gig models. Pick the storage you want. They've opened their sdk and they have the best customer service and response going. http://www.neurosaudio.com and browse the forums.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[dasmegabyte]

Wait -- that's better looks? It looks like a Samsonite briefcase from the 1980s, and what's up with that scroll control? Was it designed by Ed Wood?

Furthermore, 20 gig for $400 MSRP isn't cheaper -- it's the SAME PRICE as the iPod. I know, street prices are cheaper, but MSRP was the comparison used in this article as well.

The FM tuner, voice recorder, Vorbis support and optical out are worthwhile features for some, but then again so are AAC support iTunes integration, iTMS support, FireWire and the seamless design with only three ports.

The size -- both physical and storage -- is dead on, as is the battery life. And I'll give you this: while the iPod looks kind of like a cross between a plastic Easter Egg and a shaving mirror, this thing looks like a high tech cell phone. If you don't like the looks of the iPod because it's too postmodern, this is what you want.

This is no iPod killer. But is an agressive iPod competitor. That's good for us iPod fans as well as the detractors.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ValourX]

Funny, I would have said pretty much the same exact thing in regards to the iPod. Except I would have added that it was designed for rich yuppies.

-Jem

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[sinergy]

So what... 128kbps MP3 files sound terrible.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[angle_slam]

I'm a video freak, and you don't see me bitching about how hardly any consumer TV sets support anything more exotic than RCA component in, do you?

Probably because most "high-end" sets (above $2000 or so), include DVI inputs.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

OGG isn't "where it's at" because everybody is too afraid to "innovate" and blaze a new path by taking a chance on an unknown, even a higher-quality, less expensive one.

True, if by "inovate" you mean invest development costs into something 18 fuckers on slashdot want and noone else has ever heard of".

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[lcde]

*** I am 22, Single and work in technology. (read bling bling)
*** I am fresh out of college (1yr) and don't know how to manage money (read bling bling)
*** I AM your demographic.

And I Demand WAV format. :D

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Kiryat Malachi]

MP3 is an open format. It is not a free format. Yes, that is possible.

It's not free as in beer, but it is an openly available standard with compulsory, non-discriminatory licensing. No one (not Fraunhoefer, not anyone) can unilaterally change the MP3 standard. Anyone can write an encoder, and after the patents cease to apply (looks like the last of them will run out in the 2010-2015 time frame) anyone can write and freely distribute a codec.

Open != GPL. In fact, open != free.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I would have said pretty much the same exact thing in regards to the iPod.

You'd be the only person saying it.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[tepples]

I'm a hobbiest musician

What measures do you take to to make sure that your songs are in fact original and not subconsciously pirated from a song you may have heard on the radio?

and I have never heard of OGG VORBIS and have been encoding everything, no exception in MP3 since 1999.

Have you paid for 1. the patented MP3 encoder and 2. the right to distribute your works in Fraunhofer's patented format?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[PhilipPeake]

If the marketeers, manufacturers and caplitalists won't listen to you, and this is a huge untapped market, well, this is your chance to become richer than Bill Gates -- set yourself up in business and manufacture the players you want, and that you are so convinced would take the market by storm.

Off you go...

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[michael_george]

Better looks? Only if you don't mind people asking you why you have headphones and a remote control on your Braun Pocket Shaver.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[npietraniec]

Yes. I couldn't be happier with my Rio

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I hear a 17 year old girl ask about Vorbis support when she's looking at the pink iPod mini, then I'll be on board with you.

Dude, if you hear a 17 year old girl ask about Vorbis support, pass her name along, will ya?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[gmby]

Yeah it's up to use adults to help these lost children to see the error of their ways.
Spread the word.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ValourX]

I doubt that. Maybe I'd be the only person to say it on /., but not the only person to say it anywhere. Apple brands the shit out of all of their stuff and it is so unbelievably tacky and tasteless that I would never buy an Apple product despite any evidence of superiority or advantage in price.

Apple hardware is more expensive than its competitors and it doesn't offer any distinct advantages. Apple sells the brand and the image, not the product. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that -- Nike and The Gap do it too -- but you can't expect a freethinker to buy into some corporate marketing campaign.

Yuppies buy for status, not for practicality. Apple products buy status and image above all else.

-Jem

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ucblockhead]

It's not mentioned in the review, but you can download firmware for the iRiver 390T to play OGG files.

I use an iRiver 599T and play mostly OGG files on it. I love it. Very long battery life. (~25 hours) Quick downloads. Very light and easy to use.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why does my iFP-390 play ogg files then?

must be a miracle :)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Mateito]

> Two Words:
> Rio Karma

I'd rent you mine, but that would make me... ... wait for it...

a KARMA WHORE!!!

Ok.. back to the coffee.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Total_Wimp]

Four Words:
Rio Karma not reviewed

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ManoMarks]

And why do you think Apple is going for the DRM solution? 2 reasons:

1) Apple likes to make money. They don't make money if one person downloads a song and gives it to hundreds of friends in whatever format they want, especially if the format is freely changable thereby allowing them to put the files on non-iPod music players

2) RIAA would sue them into the next century if they tried to do otherwise.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

iRiver HP-120.

Does ogg wonderfully, and it fufils all of my needs.

couldn't be happier (unless they fixed the gapless playback and database issues)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Total_Wimp]

iPod killer? Why does everyone want an iPod killer? Any rock or baseball bat will do. What I want is a kick-ass MP3 that does basically what an iPod does and only costs a hundred bucks. That's gonna get my attention. No iPod beating necessary.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[cmdr_beeftaco]

Have you paid for 1. the patented MP3 encoder and 2. the right to distribute your works in Fraunhofer's patented format?
I believe all those fees and rights were included in the SCO licencing arrangement but please correct me if I am wrong.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[gfxguy]

There are obviously lots of players that don't support MP3, iPod being one of them.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[galaxy300]

Non only is the MP3 format ubiquitous, but the word itself has become something of a catch-all. I've heard more than a few people talk about downloading "MP3's" from iTunes or listening to "MP3's" on their computer that are unwittingly saved in WMA format.

It's like Xeroxing something - you can do it no matter what kind of photocopier you use. ; )

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Kenja]

From apple.com

Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF (Mac only) and WAV

What part of that is too hard for you to understand?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

Yeah, like when Apple came out with GRAPHICS, or THE FLOPPY DISK or THE CD-ROM or BLUETOOTH.

Yeah, just like that.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

1) Apple likes to make money. They don't make money if one person downloads a song and gives it to hundreds of friends in whatever format they want, especially if the format is freely changable thereby allowing them to put the files on non-iPod music players

It's not like they're preventing that as it is. I know "people" who've done ALL OF THAT.

2) RIAA would sue them into the next century if they tried to do otherwise.

Doesn't Apple own their own software and hardware anymore? They can still sell AAC on iTMS, but they can also allow iPods to play OGG and it won't hurt anybody. And the costs to implement OGG support are very low.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[IsThisNickTaken]

"There are obviously lots of players that don't support MP3, iPod being one of them."

Hmmm, I bet that's news to Steve Jobs. From Apple's website:

"Designed to give you the best portable digital music experience ever, the iPod delivers the highest sound quality from input to output. iPod supports the most popular audio formats -- including MP3 (up to 320 kbps), MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR) and WAV -- giving you access to a wide range of audio file types. And iPod is the only portable digital music player that supports the AAC format used by the iTunes Music Store for Mac and Windows. AAC features CD-quality audio in smaller file sizes than MP3, so that even more songs fit on your iPod."

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the total number of Ogg Vorbis users who have children is less than 10. The rest of you aren't allowed near children anymore.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transcoding? WTF?

Just keep it in MP3, you freak--OR dump all of your ill-gotten Napster music, and buy the CDs, then encode them to Ogg...

That's just unnatural. Ick.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[EulerX07]

Fruitcake, do you even READ slashdot from time to time? Hey, let's do a search on slashdot for ogg+vorbis.

In the words of Keanu : "Woah". Recently there's about 1 story per week that mentions it in the story body (the one you see in the front page, not the comments).

As far as I can remember, Ogg Vorbis as been covered on the slashdot since they started working on it years ago. The first Ogg Vorbis story was posted on /. FOUR years ago, the anniversary was 9 days ago.

I won't buy anything unless it cost money.

Too bad "A CLUE" is free and you couldn't buy one. Or did you just create an account here to flame someone for the hell of it?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[squiggleslash]

Kind of makes you wonder why they support Macs. I mean, hardly anyone uses Macs too, so why do people, Rio, Sony, Apple, et al, support those machines?

This is sarcasm, just in case it isn't honest, and no it's not directed at you...

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[JW Troll]

The iRiver iFP-390T currently supports ogg, but only if you use player-specific beta firmware.
Of course, if you want an iPod but crave precious ogg support, try the H-series, which have supported ogg from way back. See here for more. U will like. iRiver's H-series kicks ass on the second-generation iPods, while remaining cheaper and with nice features like the text viewer and USB 2. Supports ogg, gets way better battery life, cheaper. That about says it all.

And check this: for almost every iRiver, there's UMS firmware which transforms the unit into an universal mass storage device. Works fine on Linux or the Mac. iRiver is a sweet company.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[eSun]

I just purchased the iRiver HP-140 precisely for its Ogg Vorbis support. I store my entire CD collection in high bitrate .ogg files, because I think they sound better. Not to mention that it has double the battery life of an iPod.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Consumer demand for Ogg Vorbis has driven efforts from Neuros, Rio, and iRiver to support that format in their players.

Currently, Ogg Vorbis support can be found on the:

o Rio Karma series
o iRiver iHP series
o Neuros series

FLAC/Ogg FLAC support can be found on the:

o Rio Karma series

There is demand for Ogg Vorbis support in devices and it *will* appear in new versions of firmware and/or devices as their capabilities increase. Since the players listed above do enough (and then some), they are just fine for people who want Vorbis or FLAC support in their player immediately.

No one ever expected getting Vorbis support would be an easy task. But no one expected it to be impossible, either. It wasn't and now we've gotten what we wanted.

Disclaimer: I own a Karma and am listening to my Vorbis-encoded Massive Attack album on my Rio this very minute.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ManoMarks]

[Referring to people distributing songs for free after downloading them]It's not like they're preventing that as it is. I know "people" who've done ALL OF THAT.

That's a good point, of course. The efforts by RIAA seem to be oriented on keeping the level of copying and distributing (piracy in their twisted minds) to a minimum. I think there's some justification to their belief that if they make it difficult for the average person to copy songs, they won't. It may not be difficult for the average Slashdot reader, but for the average user who just wants to copy files they'll think it's too hard.

Perhaps they believe that if they open up their files to different standards they're increasing the risk that someone will make it easy to strip DRM from them.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[CatOne]

Hmmm.

So they could sell at least ONE player.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[jd142]

Heh, you should work for iRiver. This is what they sent me:

Hello, Currently none of the iRiver flash memory players will play back this format. Thank you, iRiver America eStore

How do you like the iFP-390?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a comment about Ogg Vorbis, which in this case is related to players that can/can't play Ogg Vorbis in a story about players that have Ogg Vorbis offtopic?

Better yet, this post refers to other /. story about Ogg Vorbis, and this story is about players and one of the feature is Ogg Vorbis support. How can you be any more ON-topic?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Qinopio]

The iRiver 300 series (390, 395) do indeed have Ogg Vorbis firmware, although you must choose between MP3/OGG and MP3/WMA/ASF. I have a hunch that the Slashdot crowd would prefer the former, though. The firmware is in beta still (and has been since December -_-) and doesn't support USB drive functionality, but at least it's something.

iRiver OGG firmware

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

Excellent point, it's reality vs. appearance. To the RIAA, the appearance is that OGG = Openness, and Openness = Piracy, therefore OGG = Piracy. Could very well be.

btw, I feel I have to hassle Apple to adopt new formats, because God knows nobody else has the balls.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Mr Smidge]

Think about this for a second, even if it's not a plausible idea. I believe that if Vorbis and FLAC were the de-facto codecs for lossy and lossless compression, then we could be making far more technological advances in the multimedia field, and that businesses selling digital music playing devices would be more competitive.

Even if there were tons of audio codecs, but all of them open and unencumbered, I believe that the situation would be better because we could all concentrate on making our products and not worry about codecs, because they'd all be cheap to implement, and no licensing to worry about.

So, in my eyes, that's a good *ideal* situation. Can we get near to that ideal situation? Is it worth getting to that ideal situation?

Of course, most people are generally lazy, but is there anything that a few people that do care about Vorbis etc. can do? How can we encourage adoption of Vorbis/FLAC?

Off the top of my head:
* In whatever next kick-ass all-in-one media playing/ripping solution comes with KDE/Gnome, make it rip to Vorbis by default.
* A community effort towards making optimised hardware implementations of the Vorbis/FLAC codecs designs freely available. That would allow the chips to be made relatively easily once some company wants to pick it up.
* A vorbis-biased portable media player made by Vorbis enthusiasts who know what they're on about? Perhaps in the same vein as that Linux-only HDTV PCI card?
* Bundle said portable media player with the latest packaged version of Linux Distribution XYZ? Proclaim loudly "free portable music player!" all over it.

I *know* that few people care. A bit like lots of people don't care about voting, or who runs the country. But it's still pretty important. We certainly don't want to be in the situation (heaven forbid this should ever happen) where WMA is the only format around and licensing costs are continually hiked up by Microsoft.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[mrwonton]

I would tend to agree. Apple takes the same philosophy it has in its OS and computer designs and applies it to the iPod... The result of which strikes me as a shiny coaster.

The iPod still works well as an MP3 player, which is why I have no real qualms with those who shell out the rediculous prices for them, but for me, if I'm going to spend that much on a music player, it better have spiffy blue LEDs, like the iHP-120. =)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely true. Every single company who has to pay $$ for every single copy of every single mp3 encoder they distribute cares A LOT. Every game developer who has to pay $$ to include mp3's in their game cares A LOT. Apple would have loved not to have to take the $$ hit on every single copy of iTunes that gets downloaded. Most game developers are already moving to OGG - there's no reason not to. It's only a matter of time before the rest follow through.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Seanasy]

I doubt that. Maybe I'd be the only person to say it on /., but not the only person to say it anywhere. Apple brands the shit out of all of their stuff and it is so unbelievably tacky and tasteless that I would never buy an Apple product despite any evidence of superiority or advantage in price.

So, even if they put out a good product you won't use it, why? Because of the image? Then, you're as image concious as the 'yuppies' you hate.

Apple hardware is more expensive than its competitors and it doesn't offer any distinct advantages. Apple sells the brand and the image, not the product. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that -- Nike and The Gap do it too -- but you can't expect a freethinker to buy into some corporate marketing campaign.

First, Apple is barely, if at all, more expensive than comparable PC hardware. Second, they also engineer the hell out of their products as well as branding them. A well funded marketing department doesn't necessarily mean a starved engineering department. e.g. SCSI, FireWire, Bluetooth, 802.11g.

And as for 'freethinkers,' I would expect they wouldn't let marketing affect their decision one way or the other. They'd decide on the merits of the product.

Yuppies buy for status, not for practicality.

The same can be said of geeks. Where is the practicality in mini-ATX? Overclocking? Case mods?

Apple products buy status and image above all else.

No, no they don't. Yes, there's strong status/image thing there but the fact is, at least since the release of OS X, that Apple has a strong computing platform for home use to computational science. They're putting out hardware and software that can get the job done.

Apple isn't a threat to you. If you open your mind a bit you may recognize that they produce good products at decent price points. Just because they're not your bag doesn't make them charlatans.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Nonetheless, the iRiver player is kinda ugly.

I'm sorry that your sense of 'good design' requires black and chrome, but the nicest part of the iPod's design is the fact that it's so simple. Over-ornamentation is the worst crime in design, and Apple has done a good job of avoiding it.

Really, this is the war between case modders ("Must... have... shiny multi color metal case with black rubber bumpers and many colors of LEDs inside and a window in the side and UV-flourescing cables and custom shaped fan grills and and and...") and Apple's designs (seamless metal or polycarbonate shell, single logo on the outside - maybe, and minimal ports/openings/buttons).

If you think iRiver's player looks cool, that's fine. But design has been moving steadily away from over-ornamentation for the last 400-500 years for a reason.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[ValourX]

You are completely brainwashed by Apple's marketing -- amazing.

I don't care if others use Apple products. I don't understand why you think I perceive Apple as a "Threat" to me... what I'm trying to make clear is that I don't want to be a part of the Apple Culture regardless of how their products perform. Just like I wouldn't buy an overpriced sweatshirt with a huge GAP on the front, I wouldn't buy an overpriced computer with a huge Apple logo on its face. If you want to buy an Apple product, I say go for it. Put on your Gap shirt, your Abercrombie jeans, your Nike Air Jordan's, get in your Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer, drive to the Apple store and buy everything in sight. Surrender to the power of the logo.

-Jem

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[CatOne]

Well, but why the heck would you ever use 64 kbps files? Just get a player with a hard drive, and you don't have to worry about 32 kbps files to get more than an hour on them.

Really. Welcome to the 21st century. Technology has improved, maybe you can move along with it!

With a 40 GB iPod, you can encode at 320 kbps MP3 or 256 kbps AAC and have music that your DOG can't distinguish from the original CD content (note double-blind studies show that 256 kbps MP3 is indistinguishable for humans).

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this: http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=36 4 it's a open beta still.. but works.. "The iFP-300T series users are required to make a selection between Ogg/MP3 firmware and MP3/WMA/ASF firmware. The 8MB Nor flash memory is not enough to stably support all the audio formats."

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[MoneyT]

So what happenes if you wear no name jeans, whatever T-Shirts you can get for free, own a home built PC, a used blazer and shoes from payless, and still own an Apple computer and an iPod? Does that mean you've surendered to the power of the logo?

BTW I certainly hope you don't own anything brand name. Your processor better not be AMD or Intel. And your monitor better not be made by any company us konformists have heard of. And of course you own a Daewoo car right? And you don't buy gas except from mom and pop stations. And all your food is generic brand right?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[CatOne]

Wow. Somebody chowed down on a double helping of troll casserole.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, where the hell have you been? I haven't seen a post from you in a long time.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like an 1980ies walkman to me.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[yomegaman]

Dude, no way are you the hobbiest. I'm way hobbier than you!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[yomegaman]

"white color", what a hilarious typo!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Seanasy]

You are completely brainwashed by Apple's marketing -- amazing.

No, I use Apple products and they work. They work very well.

I don't care if others use Apple products. I don't understand why you think I perceive Apple as a "Threat" to me...

Because, you're making ad hominem attacks on them. You dismiss them as 'tacky' and only worth the logo on the case when, in fact, there are plenty of serious computer users and programmers out there who consider Apple a worthwhile platform. In my experience, people only attack when they feel threatened.

what I'm trying to make clear is that I don't want to be a part of the Apple Culture regardless of how their products perform.

I am not part of the 'Apple Culture.' I use a PowerBook and and iPod. They are tools and toys. They do not define me. They play well with my Linux box at home. You can respect Apple products, or any product, and not be a part of the 'culture.'

Just like I wouldn't buy an overpriced sweatshirt with a huge GAP on the front,

Neither would I and that has absolutely nothing to do with Apple. I don't wear my Powerbook on my sleave. I don't dismiss Dells and Gateways as overpriced toys. I don't dismiss homebrew PCs as nothing but geek machismo. I don't care about appearances.

I wouldn't buy an overpriced computer with a huge Apple logo on its face.

What about a reasonably priced computer with an Apple logo on the face?

If you want to buy an Apple product, I say go for it. Put on your Gap shirt, your Abercrombie jeans, your Nike Air Jordan's, get in your Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer, drive to the Apple store and buy everything in sight. Surrender to the power of the logo.

You're not-so-cleverly avoiding the issue by pointing out that Macs have a logo on them. Does a logo necessarily mean overpriced crap? Or are you more concerned with the image than the product? I drive a Chevy Metro when I'm not taking the bus. I shop at the food co-op. I buy all my clothes at Gabriel Brothers and TJ Maxx. You know what? When I find a pair of Dockers at one of the stores I buy them because they fit well. I couldn't care less about the tag on the back.

The point is that Apple makes a decent product. If Microsoft made a decent product, I'd use that too (in fact, I have an MS joystick). If Abercrombie made decent clothes at a reasonable price, I'd wear them.

Check yourself. Who's a slave to the logos?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[fean]

First, Apple is barely, if at all, more expensive than comparable PC hardware.
it depends on what you call comparable....
if you're talking "entry level", a quick comparison reveals that the lowest dell model (with monitor) is $499, compared to Apple's lowest price computer, the eMac at $799.

Also between the two pages, you will notice that Dell has it's 20 gig music player listed at $250, while Apple's 20 gig music player is still $400.

Now, feature wise, the music players are comparable.... if I didn't have to pay for it, I'd probably pick the iPod, but I'd still be worried about the cost of replacing the battery in a year...

one thing that is certain, their "decent price points" as you say, are only decent if you value macs over PCs... If I were buying my mom a computer, and had to choose between a $500 Dell, and $800 eMac.... no contest... I could even pay $200 for her to take Computer Science 105 here at the University to learn how to use the computer, and Office, and STILL end up with the better deal.

well, anyways, the fact of the matter is that I own both a G4 and a Dell, I wouldn't go without either, but if I had to decide between the two, it would come down to the price, and I'd enjoy the 40% I saved when buying a Dell.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sorry that your sense of 'good design' requires black and chrome"

So I take it you prefer the white and chrome of the iPod.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Bullet-Dodger]

OGG isn't "where it's at" because everybody is too afraid to "innovate" and blaze a new path by taking a chance on an unknown, even a higher-quality, less expensive one. You'd think Apple would try this, but they are heading towards DRM, rather than away from it. But there's no reason iTunes and the iPod can't support BOTH. You can have DRM for songs you buy from iTMS, and no DRM on your own CDs you burn.

Sorry to be argumentative, but you have no idea what you're talking about. OGG vs AAC has nothing to do with DRM. Apple adds a FairPlay DRM wrapper around AAC, they could certainly have done that with OGGs. You're right that they could and should allow the iPod to play OGG, but AACs can just as easily be non-drm. The cds you rip yourself into AAC won't have DRM. And you can even burn your own CDs with music you buy from the iTMS.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[DWIM]

If I walked down the hall where I work (made up almost entirely of accountants with plenty of disposable income) I bet not one of them knows Ogg but all of them knows MP3.

Most of them probably aren't running Linux either.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[LocoBurger]

The Rio Karma is fantastic. I've been nothing but happy with mine. And these days, you can get a 20gb Karma for around $150 less than a 20gb iPod.

Plays mp3, wma, ogg and flac. Battery life is around 15 hours in my experience.

Need I say more?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[DroppedPacket]

Take another hit and then buy a clue instead of your next nickle bag. Or are you just being wrong and stupid on purpose?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't we talking about being innovative?

Yeah, like when Apple came out with GRAPHICS,

Xerox, IIRC. And popularised in a shitload of platforms before Apple's.

THE FLOPPY DISK

Sony, IIRC. And popularised in a shitload of platforms before Apple's.

THE CD-ROM

Philips. And popularised in a shitload of platforms before Apple's.

BLUETOOTH

Ericsson. And po... Oh bugger it. You get the point.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I always find it hilarious when people misspell "colour". ;)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Kiryat Malachi]

I would actually be happier if the iPod was polycarbonate all the way around; the chrome gets fingerprints and scratches that show, whereas they don't show on the white plastic. That said, the iPod doesn't mix the white and the chrome on the same face of the player, so most of the time you see one or the other.

But really, I like the iPod for not having any projections, for not having moving parts (on my generation at least), for having a user interface that matches how I think about music libraries, for fitting comfortably in a front pants pocket, and most of all for having an extremely clean, simple design. I use it with a PC, so iTunes was never the draw (although I wound up moving to itunes when they released the PC version just because its a little bit better integration).

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a hobbiest musician

Both of claim to be the hobbiest musician, but one of you must be hobbier than the other.

IT'S "HOBBYIST", FUCKWITS! And yes Mr Lameness filter I AM SHOUTING!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doh! "Both of you claim..."

Slow Down Cowboy!

Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[gullevek]

a me too with:

http://www.iriver.co.jp/

check out the iHP-140/120 (can play ogg)

http://www.iriver.co.jp/product/index.php?p_name =i HP-140&page=2

and the iFP-800 which an also play ogg

http://www.iriver.co.jp/product/index.php?p_name =i FP-800&page=2_2

thought I don't know if they are available outside of Japan.

Even Irivier has some Linux support (google for that)

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[nathanh]

I hate to say it, but there are what, maybe a few thousand people who even know what Ogg Vorbis is and even fewer that actually use it.

Rewind 10 years and you could have said the same thing about MP3s.

Times, they are a changing.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

well of course he's not going to find anything when theres no such thing as Off Vorbis.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[JoeBorn]

Actually, when we surveyed users on our site before we offered Ogg, there was something of an outcry. Admittedly, we cater to that type of crowd, but Ogg was more requested than all the other codecs combined.

It's one data point, but I can tell you at least one manufacturer heard something of an outcry.

Besides, most manufacturers are really lambs anyway. They don't know or care what their customers really want in any level of detail. They just follow the lead. It's naive to think they really have their fingers on the pulse of what consumers really want.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, the iRiver iFP-390T has a firmware upgrade to let it play Ogg.

It's available @ iRiver's support page.

cheers.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did he say he's distributing anything?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

And? You could say the same thing about any goofy audio format. What makes Ogg so special that is deserves special treatment? The audio codec space is already filled to capacity.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[nathanh]

And? You could say the same thing about any goofy audio format. What makes Ogg so special that is deserves special treatment? The audio codec space is already filled to capacity.

No licensing fees or royalties to implement OGG encoders or decoders.

As players get cheaper, I fully expect the smaller companies to start offering OGG. It's a commoditisation effect.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[falcon5768]

its great to how two curses makes a post that is EXACTLY the same as one of the +5 posts a -1 :-D

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[blitziod]

screw the riaa...buy music or get it for free( legally ) www.ampcast.com..is the future!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a real ipod killer?
IGN knows what's going on, and it ain't ipods.
After testing my buddy's third-gen model, I can't believe they're so popular. The minis are even more anemic, but the size is an obvious selling point.
No radio, no ogg, no battery life, no decent storage size, no low price? Forget about it.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[scottgfx]

Quote: "You are completely brainwashed by Apple's marketing -- amazing."

Why do you feel so threatened?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[evilviper]

Outside of a small minority of the Slashdot crowd, there is basically no consumer demand for Ogg Vorbis. Deal with it.

The /. crowd is quite a large crowd.

I expect there must be some non-/. user demand, as CDex (and other programs) rip to Ogg by default.

I bet there was practically no AAC demand before the iPod came out, either. I bet Ogg has more support now than AAC did before iPod.

Hey, there was practically no demand for MP3 until MANY YEARS after it was released to the public.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[tbone1]

OGG isn't "where it's at" because everybody is too afraid to "innovate" and blaze a new path by taking a chance on an unknown, even a higher-quality, less expensive one.

Is it possible, is it conceivable, that except for a few of us geeks, no one cares? And if no one cares, why would a company pour money into soemthing that won't make them money? Didn't you learn anything from the .com bubble?

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do you NOT remember correctly, your misuse (and misspelling) of the word "popularised" is extremely telling, since yes, the technologies weren't invented by Apple, but they were DEFINITELY POPULARIZED BY THEM.

That's what they do.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

True. I think another mini-thread up a few makes a few good points, in that the appearance of AAC is that is is secure and has DRM solidly built in, while OGG has the appearance of being a communist/piracy-loving/hacker format.

I still think that OGG being free (as in beer especially, but also as in speech) makes it a more cost-effective and long-term solution.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

Great link. Thanks!

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[bfg9000]

If Apple wants to make money, they should standardize on a format that they don't have to pay to use, and that, because it's open-source, will likely be around forever. They can then take the savings and either keep them or pass them on to the customers.

And if you think nobody cares, go read a thread about iPods and enjoy the people (and there are always a few) griping about the high price.

In fact, they should have made the iPod ONLY use OGG, knowing full well that hackers would release a MP3-playing firmware patch for it. Apple wouldn't pay any fees, because they're only using OGG; iPods would be cheaper; the people would rip their legal CDs to OGG because Apple supported it and it sounds better; and those people with a million stolen MP3s can play them with their hacked firmware. Or they can mass convert their MP3s to OGG easily.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?

[TiggsPanther]

The only reason I don't use Ogg Vorbis is that no (cheap) hardware players support it. That's the only drawback for me. Otherwise I'd rip any of my own purchases to OGG.

Similarly the only reason I get annoyed when I find things in OGG format is that I can't play them on my hardware kit.
But the .ogg files I do have are of a very high standard. I like them. And I like the fact that the format is more open. besides, end-users don't really care about the format as long as it plays, and that it doesn't sound rubbish. If Ogg Vorbis files turned up everywhere but could be played everywhere then people really wouldn't complain. (And it's shut up us in the geek-crowd).

Tiggs

Rio Karma

[Dante]

Christ where is the Karma? My Karma just kicks ass, It uses USB 2.0 and Ethernet. Supports Linux. Sounds great, gets loud when I want it to be. Came with decent earphones Sennheisers no less. Has amazing battery life and weights just a few ounces, and holds 20 gigs.

And get this, it does ogg and flac, why would I want anything else?

Re:Rio Karma

[LostCluster]

Slashdot Error: Karma-whore detected. :)

Re:Rio Karma

[zoobaby]

They left the RIO's off completely. Kind of funny if you ask me. I have the RIO Nitrus and love it. It is 1.5Gb and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. The batterylife is rated at 16 hours, but I usually get about 20 on mine. It is (IMHO) the perfect size. I can fit enough music on it to keep me happy during a three day trip.

One con for it is that it is not USB2.0 High Speed. So when you transfer a gig, it takes some time.

Re:Rio Karma

[falconed]

Also missing is Dell's music player. My wife bought me one; it holds 20gb, the battery seems to last forever and the sound is great. Best of all, it's priced at only $250 for the 20gb model. Odd that pcmag didn't include the Dell in this lineup since they already reviewed it last year.

Re:Rio Karma

[casret]

I was all set to go and plunge into the Rio Karma world, but my one hesitation is all the horror stories with the hard drive. Everyone on www.riovolution.com agree that you must buy the Karma with an extended warranty, because of the hard drive problem. Once you figure that in ($40 at BB, $60 at CC), the price starts to creep back up into iPod land.

Re:Rio Karma

[Yarn]

Price isn't the only reason to buy a karma. It also plays ogg and flac. The sound quality is slightly better than the ipod in my experience, and it can more-or-less eliminate gaps between songs in the same album. If you like crossfading it can do that too.

The 15hr battery life is another big plus.

The hard drive *is* a problem though. My one started making clicking noises, and I feared the worst, but it has got better.

Re:Rio Karma

[lightspawn]

And get this, it does ogg and flac, why would I want anything else?

Now we just need .mod and .mid.

No, seriously, 20 gigs is like a lifetime of .mid music.

Plus a .mod revival would really be great (make your own music instead of using RIAA stuff! what a concept!)

Re:Rio Karma

[casret]

I definetely like the feature set, which is why it initially attracted me. One question though, I would mostly use a DAP when walking (briskly) around or at the gym (not on a treadmill though). Will it skip during these activities? I think I may be better off going with a flash player with my needs.

Re:Rio Karma

[Yarn]

It has 16M of cache, but I hear that it spins the hard drive up more than the iPod, to avoid gaps between songs.

I don't walk or cycle with any music playing (I need all my senses to survive the trip to work).

Other people on the www.riovolution.com* forums may be able to help.

* Intentionally not linked.

Re:Rio Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Listening to 20 gigs of midi certainly would be a lifetime... a lifetime in hell :P

Re:Rio Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it won't skip unless you sit there shaking it violently for like 15 minutes. The mini HDs used in these players are less susceptible to vibrations and abuse as a result of their size; in an odd twist HDs get more stable as they get smaller.

If you were to carry FLAC files you might experience an issue since a whole song won't fit into memory (50mb or so average for songs in FLAC), but I also used FLAC for awhile before I switch to 192kbps OGG Vorbis (more albums able to fit in teh 20gb of teh Karma) and didn't have any problems.

I've had my Karma for four months now without a problem. It works great. It beats every other player hands-down, and stomps all over the iPod.

Best,
rt

Re:Rio Karma

[Rageon]

I love the Karma's that work. However, I'm on my 3rd since Christmas. Good thing I sprung for the extended warranty....but I'm regretting only going for 1 year instead of 3. The Karma sounds great, the interface is easy to use, the battery is decent, it plays ogg/flac, and it's pretty damn small. On the other hand, the screen scratch terribly, the scroll wheels break off, they often forget to recharge when placed on the dock, and most importantly, iPod:Karma = concrete:glass. I love my latest Karma, but I'm not sure I would buy it again.

Re:Rio Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, Im on my 3rd Karma due to hard drive crashes, but the features of this thing are great. Did anyone mention the GAPLESS playback? No space between tracks! I cant find another player that does this.

Re:Rio Karma

[Enrico Pulatzo]

They reviewed the smaller players that compete with the iPod mini. You did notice they don't include the 40GB iPod or the Archos Jukebox right? Your 20GB player is in a different class.

Re:Rio Karma

[Long-EZ]

Your 3rd Karma since Christmas!?! I've heard of hard drive problems, but one a month? Your comments about scratching the screen and breaking off the scroll wheel lead me to believe you're kinda hard on the hardware. I know it's supposed to be portable, so you can expect the occasional bump. But this thing is small and it has a tiny hard drive. It's not intended to chock the wheels of your car, pound nails, or fill in when you forgot to bring your puck to hockey practice.

Still on my 1st Karma, since about Thanksgiving. I do wish I'd gotten the extended warranty, though.

Re:Rio Karma

[Rageon]

Well, the first one simply would not charge without the stars, sun, and moon being lined up. Typically, it would charge 5 minutes or so at a time. So #1 went back for that reason.

The second one was a broken scroll wheel resulting from a fall of about 2 feet on to carpet. Yeah, I suppose it's my own fault for letting it fall, but when my friends are dropping their iPods on cement while jogging, I think a spill from desk chair to carpet floor is more than reasonable.

As far as the scratched screens, that's a fairly common problem actually. I literally had scratches in #1's screen simply from putting it in the felt bag and carrying it to school. I've read numerous similiar accounts. The best solution is to cut a PDA protector down to size. www.riovolution.com has templates if you wish.

No drive problems for me though. I was reading up and it seems like there was a bad batch that is resulting in the drive failures, and unless one was unlucky enough to get one of those, you should be fine.

Re:Rio Karma

[Long-EZ]

Like I said, I wish I had bought an extended warranty.

The scroll wheel breaking when dropped two feet onto carpet is disappointing. I handed mine to a friend and we somehow botched the handoff. We did an odd juggling dance. It would have been funny, if a fragile $400 device hadn't hit a tile floor from about three feet. Landed on it's back and didn't even skip.

My Karma's LCD screen is starting to get a lot of fine scratches. I think they occur when it's in the felt bag in my pocket. Some guy is selling protective covers on eBay. They look a bit cheesy to me. I think they're thin neoprene with a clear soft vinyl window. There are hardcoating processes for Lexan that make "bulletproof glass" vandal resistant as well. Fused quartz is even harder if someone wanted to make a clear insert out of that. I guess the scratch-o-matic plastic was more cost effective.

I'll just treat my Karma as gently as I can and hope for the best. I wish there was a way to backup the entire contents to my PC hard drive, in case I need to swap out my Karma. I use RMML under Linux to transfer songs, and I have a lot of time invested. I'd hate to have to do all that all over again. It'd take 2-3 days to get back where I am because I usually have to supply the track numbers manually.

A coworker of a friend had a hard drive go bad. He said that his Karma wouldn't power on properly, and just displayed the message "Bad Karma". Pretty funny error message, unless it happens to you.

Re:Rio Karma

[evilviper]

My one started making clicking noises [...] but it has got better.

Monty Python anyone?

She turned me into a newt!

Re:Rio Karma

[evilviper]

would I want anything else?

How about being able to store something other than music files on the device? How about being able to use it as a normal USB hard drive?

I don't know about you, but being forced to use their software to access the unit (closed-source no less) strikes me as being short-sighted, and it may only be a small step (firmware upgrade) until they aren't allowing you to transfer your files back from the unit (similar to the Sony MiniDisc approach).

Maybe I sound paranoid, but I can assure you that my paranoia has proven to be reasonable in the past.

I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[ElGnomo]

earbud quality != player sound quality

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[blackmonday]

Wow, you're on of the few people I know who don't like the iPods earbuds. I do tons of audio work recording bands and such, and I use high end headphones, and I think the white earbuds are awesome. I thought I broke em once and I freaked, because they're a special order item unless you feel like springing for the iPod remote too.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[Black Perl]

earbud quality != player sound quality

Technically true, but poor-quality or poor-fitting earbuds are the biggest factor (by far) of inferior sound quality.

The best thing to do is find some good-quality earbuds that fit your ears well. It will make a huge difference, no matter the player.

Unfortunately most people don't do that. Therefore, I can see the point of a consumer magazine rating players by earbud quality.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[falcon5768]

i dont wear them cause i live in a city where you will get your pod mugged if you have them... that and they broke I used them so much at home

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[dasmegabyte]

No, but sound is only as good as your weakest component.

Personally, I'm glad they did that review, because you can't listen to the in-ear phones before you buy them. I stupidly crushed my Sennheiser buds (cord was never long enough on those anyway and an extension would make it too long) and the original iPod phones blew out the second week I had them...and it's nice to know there's a solution between the $20 phones I got at Target and the $99 studio in-ear phones...

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[VCAGuy]

True that. I have a pair of Future Sonics molded IEMs. Now that's quality audio in your ear!

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[swb]

I thought the Apple earbuds sucked, relative to two other pair of earbuds I have, some unknown-model Sennheisers that came with a Teac mini-CD MP3 player and a pair of Koss buds that have some kind of squishy material that expands in your ear canal like earplugs.

Sound quality aside, they all suck for three major reasons: a nuisance to put in, a nuisance to *keep* in, and a total cable-management nightmare.

The best portable headphones I've ever used have been a pair of Koss Porta-Pro Jrs. I bought mine about 6 years ago and they still sound great.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[JabberWokky]

mp3, wma and ogg != sound quality

No matter how good your headphones are, or how many spoilers or neon kits are on your player.

I hate the tingle of mp3 or the wussiness of wma. mp3 sounds like tinny speakers and wma sounds like FM. For convenience sake, I am more than happy to listen to it, but putting a nice set of headphones on a compressed format player and listening to it out in a high ambient noise environment is pointless. Enjoy the music, but slapping one really nice bit into a bad listening environment doesn't do anything but increase your snooty audiophile quotient.

I don't like earbuds because they feel funky. I use a normal pair of headphones (out of a pile of about 20) on a cassette player (for learning lyrics or listening back to session tapes to refine them). If I'm listening to an album, I have a 25 watt purple light bulb in one lamp for low light levels, drapes on the walls to kill noise from outside and two nice headphones. Right now I have a rack computer in the room which spits out way too much noise, but that's unavoidable until I move in September.

And if I'm doing that, I sure as hell am not going to listen to a portable mp3 player, no matter how good the headphones are.

--
Evan

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[Anonymous Coward]

You should at least make the mod this up part of your sig a link.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[gray code]

I dunno, using a pair of Etymotic or Shure isolating ear-plug style headphones (if you don't mind, or can get past, the feeling of having something in your ear canal) with something that supports .wav or FLAC can get you pretty decent sound quality in normal outdoor environments.

I borrowed a friend's set of Shure E3cs and used it with my Rio Karma and was impressed by the difference good headphones can make.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[Black Perl]

You should at least make the mod this up part of your sig a link.

Yeah, but then I'd get a [foo.com] after it. I don't think it's possible to make it look 100% authentic.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[JabberWokky]

For wav and FLAC, sure. (Although I haven't played with FLAC - lossless or almost, right?). My point was about mp3s. And there are cheap headphones versus semi-decent headphones that make a difference, but from semi-decent to outrageous, you're not getting anything more out of an mp3.

Sound supression is something that is good, but it doesn't help the actual sound quality, just the listening experience - a good set of over the ear headphones do the same. But that's format, and I was talking overall quality - once you're at a fairly low quality, you've wrung all you're gonna get out of an mp3 source.

--
Evan

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[Black Perl]

I thought I broke em once and I freaked

They were like, BEEP BEEP BEEP.

Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod

[frekio]

MaximumPC magazine also had a recent review of MP3, and they said while the IPOD headphones are very good relative to other headphones that come with players, they are the best component to upgrade in order to get better sound out of your player into your brain.

They recommended the quite expensive earbuds at www.shure.com (the e3c mainly). Does anyone have any experience with these, or any other suggestions? I was looking for some great earbuds, I am worried about this in ear design though, that it may not fit correctly in my ears.

This might be off-topic

[AtariAmarok]

This might be off-topic, but does anyone remember the name of that MP3/etc player that is shaped like a cassette and plays inside a cassette tape player?

Re:This might be off-topic

[nkh]

This kind of player has usually 64Mo (128Mo if you're lucky) so you should better forget it... I'd rather buy a portable CD player which could play CDRs filled with mp3 if I were you (and the CD player is really cheaper).

Re:This might be off-topic

[drkich]

<a href="http://www.digisette.com">digisette</a&gt ;

Re:This might be off-topic

[Shinglor]

That is the Rome MP3 player. Tech Report Review

Re:This might be off-topic

[guiscard]

This might be off-topic, but does anyone remember the name of that MP3/etc player that is shaped like a cassette and plays inside a cassette tape player?

This one?

Re:This might be off-topic

[SydShamino]

It is the Digisette, as another poster says.

I have a Digisette DUO-DX AR-496 digital music player. It supports MP3 and WMA and AudioBook formats, though I've only used it with MP3. Note that it can also record MP3s on the fly, using an audio-in jack. Useful if you want a digital tape recorder in a pinch. It also has a headphone jack and sounds great as a stand-along portable player.

It comes with built-in 96 MB flash memory. It has an expansion slot for an MMC upgrade. Note that the manual and website might just mention a 64 MB upgrade, but I -confirm- that it works with a 256 MB MMC. With about 350 MB of music on it now, I have more music than battery life (which is about 5 hours).

I drive a convertible, and I would never consider putting a custom stereo into it. My wife has a nifty iPod, but her stereo retransmit thingy gets a lot of static, and the whole arrangement is much more cumbersome than a single unit I can drop into the built-in tape player. Despite what some reviews of the product have said, you can skip tracks without taking the thing out of the tape deck.

While I would have tried a 512 MB MMC if I had found one, I think 256 MB were the largest made before the shift to SD whatever, which it does not support. I would eventually like more space than I have now, but it is perfectly usable as is for my commutes to and from work, with the nice variety of happy music I can sing to on a nice Spring drive in a convertible in Texas. It makes commuting fun. :)

Re:This might be off-topic

[SydShamino]

If it matters to the Slashdot crowd, its manager software does NOT work well in Linux under Crossover Office. The software installed, but it couldn't find its language or player type libraries, and it didn't see the USB ports or the device.

Rio Karma is noteably absent

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great player that competes in the same market as those test, and it plays Vorbis and FLAC.

Grrrr....

[telstar]

Anybody have the summary PDF mirrored? I don't feel like creating another account with another password, and nobody's offered me chocolate to do so.

Re:Grrrr....

[sr1nath]

You are not supposed to RTFA now. It is reviewed on May 4th 2004.

Re:Grrrr....

[Nikkodemus]

That reg' form is evil, two part as well, just when you think its over.. bastards.

---

I registered..

Name: fuckyou_asshat

Password: fuckyou

I can't get the .pdf to download in Mozilla 1.6, or even display.. they seem to want to anal probe my PC first..

My full member profile.

Personal Information
Member Name: fuckyou_asshat
Name:
Job Title:
Primary Job Function:
Secondary Job Function:
Gender:
Year of Birth:
E-Mail Address: fuckyou@mailinator.com
Budget for technology products for themselves or their household in the next 12 months:
Hobbies/Interests outside of work:
Description: I'm hung like a railroad disaster, my dick just lies across the tracks, waiting..

Professional Information
Industry:
Organization Size:
Budget at work for computer- and internet-related products for the next 12 months:

Technology Information
Operating Platform(s): PC
Operating System(s): Asshat Professional
Software: Access, Basic, C++, Excel, Flash, FrontPage, HTML, JAVA, Lotus 1-2-3, Perl, Photoshop, Word
Is expert in: Access, Basic, C++, Excel, Flash, FrontPage, HTML, JAVA, Lotus 1-2-3, Perl, Photoshop, Word
Has been using computers for : 5 Years - up
Has been using the internet for: 5 Years - up
Runs Own: Website
Has set up own: Server, Network, Homepage, Website, Wireless Network

Karma has OGG

[ponds]

My Rio Karma is full of 20 GBs of ogg vorbis encoded lovin' .

It has about 13 hours of battery life, and can talk by USB 2.0, USB 1.1, or even 100mbit ethernet. When I plug it into the ethernet, it runs a webserver with a java applet that allows you to send and receive software.

It works on any operating system with a VM/java plugin without a hitch. I use it in Linux and didn't have to set up anythign when I got it.

Don't know why they didnt review it...

Re:Karma has OGG

[DeeKayWon]

Don't know why they didnt review it...

Because no player in that capacity range was included at all?

Jeez, people. The largest players there are the iPod Mini and the MuVo2 at 4GB each. Quit with the "why didn't they review this 20GB player?" comments.

What's more important

[eblis]

Would you rather have longer battery life, or better sound quality. I want both. Is this reasonable? And support for ogg vorbis is also a must.

Re:What's more important

[skiflyer]

Playing OGG's will kill the battery faster in just about any player as the calculations are more intense... check out the iRiver battery run comparisons for real world evidence of the fact.

On the iHP's the battery life goes from around 14 hours to 12.

Re:What's more important

[okar]

WiFi-filesharing with other nearby players? ;)
Would totally rock if (when) you've gone through your playlist a couple of times.
(I _am_ ignoring the legal issues.)

Re:What's more important

[Hatta]

What about a unit with bit perfect digital in? There are a lot of phish heads etc. out there that would love to ditch their dats for a HDD recorder, but all that's contingent on being able to use their existing mics and preamps. The dinky little mic in jacks just don't cut it.

Anyone know of such a beast?

Re:What's more important

[dasmegabyte]

Nice demands. Are you willing to pay more than $500 for them?

Because if you aren't, I don't see why the digital media player market is all that worried about getting your business. Adding features is expensive, and if adding them doesn't significantly increase profits, then there's no incentive to do so.

I bought an iPod because 8 hours was enough and AAC was enough of an improvement over MP3 that I didn't pine for Vorbis. Sound quality was the only criteria. Would I like more battery life, more sound quality, a foot massage? Sure. But they didn't stop me from buying at $500...and I wouldn't pay $600 to get them.

Re:What's more important

[Medieval_Gnome]

Both the iriver iHP 120 and 140 have digital line in and out. They allow you to record at up to (iirc) 320kbps MP3 and straight WAV. The 120 has 20gigs, and 140 has 40. Wonderful software to access the players also - they just show up as a generic USB(2) mass storage device. It also supports OGG, MP3, WAV, and AAC (afaik).

Sorry for the fanboy sounding, but I have one and just love it.

Re:What's more important

[HardCase]

Well, as a blatent plug for me, you can buy any one of those players, a low cost set of quality headphones and one of these. The sound quality is almost always a product of the low budget headphones combined with low voltage (which causes clipping which causes distortion). I use a Neuros player which supports OGG, lasts for between 10 and 12 hours per charge and sounds pretty good with that CMoy amp and a ~$50 pair of headphones.

$200 for the Neuros
$50 for the 'phones (Grado SR-60)
$50 or $60 for the amp

-h-

Re:What's more important

[radish]

$500? How does $250 sound? The Rio Karma has better sound quality than iPod (as has been proven by both the specs and analysis), and supports FLAC and Vorbis out of the box. It also has 16 hours battery life with mp3, about 12 with Vorbis.

Re:What's more important

[radish]

Buy a Rio Karma - it has longer battery life, support for Vorbis & FLAC, and better sound than an iPod. Done deal :)

Strange Selection

[jhage]

No Rio players at all (either Nitrus, Karma or any other). One Creative. Whole bunch of really odd choices (Sony MD player?). Given what they reviewed, I guess the iPod would come out on top.

Re:Strange Selection

[jonbenson]

Has anyone seen the Gateway DMP-X20 20GB Jukebox Player? It looks just like the Apple iPod. I was wondering if it might be an iPod in windows clothing?

Re:Strange Selection

[erik_fredricks]

In other news, Car & Driver reviewed several cars, including the Mazda Miata, AMC Pacer, Chevy Vega, Yugo GV, and the venerable Ford Pinto. Editors were pleasantly surprised to find that the Miata won, hands down.

Seriously, the Karma's the best one out there. I've tried most of the others, including the iRiver ihp-120, and there are alot of things that can't be described in print, but the Karma just gets everything right.

FM support

[Dark Paladin]

I'm rather interested in seeing some of these that support FM radio. I hadn't really thought about it, since other than NPR I haven't listened to much radio for the last 18 months (why bother? It's the same damned stuff they were playing 3 years before that!).

But it makes some sense - most walkman's, even CD based ones, have AM/FM radio support. A MP3 player shouldn't be that different.

Though, maybe there is a very small portable XM radio player. Hm - something to look into.

Re:FM support

[Ashyukun]

The lack of a FM tuner is definitely my only real gripe with my iPod Mini. You'd think given how small the circuitry for them is these days that it would be a simple matter of adding it in (and using the headphones as the antenna), but unfortunately they didn't. I'd gladly buy one if someone put out a device that plugged into the iPods and added a FM radio to its capabilities...

Re:FM support

[lintux]

My iRiver CD/MP3 player supports Ogg Vorbis (beta) and has an FM-tuner. I don't know whether the Flash/HDD iRiver players have a tuner though...

Re:FM support

[Black Perl]

The FM tuners in these players all suck. Maybe it's a lack of a decent antenna, but I haven't been able to get decent reception out of any of them.

Now if they can shrink an XM tuner down to the size of one of these things, I'd get one!

Re:FM support

[ArghBlarg]

iFP 595-T has an FM tuner. Also line-in recording, encoded in real-time to MP3! At sampling frequency/bitrate you choose too! (up to 44.1KHz/256bps IIRC).

Re:FM support

[JabberWokky]

I really want AM radio. I listen to AM in the mornings while jogging. Although the "flash key plus mp3 decoder" looks interesting.

--
Evan

Re:FM support

[Anonymous Coward]

"
why bother? It's the same damned stuff they were playing 3 years before that!).
"

Now that's just not true! Theres a whole load of brand new bland corporate pop on the radio since then.

Re:FM support

[extra88]

All but the lowest-end flash-based iRiver players include an FM tuner. Even the lowest-end ones include a microphone for voice recording (the format is mp3) and many of the models can record FM broadcasts and from a line-in jack.

I have the iFP-380T (128MB), the cheapest model with line-in recording. To be honest, I haven't used it a lot. Most of my time is spent at my home or office computer where I can listen to all my mp3s or radio streams but I do use the iRiver at the gym. I've also used it a bit for voice recording, just "notes to self" kind of stuff. I've been happy with the recording capability. Since the flash players are so small, they have to use just a few controls to do everything. This takes some getting used to but once you learn them, the number of steps required to do any particular task is not onerous.

I haven't tried firmware updates yet to add support for other file formats or USB Mass Storage support but I've very glad the options are there.

Re:FM support

[4of12]

Bingo.

I was looking recently at the Karma, Neuros and iRiver for something that I could use to record quality FM broadcasts from a local college station. Yes, I want multiple codecs, sync up to my collection via Ethernet, etc.

Note: some of these players have FM receivers but do not allow recording directly off FM.

as in this entry from the FAQ for the iRiver H140:

Q. Can I record from the FM Tuner on the H100?
A. FM Recording is not a feature of the H100, however Voice recording and Line-in recording are built in.

Another nice feature would be low power FM transmit so that you could easily use your portable player to feed into your car stereo.

Or to feed into another nearby player with an FM receiver. But we all know what kind of virulence that capability would unleash - the end of civilization as we know it.

Re:FM support

[Daniel]

I was looking recently at the Karma, Neuros and iRiver for something that I could use to record quality FM broadcasts from a local college station. Yes, I want multiple codecs, sync up to my collection via Ethernet, etc.

Note: some of these players have FM receivers but do not allow recording directly off FM.

I have a Neuros, and it does support recording directly from FM. (however, the reception is lousy enough that I haven't actually done this much -- easier to throw together a script to save their mp3 stream)

Daniel

Re:FM support

[ZarKov]

Another nice feature would be low power FM transmit so that you could easily use your portable player to feed into your car stereo.

The Neuros has this, and it works fairly well. Currently, it can only broadcast as low as 91.1, which may be a problem if you live in an area with crowded airwaves. I think the new version, due sometime this year, is supposed to be able to transmit at lower frequencies.

Oh, and it'll record off FM as well, as already posted.

The Neuros flat-out kicks ass. It's not the smallest device around, but it wins on everything else.

Re:FM support

[evilviper]

I'm rather interested in seeing some of these that support FM radio.

I like radio very much, and was disappointed at the lack of an AM/FM radio in most units. I've just accepted it, however, as I can just buy a seperate $20 AM/FM radio that is about 2" square, and will run forever on a single AAA battery.

why bother? It's the same damned stuff they were playing 3 years before that!

Let me guess... All the stations in your area are ClearChannel? Either that, or you're listening to classical music. Not too much of that is new :-)

Listening to the radio is a good way to prevent insanity after several solid hours of music.

I also find it very important to be able to get news anywhere I go.

most walkman's, even CD based ones, have AM/FM radio support.

Hate to break it to you, but I've been looking for CD-players recently, and only very few even have a radio. And worse, the ones that have a radio are usually the ones that have crappy battery life, and are designed terribly.

Anyhow, looks like digital audio players aren't that different after all.

Re:FM support

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get FM Record from the Radio My Way from Pogo Products: http://www.pogoproducts.com/radio_yourway.html

though the general consensus seems to be that its poor FM reception makes the current generation a poor value.

Missing choices

[wizarddc]

I know they could review only so many devices, but I'm disappointed they didn't review any Archos products at all. I've had my Jukebox Studio 20 for 2 years and it still works great. It might be a little heavier than most, but battery life has never been an issue for me. This thing rules. Why did they review 9 Memory players, and only 3 HD ones? What gives?

Who else had their favorite player ignored in this?

Re:Missing choices

[DAldredge]

Because it makes it easer for Apple (a major ad buyer) to win.

Re:Missing choices

[nitz7978]

here here... I have a jukebox 5000. I have upgraded the os to rockbox and added a 30GB hard drive to. couple that with 2050ma batteries and this thing has to be at the top of the list of most cool gadgets out there. Archos seems to never get any recognition at all. I'd love to see some other reviews of their products and see what everyone else thinks of them.

Re:Missing choices

[b-baggins]

Apple a major Ad buyer in PC magazine. That's a good one. Too bad I don't have mod points to mod you up funny...

Re:Missing choices

[DAldredge]

I bet apple buys more ad space from that company than the makers of the Rio do.

Re:Missing choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother. DAldredge is just plain stupid.

Re:Missing choices

[ZipR]

Maybe it's because they don't make them anymore?

If you go to their website http://archos.com/products/mp3_music_product_list. html You'll see that the jukebox players and recorders are MIA. Sad, because I love mine!

Re:Missing choices

[Kazoo the Clown]

I agree about the Archos-- and in fact I think the BEST feature of it is the fact I can get source code to player software that's better than what the factory built here..

And sure, most of you are saying, "I don't want to see the source code, I just want it to work", but that is because you don't realize what the EFFECT of having code available to the public means that all kinds of folks are tweaking and getting it to do things the designers never thought of. The latest hack for RockBox is to ADD talking directories and other talking features, which the original never had, and a crude video playback on the LCD (not that you'll use it, but someone did it because they could)-- there's an entire episode of Futurama you can playback on the darn thing, though it's a recipe for eyestrain on the dinky on/off pixel display-- but the fact that someone could have hacked it because they have access to source means that it's not a static product that the manufacturer will intentionally obsolete in the next version so you'll toss it and by their new one...

Sure, the Archos isn't a super capable platform that you can crunch 3D graphics on (though there is a simple 3D program on it now :-), but THINK of the power we would have as consumers if we were to DEMAND the manufacturers make their electronic toys open-source so legions of users could add their own enhancements rather than remain the bleating sheep of their marketing schemes...

In fact, someone WOULD have hacked OGG on the Archos by now, except the decoder is canned in a chip such that the CPU hasn't the right kind of access &/or horsepower to do it...

And I myself, don't particulary want to tweak the source code, but it is comforting to know that it's available and means the device will have a life of its own despite the manufacturer's inevitable desire to obsolete it.

Maybe you like these manufacturers dictating what you can do with the hardware-- what you can play on what, etc.., and as long as you roll over for them, that's what you're always gonna get. But if products that have that little extra capability for end users to hack and customize them become popular enough, the manufacturers will ultimately PLAN for it and make sure the hardware is flexible enough so you can really do what you want with it.

Suppose next year, it's no longer Ogg, or MP3, or WMA, but someone comes out with a new algorithm that is better quality, or smaller size, or whatever, and COULD run on the box you have but the manufacturer won't give you the code to do it instead preferring to sell you a new one? Do you really WANT a future where all products, hardware or software are by subscription and you have to buy a new whatever-it-is every year when the one you have is too out-of-date and the manufacturer refuses to support it anymore?

Re:Missing choices

[DAldredge]

Plz uz sml wrds. Oog smashed me, have dame bramage.

Very few

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, so the people who died working for the French Resistance were just messing around then?"

The French resistance was a tiny movement. Most of the French were happy to welcome and serve their new German overlords, and to help them rid France of Jews.

The nasty antisemitic streak lives in today's France: a country now noticed for its massive brownshirt "Down with the Jews!!! rallies.

Re:Very few

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah - true enough.

Just wanted it on the record that there was some sort of popular resistance.

Re:Very few

[falcon5768]

I quite found it funny watching the discovery channel this week and seeing the french where pussy's even to the vikings.

Apparently the king just got up and ran from Paris under fear of being killed by them.

As for the french resistence... it is true, they where a small group. Its a known fact the goverment of france really had no problems with Germany invading as long as they got to keep their wealth. Kinda like how France was all upset we invaded Iraq because we took away all of there nice contracts with them that where paying the French wealthy millions of dollars. The French goverment parades around like they are the peoples country, when they really are just as bad as our shit stain of a presedent, in it for the greed.

Re:Very few

[Pieroxy]

Most of the French were happy to welcome and serve their new German overlords

Happy, or scared enough to shut up and say hello?

Re:Very few

[Anonymous Coward]

I quite found it funny watching the discovery channel

Ah... Discovery channel. The channel of all historical truth.

Re:Very few

[Anonymous Coward]

How that gets moderated Flamebait is a mystery to me. I meant it seriously.

How could they miss the Jens i-bead?

[MrBlic]

They missed my favorite player, the Jens (sounds like yens 'cause it's Sweedish.)

It was the editor's choice for one of those sites (ziff davis or pcweek or something) a few months ago when I bought it. It's the size of a stick of chewing gum, has 512MB Ram, USB connector at one end, and it's also an FM Radio and a voice recorder. Even better, it comes with a really cool neckstrap with built-in earphones. The icing on the cake is that it is delivered in a really sexy black aluminum tube.

Oh well... (warning: very loud flash-enabled homepage!)

http://www.jensofsweden.com/

-Jim

Re:How could they miss the Jens i-bead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it do linux, and what formats does it support? Does it really record the voice memos as .WAV only?!

(This is a serious question; the reviews I find are kinda spotty, and their homepage is incompatible with me.)

Re:How could they miss the Jens i-bead?

[kwandar]

I agree, the I-bead is great! After checking out a lot of other MP3 flash players, I bought an i-bead. Lots of play time, nice size, recharges directly from the USB port, has FM radio, can record conversations, and works as a usb drive. The swiss army knife of MP3 players!

I also saw mention that they are working on ogg vorbis firmware version, thought I'd wait to see if it actually comes out, if this is a feature you need.

If anyone is interested I found the best price here, and no, I am not affiliated in any way, other than to have purchased one from them.

This beggars belief...

[radish]

They didn't even review the Rio Karma? Are they smoking something? If there's one player out there which has repeatedly been shown to be the genuine iPod beater it's the Karma, yet a supposedly "thorough" group test doesn't even mention it.

For the uninitiated:

* 16 hours battery life
* 20gb capacity
* Smaller than an iPod
* Plays AAC, WMA, MP3, FLAC, OGG, and more (Audible coming soon)
* Fully supports GAPLESS Vorbis, FLAC and mp3 playback. This is unique among portable players and a very big deal for a lot of people.
* USB2.0 & Ethernet connectivity
* Fully supported under Windows/Mac/Linux - works on any platform with Java & Ethernet
* Best of class sound quality
* Full 5-band parametric EQ
* On the fly playlists, Rio DJ (randomisation, new tracks, old tracks, most played etc)
* Crossfade between tracks
* The thing just ROCKS

I will be writing to the editor...

Re:This beggars belief...

[DAldredge]

Rule 1: Do NOT offend major ad buyers.

Re:This beggars belief...

[javatips]

Can you listen to music while it's connected to a USB or ethernet port?

Re:This beggars belief...

[altman]

Yes, you can. Not when it's transferring, but no problem with it being connected (eg, in the amazing glowing dock that can be set to pulse the blue cup in time with the music....)

Re:This beggars belief...

[mimio]

Check out these reviews for Rio Karma on CNET and IGN. They also review a lot of other MP3 players. That's what made me buy a Rio Karma. Still waiting for it, because it has to be delivered to Colombia.

Re:This beggars belief...

[jkabbe]

Smaller than an iPod

If you're going to talk something up at least be correct.

Karma: 2.7 * 3.0 * 1.1 = 8.91 cubic inches
iPod: 4.1 * 2.4 * 0.62 = 6.1008 cubic inches

If "size" = "height" then, yes, the Karma is smaller. However the iPod is smaller in the other two dimensions and smaller in overall volume. If Apple wanted the iPod to be 33% larger I am sure they could add more battery life too.

Re:This beggars belief...

[javatips]

What happen when you listen to the music and some transfer take place? Does the music stop/jerk?

When using it with Ethernet is the only mean to access the file with the Java applet or can you access it with SMB or another protocol?

Sorry, if I ask a lot of questions but I find the device to be very interesting.

Re:This beggars belief...

[Anonymous Coward]

You think glowing blue looks cool? Jesus. Keep your Rio Whatever. I'm proud to count you as NOT one of us.

Re:This beggars belief...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Smaller than an iPod

This line item is wrong.

By cubic volume, it is 50% larger than iPod (not the mini, either). Most of the difference is in the thickness. A 20GB iPod is 40% thinner.

I'll grant all the other things though, it does look like a nice feature set.

Re:This beggars belief...

[radish]

I apologise, you're right. The Karma came out while the iPod gen2 was current, which was slightly bigger in volume than Karma IIRC. I forgot the gen3 was smaller. Still, what's interesting is that upon actually using it, many people in my office (some who are iPod owners) say something like "it's so small". Perception is everything and the Karma fits very nicely in the hand (provided you are right handed, I don't know how it is for lefties).

Re:This beggars belief...

[radish]

What happen when you listen to the music and some transfer take place? Does the music stop/jerk?


No idea - never tried it. I would imagine it would just stop as soon as the transfer started.

When using it with Ethernet is the only mean to access the file with the Java applet or can you access it with SMB or another protocol?

At the moment you have to use the applet. There are a couple of OS projects looking to open up the protocol. SMB support is possible, the devs are currently looking at implementing MSC support for USB2, nothing confirmed yet.

You should check out www.riovolution.com for a lot more info and some great forums.

Re:This beggars belief...

[g-san]

DHCP... i'm sold. that shows Rio was really paying attention to the details.

Here's a rundown of the menu and a nice review.

Re:This beggars belief...

[radish]

Not just DHCP but uPNP as well :)

Re:This beggars belief...

[Saeger]

I was glancing down your list of features until I hit this one:

* Best of class sound quality

...and instantly my BullShit Detector went off because of the overused "best of breed/class" marketing phrase. The rest of your list is mostly on the human-voice cluetrain though. :)

--

Re:This beggars belief...

[Saeger]

Rule #2: Do NOT offend iPod-loving moderators with conspiracy theories.

--

Re:This beggars belief...

[jkabbe]

I think it's because the Karma is square and so it fits in your hand nicely whereas the iPod, being longer, sticks out a little at the ends. It makes the Karma seem smaller even though it isn't.

Re:This beggars belief...

[radish]

I apologise, here's a rewrite:

* It sounds a shit load better than most mp3 players, and even a bit better than an iPod. This has been verified both by the specs (snr etc) and analysis. The D/As are rather tasty, likewise the amps. The guys who designed this thing are obsessed with sound quality...

Better ? :)

Re:This beggars belief...

[DAldredge]

Hell, about the only time I get a down mod is when I say something negative against apple. I even have a poster who follows my ebay buying history to 'harass' me about it.

It is all rather sad.

Re:This beggars belief...

[4of12]

As a Borg I must take exception with your denigration of the more cube-shaped Rio Karma.

You seem to require assimilation.

Re:This beggars belief...

[John Newman]

Strange...my perception is that the smallest dimension is what matters most. The iPod slips right into my pocket, and people comfortably wear it on their belt or their arm. Something almost twice as thick (1.1" vs. 0.62") might fit more securely in my hand, but would feel way too bulky anywhere else.

Is that a Karma in your pocket, or....

Re:This beggars belief...

[evilviper]

* USB2.0 & Ethernet connectivity

Yes, but what I found (fortunately before spending big $$$ on the damn thing) was that it will not work as a portable USB2 hard drive, unlike practically every other player in the world.

Ethernet is also of limited usefulness, because you can only access the unit over ethernet by using their software... If it had even a simple FTP server accessible over Ethernet it would be killer. As it is, it's not very useful.

With everything it's got, it could be a very, very cool device... It would really justify the retail price. Instead, it's pretty tame.

The iRiver plays Ogg

[Delirium Tremens]

The iFP390 family plays Ogg very well.
I know first hand, I have one.

Here is the firmware for it.

iRiver HP 120

[Anonymous Coward]

The iRiver HP 120 supports Ogg beautifully and looks just like a USB hard drive, meaning it is fully cross platform. Also the battery life is about 3x longer in years than the iPod, and lasts about 16 hours on one charge. I love mine!

No Toshiba Gigabeat or MPMan?

[neonstz]

It's strange the neither the Toshiba Gigabeat nor any of the MPMan-players are included in this review. Some of the MPMan-players got a battery life of 50 and even 100 hours.

Re:No Toshiba Gigabeat or MPMan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that CLIPPY on the MPMan?

Why wouldn't they include the regular iPod?

[Toxygen]

Maybe they were trying to review the newer players on the market, I dunno, but the iPod has seen 3 generations so far and having just bought a 3rd gen iPod a few months ago I'd be interested to see how it compares. The last generation is certainly more recent than some of the players they reviewed, so why wouldn't they include it?

Headphone Amplifier

[TubeSteak]

Chu-Moy
Picture

Before I got the amp, I'd grown used to hearing clear buzzy distortion on low bass when I wound the volume up. I assumed it was the poor Sennheiser headphone transducers being pushed past their limits.

Nope, it was the wimpy motherboard sound hardware running out of juice, and clipping

These things are fairly simply to make & I'm going to do it as soon as i get around to it (I even have a few empty tins of Penguin Mints). I realize the thing is equal to or bigger than some of the tested players, but it is pocketsized.

Re:Headphone Amplifier

[erwinkarim]

popular science got some headphones recommendations for your ipod mini/mp3 player.

one of the headphones cost 10 times more expensive than the ipod mini.

Re:Headphone Amplifier

[HardCase]

Just be aware that if you put it in a mint tin, you'll probably break it within a couple of weeks. Those tins just aren't beefy enough. Even on your desk. I sent my Cmoy amp zipping across the floor when I turned around one day and my headphone cord yanked it. I build all of mine in a nice extruded case from Hammond.

-h-

Re:Headphone Amplifier

[dasmegabyte]

The other option is to get a nice pair of low resistance headphones.

See, the reason you have to BOOST the signal going in to the phones is that the phones are built to resist the maximum output of a consumer device to avoid damaging your hearing.

I have a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 Pro 64 Ohm phones that are so loud when plugged into my iPod that I can't listen to them with the volume above 70% or so. When I listen with my earbuds, I have to turn them up all the way and it's still not very loud.

Re:Headphone Amplifier

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand the purpose of a headphone amp- its not to increase the volume, its to increase the sound quality by bypassing the shitty amps built into most portables today.

(Any portable should be able to play loud enough to cause hearing damage)

Almost all portable players lack current driving ability and have a high internal resistance. As you draw more current, the amplifier create more distortion- A low impedance headphone would only make things worse, at it would need more current for the same sound output (P=I squared * R)

So the solution is to bypas the shitty internal amp and replace it with a high quality amp designed for optimal sound quality. Its amazing how much of a difference the simple CMOY amp (which is basically a textbook non-inverting opamp circuit) can make over even the best portables. Of course, its a bit inconvenient to use as you have to drag around an extra box, but well worth it if you care about sound quality.

Karma: kicks ass

[xlurker]

• ... My Karma just kicks ass ...

I want that kind of karma also

Bah!

[Espen]

"iTunes is incapable of displaying file types"

Give these guys a thesaurus! What do they think the "kind" column is for in "view options"?

And is it really worth reading a review that sees anything worthwhile in: "The 3.4-ounce iPod Mini has more EQ selections than any other player"?

Re:Bah!

[iJed]

Give these guys a thesaurus! What do they think the "kind" column is for in "view options"?

Evidently this reviewer is not the most capable computer user in the world. It seems that his computer had some performance issues too. My 450MHz PowerMac G4 can easily rip a CD to 192Kbps AAC audio in well under 1/2 hour. However maybe the Windows version of QuickTime is less optimised... Also saying that MusicMatch has better controls than iTunes is simply laugable. I know two PC users who have moved from MM to iTunes and neither would ever consider going back.

Re:Bah!

[rk2z]

I switched back. While I like itunes on my powerbook, MM functioned much better on my widows box, mainly because I don't like the default way that itunes organizes my music. I also didn't like how itunes decided to break my music match ipod connectivity when I installed it.

Re:Bah!

[timothv]

The word "kind" makes me wonder what "kind" of stick the apple UI designers had up their ass. Everybody says "type" and it makes perfect sense, why does apple want to sound stupid and insult users by thinking they can't understand what "type" means?

Re:Bah!

[PCM2]

Do you want a serious answer?

On the original Mac OS, unlike MS-DOS, file associations were not determined by a three-letter extension. They were identified by metadata stored in each file's resource fork.

The metadata was classified into two parts: Type and Creator. The Type was what you think it would be: text file, MP3 file, etc. The Creator was the specific program that made the file. So when you double-clicked on JPEGs you last saved in Photoshop, the OS would open Photoshop when you double clicked on them.

Therefore, since Type had a specific meaning in Mac OS already, they needed a different word to indicate (in a user-friendly way) what kind of document you were looking at in the Finder. They chose "Kind." When it came time to port iTunes to Windows, they kept the same nomenclature.

Personally, I don't think "Kind" is half as lame as Microsoft deciding its users were too dumb to know what "Applications" were, and storing your software under a directory called "Program Files."

Re:Bah!

[timothv]

Thanks for that explanation, I've always been wondering about it.

iRiver!

[andrewdk]

I so dearly love my iRiver(s). I bought an iFP-190TC for $200; and then I won 3rd in a contest from iRiver themselves and got an iFP-380T. Wonderful. But why didn't PCM review the iRiver H series of players? They compete with and surpass the various iPods by far, IMO.

Re:iRiver!

[kidgenius]

I have an iRiver iHP-120 and I love it. It has decent battery life, a radio tuner, usb 2.0, and the thing that everyone here at /. wants in a player...OGG support. My one quibble is that it takes a bit of time to start up. It's not quite instant on as I would like.

Re:iRiver!

[Maditude]

I so dearly love my iRiver(s). I bought an iFP-190TC for $200; and then I won 3rd in a contest from iRiver themselves and got an iFP-380T. Wonderful.

Looking for one to take jogging/skiing and that kind of rules out players relying on disks -- so do the iRiver flash players allow you to swap out the flash memory? And if so, what kind (CF/SD/etc)?

Re:iRiver!

[CuriHP]

Disk players are just fine for jogging. I jog 3 or 4 times a week and have used both an original iPod and a iPod mini. No skips at all.

Re:iRiver!

[RockClimbingFool]

its not a question of skips, but by how much are you eroding the lift of the hard disk by subbjecting it to an environment it was not designed for. the hard disks in the ipods are not specially designed for the ipods.

Re:iRiver!

[CatOne]

A CF card can handle it. Plus, the drives are spinning like 2% of the time.

iRiver iFP-390T

[xlurker]

has an FM reciever...

Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[LostCluster]

If you use iTunes, the only handheld player that can help you is an iPod. You're stuck picking from Apple's line of products.

If you use Real's offerings, you need to have your head examined. There aren't very many players out there supporting Real's file type.

Strangely enough... Microsoft's the one coming to the plate offering a competitive environment.
WMA is the most popular "secure media" media format among the players being reviewed. There's several music stores competiting for your business on a song-by-song basis, with Wal*Mart as low as 88 cents a song and BuyMusic as low as 79 cents for hit songs, blowing Apple's 99 cent offer out of the water.

Also... Microsoft has the most exposed API. If you want to build your own application to control your digital jukebox, Microsoft has a full SDK for its Windows Media Player 9 Series, with a powerful ActiveX object and the ability to go deeper if you want to. Real has no open API for playing its scrambled files, and Apple's is only available to C++ programs with a lot of time on their hands. In short, if you think you can design a better interface for digital music, Microsoft's giving you to the best tools to do so.

Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[repetty]

"If you use iTunes, the only handheld player that can help you is an iPod."

This is just not true.

--Richard

Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[SpermanHerman]

Great argument!

~SpermanHerman

Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[Mattintosh]

If you use iTunes, the only handheld player that can help you is an iPod.

Funny, my now-ancient Creative Nomad 6GB player works just fine with iTunes for both MacOS and MacOS X. I haven't tried it with Windows, but I assume it works with iTunes there as well.

I'm not "stuck" doing anything. There's always an off switch. Interestingly enough, that's pretty much what became of that old Nomad. I didn't use it much, so I turned it off and stuck it in the closet with the rest of the junk that doesn't work.

Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[blamanj]

Indeed, the MPIO player, which they rated quite highly has an iTunes plug-in.

I'm happy with mine, the control is a bit twitchy but the size is perfect and it's great to have FM so I can listen to NPR.

Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use iTunes, the only handheld player that can help you is an iPod. You're stuck picking from Apple's line of products.

Wrong. I can trivially encode to MP3 using iTunes (I have done so for hundreds of files) and transfer to my player of choice. They only need to use a flash card or support the Mac connectivity-wise, for instance, mounting like one of those USB pen drives. (Rio Karma is touted on some posts as being Mac compatible as well).

If you use Real's offerings, you need to have your head examined. There aren't very many players out there supporting Real's file type.

Agreed.

Strangely enough... Microsoft's the one coming to the plate offering a competitive environment. WMA is the most popular "secure media" media format among the players being reviewed.

Misleading. "Popular" only on the sense of being supported by the majority of players but not in the top seller (iPod). I could not care less about hundreds of crappy players made in the East (no offense) that only a few buy.

There's several music stores competiting for your business on a song-by-song basis, with Wal*Mart as low as 88 cents a song and BuyMusic as low as 79 cents for hit songs, blowing Apple's 99 cent offer out of the water.

Well, that is debatable, but other non-tangible stuff comes to play here: available collection, collection size, collection selection quality, ease of use, compatibility with the top-seller hardware (iPod), etc. BuyMusic? You gotta be kidding.

Also... Microsoft has the most exposed API. If you want to build your own application to control your digital jukebox, Microsoft has a full SDK for its Windows Media Player 9 Series, with a powerful ActiveX object and the ability to go deeper if you want to.

Yeah, I have not examined MS's WM9 SDK in any detail. However, Microsoft has a proven trackrecord of changing technologies, providing moving-target-APIs and mercilessly killing off small companies whenever it is strategically or economically advantageous for them. You have been warned. You can go that way, but you are at a real risk of eventually withering or OEMizing yourself to another wannabe that is slowly out-Delled to finally die (Gateway anyone?), good luck.

Real has no open API for playing its scrambled files

Somewhat false. You could have mentioned the somewhat-OSS-like Helix Initiative, I do not particularly like them, but credit's where credit's due. Have you downloaded their source code and examined it in any detail? I have.

Apple's is only available to C++ programs with a lot of time on their hands

Downright nonsense. Somewhat vague sentence... care to mention any specific evidence on that? You have worked in Objective-C, the Foundation classes and the IOKit yourself? Cool, enlighten us on its non-RAD characteristics but expect some informed resistance.

(Posting anonymously as I have MPs)

Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment?

[diamondsw]

I believe what the grandparent post was saying is that if you use the iTunes *Store*, you can only play those songs on an iPod from Apple. The parent poster is correct, however, that numerous players work fine with iTunes for MP3-format files.

I'd comment on the article, but this "review" looks to be too poorly done. Where to start?

What about the Neuros?

[talexb]

It seems odd that they didn't include a review of the Neuros Audio unit. I have the unit with the 20G hard drive, and although the firmware is a little wobbly, it's a great unit with a cool feature called HiSi, or "Hear it - See it" that lets you identify a song on the built-in radio or even on a P.A. system through the internal microphone.

Re:What about the Neuros?

[Ziviyr]

I'd like to have seen how it stacked up in their battery life comparison.

Re:What about the Neuros?

[7Ghent]

I've got one as well. It seems like the logical choice for the Slashdot crowd. Open-source firmware, supports Linux and Ogg Vorbis. It's a little clunky, but it's also *quite* cheap. I got my 20GB for $199.

Really, the Neuros is to Linux what the iPod is to OS X.

Re:What about the Neuros?

[Enry]

Don't forget the Linux-friendliness of the developers, the ability to play OGG Vorbis, and MyFi (broadcast to a nearby FM receiver).

Re:What about the Neuros?

[HardCase]

Yeah, I'll second that. I've had one since last summer and I love it. The 2.13 firmware works fine for me and I guess I'll be upgrading to USB 2.0 now.

Best of all, it plays all my .oggs.

-h-

Re:What about the Neuros?

[pangian]

When you say that the firmware is wobbly/clunky, what do you mean exactly? Hanging up on scrolling? Unintuitive interface? Firmware patches needing frequently [re]applied?

Basically, I'm trying to find an mp3 player for my girlfriend, who is not a geek. Would you feel comfortable recommending Neuros to a non-geek who is keen to learn to use a new player but not interested in doing system maintenance?

If not can you recommend other players that have features like HiSi (which she'd love) and/or MyFi (which I do).

Re:What about the Neuros?

[jargoone]

Open-source firmware

Really? Would you care to post a link to the OS firmware? I knew that the Windows Sync Manager was OS, but if the firmware is also, it's certainly news to me.

Re:What about the Neuros?

[jargoone]

The firmware, out of the box, is a little buggy, but the new version is much better. One thing that still gets me is that there is no "tree" (directory) access to the media on the player: it's all organized by artist, album, song, even genre, but no way to "drill down" more than one level. I have mine full (20 gig) of personally owned, well organized music, and it's still a little difficult to navigate.

I'm still getting used to the quirks, and I do like it, but I would have a hard time recommending it to a non-geek. Just MHO.

Re:What about the Neuros?

[Daniel]

Would you feel comfortable recommending Neuros to a non-geek who is keen to learn to use a new player

My younger brother is planning to major in English, and I practically had to physically pry my Neuros away from him once he got a look at it.

Daniel

Dedicated software for iFP-390T? No!

[87C751]

The review lists "dedicated software" as a minus for the iRiver iFP-390T. Wrong! Here is the UMS update. My 390T looks just like a disk drive to my Gentoo box.

Re:Dedicated software for iFP-390T? No!

[JW Troll]

while you're at it, might as well mention the excellent ogg firmware too. Cuts battery life down to ~9 hours on my machine, but that's not so bad considering that most mp3 players they tested didn't even get that much.

OT: I wonder where the testers managed to find 1400 mAh batteries, since the cheapest crap NiMH I could even find a year ago were all 2100. I sense incompetence.

Saturday Night Live

[karnal]

If it's not Scottish, it's CRRRAP!!!!

Holy Mary!

[ilikejam]

The frequency response curves on all those headphones is absolutely horrific!
Do yourselves a favour - buy the cheapest player and get a pair of headphones for $30. It'll sound way better than anything with the supplied headphones.
I think I'll be sticking with my 'old school' MiniDisc Walkman (and yes it is a Sony, so yes I can call it a Walkman) and my Grado SR60s. Mmmm. Expensive.

Re:Holy Mary!

[dasmegabyte]

Well, it's hard to find a good pair of earbuds. I have three sets of great phones (Sennheiser HD 580, HD 280 and an old pair of AKGs), but they're all too ostentatious, not to mention bulky and hot, to wear to the gym. The stock iPod phones blew out quickly, the Sennheiser buds I replaced them with had a short cord and crummy frequency response (nice dynamic range though) and those are the best I've found!

Re:Holy Mary!

[Anonymous Coward]

A few words about the difficulty of measuring headphones and an example of how it can be done to get more readable results

Re:Does it have the iPod battery problem?

[weslocke]

Will the Rio let you open it to change the battery without destroying it? Does it have the iPod problem of "oh the battery died. throw it away and buy another" ?

The Karma doesn't have that problem, so Rio America doesn't have a replacement plan for fear of worrying prospective customers. Rio Japan however has a replacement plan going just in case, net cost of about $40 USD.

The only problem the Karma has had with any real frequency is the hard drive dying. But this is usually attributable to having the unit dropped/jarred/etc (for instance one guy went through five players and was griping. After a while everyone found out that he had it hard mounted into his car with no sort of shock absorption for the unit. Maybe an iPod would handle it better, maybe not.)

And something else that I haven't seen posted about the Karma is gapless playback. I believe it's currently the only unit to support that, which is nice for live recordings.

It has its drawbacks too (can't be seen like a USB drive natively, no folder support, no real case included) but has better sound (supposedly) than the iPod, cheaper than iPod, a _great_ playing interface w/ a very intuitive 'DJ' app, very solid feel, OGG/FLAC, and some very active developers that not only put out firmware updates on a frequent basis with all sorts of nifty things (I think they just put out beat matching. For when you're driving or something and want 'Music With an Insane Beat' or something like that) but actually participate in the forums (Riovolution is one) that are around.

Only had mine for about 2 weeks, but you'd have to cut my hand off at the wrist to get it away from me.

(Oh yeah, and it comes with a set of Sennheiser earbuds. No explanation needed there, I'd think)

No, earbuds suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. They're annoying in yours ears, they're annoying to put in, and they don't sound very good.

Lightweight headphones that are high quality are where its at. Koss makes a nice pair for $40 that rival anything out there.

Earbuds. Please. They scream "I Like AM Radio".

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they smoking something?

It is April 20th....

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

8 buttons plus a 3-mode scroll wheel just to play music. "Bad" doesn't begin to describe the display, overall UI and ease of use. That thing's awful. Did you notice the bits held on with double-sided tape yet? Maybe you don't live in a warm climate. Finally, Creative's own news server is populated by a dim group of people who make anyone with a problem feel unwelcome. Ownership's a seedy experience.

Creative deny the intermittent sound problem with their output stage. There's no reason to be a repeat customer of a company like that.

They're not in the same league as iRiver, for example.

other mp3 player review source

[hackman]

It seems like it is hard to find factual reviews of mp3 players. This might be useful to some of you, check out the playerblog site which has postings of mp3 player reviews.

Also missed Dell DJ

[seatbelt123]

I bought one about two months ago and I'm extremely happy with it. Pros: - 15gb - 16hr batt life (specified, but seems to last longer) - $200 Cons - MusicMatch - Navigation not as nice as iPod

About the iRiver Units...

[ArghBlarg]

Nice units overall -- I bought an iFP-595T while in Japan this past January. Good clean audio output, and it does line-in recording with realtime encoding to MP3, at KHz/bitrate of your choosing (up to 44.1KHz/256bps IIRC).

However, some caveats:

You need to use their dumb iRiverManager front-end app to get files in/out of the player. They have alternate USB mass-storage firmware that lets the unit just show up as a removable drive, but "curiously" the MP3 recording rate is crippled in that firmware... hmmm. If I were paranoid I'd think they were trying to 'discourage' the unit's use as a USB mass-storage device, as it would let you copy MP3 files in/out without restriction. They have a lame DRM-check in the manager software so you can't copy files with a .MP3,.WAV (who knows what else) extension back off of the unit -- unless you gave them a bogus extension before putting them *on* the unit, hint hint).

I just made a perl script that renames all .MP3 files in a directory to .MP3.REC -- then the iRiverManager software lets you copy the files on/off with no problems.

They apparently have beta OGG support but I'm not upgrading until they un-cripple the USB mass-storage version of the firmware.

One problem with it

[Anonymous Coward]

That goofy remote. It spoils an otherwise interesting player. I was all set on it, looked at that WIRED remote and said "No thanks".

I don't want a remote. I don't care if its wired or wireless. Its a wast of money and space.

Re:One problem with it

[glwtta]

The what? I've never seen a remote on mine.

Re:One problem with it

[radish]

The Karma doesn't have a remote. In fact the lack of remote is something a lot of users complain about. Sounds like it'd make you happy :)

Any without annoying DRM and software?

[guidryp]

I have an RCA player with annoying DRM features that requires it's own SW to do the transfer so it can layer on some stupid and pointless DRM layers.

I want a true drag and drop player that just accepts the mp3s I move onto it. No software should be necessary.

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[abischof]

It really could be an iPod-killer if only it supported Macs -- all the software downloads on the support page are .exe files :(.

Hrm.

[Run4yourlives]

Obviously price wasn't a big factor in their measurements.

I have the iRiver, and I love it...

[jCaT]

The only thing it lacks is usb 2.0. I actually have the 395t, the 512mb version of the 390.. and let me tell you, it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R to transfer 512mb of stuff to it.

That being said, the sound quality is excellent, which is why I bought it in the first place. iRiver's internal amplifiers in their players are much higher quality (and higher output) than most competing players. That was a big selling point when I was shopping for a player, and it does end up making a pretty big difference. I was very surprised to find out that a mp3 player the size of a pack of gum can actually drive my Sony MDR-V70 studio monitor headphones with ease.

iRiver does publish new firmware for their players from time to time, so they may eventually support .ogg files if there is enough demand.

iAUDIO CW300

[Innominandum]

I hate to sound like an advertisement but it seems that a lot of people don't know about iAudio. The JetAudio media player software introduced me to it as they both use the same MP3 decoder.

The JetAudio media player software has a shoddy interface but the best sounding MP3 decoder I have ever heard, hands down! You can select between 32-bit float and 64-bit float decoding, and it supports 24-bit and 32-bit output to your soundcard.

So I bought the iAudio CW300 which comes with 512 Mb flash memory, Sennheiser MX 400 Earphones, and a whole bunch of accessories. Supposedly one AA battery lasts 30 hours (I assume if you turn the backlit display off.) It also has a microphone for recording to MP3, FM tuner that you can encode from.

I admittedly haven't tried other MP3 players, but after using JetAudio, I couldn't see many players being able to coming close to the sound quality with a standard Fraunhofer decoder.

Wow.

[Run4yourlives]

That's an absolutely brilliant idea. I suppose Apple's too worried about the RIAA shutting down iTunes to implement it.

Time for someone else to step up...

Re:Wow.

[larkost]

Even more likley... they know how fast WiFi would kill the battery life. There is a reason almost every portable WiFi device has a physical switch to turn it off... and a reason the BlueTooth (slower, shorter range) exists.

Actually

[Run4yourlives]

iPod or not, I can't be bothered to use any type of bud headphone, either. They do nothign but bother me, and after 20 mins. my ears start to hurt.

The old sony sports style headphones were the ones that were the most comfortable to me.

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[immerrath]

you dont need no software -- just mount, copy mp3 or ogg files or directories to the drive, and you're all set to go.

Where are the CD-R/CD-RW media based players.

[NiteHaqr]

I figured that the iPod was too expensive for me, I also wasn't convinced that I wanted to have to wade through GB's of files.

You know what I mean, I'm sure most people have set up an mp3 playlist one day and then listened to it the next day and hit the "skip to next" track button a load of times because the tracks that came up, while fitting your requirements one day, no longer do so.

I figured that a player based around CD-R's/CD-RW's would be the answer.

So I went for the Sony DNE-1.

It sounds good and I can just drag-n-drop tracks or folders onto it and then burn them - takes about 3 minutes to make a whole new cd, and I can carry CD's pretty easily.

When I get bored with a disc I can just throw it away or stash it away someplace. I had intended using CD-RW's and just re-burning them, but CD-R's are so cheap as to be almost disposable.

Might still be swayed to an iPod someday, but for now I'm happy with what I have

Re:Where are the CD-R/CD-RW media based players.

[2nd Post!]

Here is where the iPod shines:

It sounds good and I can just drag-n-drop tracks or folders onto it and then burn them - takes about 3 minutes to make a whole new cd, and I can carry CD's pretty easily.

On my iPod it's

"It sounds good and I can just drag-n-drop tracks or folders onto it and then it uploads the playlist - takes about 5 seconds to make a whole new playlist, and then I can carry around the iPod pretty easily."

Another benefit: Live playlists. Imagine this playlist:

Songs rated 3 or higher
Songs not played in the last 5 days
Songs played less than 10 times

That's the iPod for you :)

These are selection of ultra portable players

[phatsharpie]

For all those wondering about the selections of players for this review, it looks like this article is a review of ultra portable players. The kinds that are used for going to the gym or jogging, hence the title "Play As You Go". That's why there are a large number of flash players and such. The original iPod and its competitors are not really within this category, they are still too bulky for most people to workout with.

-B

The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The ways that OV will become the standard:

Microsoft, Apple or the RIAA (or one of major members) introduce a DRM standard for it.

You convince Joe blow to addopt it.
(too late Joe picked MP3)

There is no other way. No marketeer will steer away from Microsoft / Apple. The only people who will support you are niche's that are going for a segment market. (and believe me Ogg doesn't have the support to break out of its niche.)

I am not saying YOU should stop using it...But expecting marketing people to jump at you without one of the above is insanity...Marketind DOES NOTHING intellegent without it already being done first somewhere else.

I'll never buy from Real

[apachetoolbox]

I vote with my money. I'll never buy a product from Real Inc.

Re:I'll never buy from Real

[radish]

What's Real got to do with it? The Karma is made by Rio, who are owned by the same people as Denon and Marantz (NOT SonicBlue, and NOT Real).

Re:I'll never buy from Real

[Anonymous Coward]

The Rio Karma is sold by :
Digital Networks North America

which to my knowledge is different from
Real Networks.

So technically you wouldnt be buying from Real Inc if you buy a rio karma.

Re:I'll never buy from Real

[scotch]

I vote with my fists, and if I ever meet you, I'm going to elect you dead.

Re:I'll never buy from Real

[bogie]

LOL

Re:I'll never buy from Real

[Dun Malg]

What's Real got to do with it? The Karma is made by Rio

He's probably the same guy who thinks Network Solutions is owned by Verizon.

Not a good Sound Quality test

[polyp2000]

The sound quality graph is not a reflection of the sound quality of the device, instead a reflection of the supplied headphones.

A much better test would have been to use the same headphones (preferably a good pair) with all the players and do the comparison. The last few times i've bought personal stereos/ CD players / MP3 Players. I usually end up ditching the supplied earbuds because they are usually really shit quality with most brands.

nick ...

Transcoding?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ewwww. Don't do that.

iRiver

[Illissius]

doesn't currently have it on the iFP-39x model reviewed (a firmware upgrade is planned), but does on the iFP-59x series, as well as all their HDD players and the newer CD players. (Basically, the older players don't have the processor or the flash ROM capacity to be able to use it.)

Re:iRiver

[Drathos]

Um.. A beta of the firmware is currently available. I know one person using it with no problems. Ogg files eat more batteries, but aside from that, he loves it.

Sadly I'm stuck being Oggless with my iFP-190.. When the 700 or 800 series are released, I'll probably upgrade then.

Missing choices - Rio Nitrus - Rio Anything

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

They seem to have picked their winners and then picked some schlock for them to beat. To not even consider anything from Rio is idiotic. Several have mentioned the Karma. For flash players, the Cali has to be at least considered by anyone looking for one of these.

I own a Rio Nitrus. Some of the things I like about it are:

• Form factor - size and weight of a large binder clip.
• Excellent sound quality.
• Genuine 16+ hour battery life.
• 1.5 GB capacity.
• 5 band equalizer with presets and customizing.
• Easy to use controls, menus, and backlit display.

Thanks for the answers

[AtariAmarok]

If it matters to the Slashdot crowd, its manager software does NOT work well in Linux

Thanks for the answers, all. And unless you are new to Slashdot, you will realize that "how well it works in Linux" DOES matter here. Soon you will also realize that the Borg Bill Gates icon is not a compliment, not a "Trekkie denotation of love for this man who has given us so many great products".

Re:Thanks for the answers

[SydShamino]

It's very possible that tweaks with the way file paths work in Crossover Office (or maybe, just moving the files it was looking for into a main directly from their respective subdirectories) would have fixed that problem. Also, it's very possible that tweaks to the USB drivers in Linux might have enabled those to work, too. I use Xandros because it's (mostly) easy and it's NotWindows (tm), but I don't mess with crap if it doesn't work right away.

Thus, by all means, if someone can make this software work with Crossover Office, let me know so I can move one more thing off of my Windows install. Alternatively, other than the ~1 MB of config data the manager puts on the flash to program the player, the rest of the thing should be programmable as a standard removable flash/MMC device and used without the manager software at all. Again, since it wasn't recognized by the USB driver when I plugged it in, I didn't care to try harder.

Somebody Must be too Cheap

[KaffeineKitty]

Was PC magazine too cheap to buy the MP3 players and this was all they could get from the manufacturers? That would explain why there are so many off-brands in the review. After all the no name companies will jump at the chance for free advertising. Has anyone ever even heard of a BenQ Joybee? Or I suppose it could just be that someone was such an Apple iPod fan that they couldn't bear to compare it to a Karma. Whether I download music from Emusic or Musicmatch, rip it from a CD, play MP3 or Ogg Vorbis it doesn't matter the Karma plays them all. Besides who wants a pink MP3 player anyway. The black and silver design of the Karma with the cradle that glows blue matches my silver case with the blue cold cathode light so much better! With the speaker out jacks on the cradle I can even hook it up directly to my big surround sound system in the living room!

Re:Somebody Must be too Cheap

[Peganthyrus]

Besides who wants a pink MP3 player anyway ...women? I mean, hey, a pink iPod Mini would match my hair, and that'd be pretty damn cool.

Re:Somebody Must be too Cheap

[KaffeineKitty]

Actually, I am a woman but I never cared for pink myself. So the pink iPod matches your hair? Does that mean you have pink hair? If so then by all means go all pink!

white headphones suck

[zenneth]

Is there a "least likely to be taken from you at gunpoint" category?

Z

Re:white headphones suck

[Anonymous Coward]

- Place iPod on table
- Grip earbuds in right hand
- Trace white cable back from earbuds using left hand until hand hits iPod body
- Locate interface between cable and iPod
- Separate the two parts along the interface line.
- Throw earbuds and cable over shoulder
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 with other (non-white-cabled) ear/headphones of choice
- Insert connector on end of cable into iPod receptacle.
- Don't get mugged.

Wireless?

[orn]

Do any of the players on the market support 802.11b/g? I'd really like to be able to record certain radio programs then push them down to a portable all via scripts and in the background.

Try the N-Gage, seriously.

[Renaud]

I know the jokes about the original N-Gage never seem to end around here, but I've been perfectly happy with mine and I still fail to find anything today that comes close in terms of functionality. Consider this:

* State of the art phone

Tri-band GSM (I live and am using it in France, but it worked flawlessly during my trip to the Bay Area a few months ago) with the IMHO great Nokia usability.

And please, the whole sidetalkin' stuff is really overblown : I see no reason not to always use it as I do with the included hands free kit (2 earspeakers and a speed dial remote to take incoming calls or make new ones using voice-recognition)

MP3/MIDI ringtones, etc... and Bluetooth (improves your sex life!)

* MP3/AAC player.

Ok, MMCs aren't cheap and space is rather limited (we're talking a few hundred megs, not gigs), but my 128Mb one easily holds a few games + one album, which is more than enough for the daily commute time if you think about it.

Before leaving, I just connect it to my laptop using a standard mini-USB cable, and it shows up as a regular USB mass storage device under Windows or Linux, like your average digicam. That also makes it a USB key you're less likely to lose than a real one (because it's also your phone, so you'd better pay attention to it :) )

And OGG support is coming through third party software.

* FM tuner

with instant access key, and which you can record to AAC.

* Games

Looking at Tony Hawk Pro Skater or Tomb Raider, I'd say the N-Gage roughly has the horsepower of a PlayStation 1.
I'm not using that much actually, but all the other features still make me love my N-Gage

* Software : Symbian S60 system

That means a beautiful, consistent UI, and a stable OS.
The included software is good : WAP browser, SSL-enabled IMAP/POP3/SMS integrated message center, the usual calculator/pda stuff, RealOne player... ... and lots of third party software like Opera (which is *real* good and usable), streaming radios clients, etc...

I also love CityMaps, paid $5 for the single city version of this map software/route planner and it's so much handier than carrying a map or a separate device (also no recurring costs to use it since it's offline)

* It's ONE device

That's what buys me with the N-Gage : I don't like carrying too much stuff around, having to reach for it when I need it, and risking to forget them before leaving.

There I have MP3/radio/phone/games/basic PDA/internet client(+bluetooth modem) in just one device, and I've found this nowhere else.

(I don't care about the games, just the MP3/phone/internet/3rd party software capabilities, and even that I can't seem to find anywhere else)

Why not Hi-MD ?

[terrac]

Sony for one makes a new MD format Hi-MD which can do 1GB on the disk, is compatible with older MD formats, suppors 100X USB transfer from a PC and the best part.. you can store it's media and replace the motor unit if it ever breaks. I for one am not buying an iPod anymore as I would really like to be able to store disks with sets of songs. Also not having a DRM mechanism like the iPod makes it useful for distributing media to people. check http://minidisco.com/portables.html for examples

I-Rivier 390T

[LouCifer]

Sure, its a decent MP3 player. However, the customer service SUCKS ASS. Send them an email, and wait for days for a response.

Bastards.

Re:I-Rivier 390T

[LouCifer]

..not to mention that you have to use either their I-River Manager crapware or MS' Media Player to load/unload the flashdrive; You can't simply drag/drop stuff to it (so you can't use it as a storage device).

Bastards.

Do you mean the Sony "turbo" headphones?

[swb]

...the ones with the normal headphone band that goes over your head, and the speaker part that is about the size of a penny and is set perpendicular to your ear opening so that the front of the speaker essentially faces forward as you put it on?

Those were my favorites, too, do they still sell them? They seemed to have disappeared when they started selling those earbuds, which I can't stand.

Re:Do you mean the Sony "turbo" headphones?

[Run4yourlives]

them's the ones... I haven't seen them in a long time... many variants out there though.

Re:Do you mean the Sony "turbo" headphones?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wearing them right now. I see them everywhere. 14 USD.

Re:Do you mean the Sony "turbo" headphones?

[flink]

You mean these (SONY MDR-W08)? They're the only kind of headphones I can stand.

In ear buds . And YES I like ...

[Retep Vosnul]

Seeing the Phones graph I finally realize why i'm one of the few that likes his in-ear buds.

1. My ears must be really extraordinary shaped compared to others ( alien DNA with 5th nucleotide etc etc ).

2. The result for the in-ear buds in the deformation_thingy_device_graph isn't to bad ( closer to 0dB then any other ) except for ... the range where my hearing is a bit damaged due to the strange idea that I knew how to set up monitoring headphones on mixers in my youth.

And YES, i'm one of those idiots that whould rather be robbed then put black phones in my iPod.
( and YES i'm also one of those lameass farts that can not be bothered linking a prior /. story that is (semi)relevant to the post.

retep.

Re:FM support - iRiver IHP-120

[marcop]

The iRiver IHP 120 (20GB HD based player) has FM and Ogg support. It can also record from a microphone (built in and external) or digital input. Nice player but the control "joystick" is not that nice to use. Also, lower (bit still good SNR) and one can't change rechargeable battery (at least not officially) when it dies.

Any good compactflash players?

[bani]

I'd like to know if there are any good compactflash players. After seeing so many portable drives die in all sorts of devices (cameras, laptops, PDAs, mp3 players), I'd prefer solid state storage. And large CF cards can be had relatively cheap (much cheaper than SD/MMC).

I'm not interested in players with only a fixed amount of storage (eg 256m or 512m players with no removeable storage).

Re:Any good compactflash players?

[falltime]

The NEX IA IS a CF player - the review is using a CF drive - stupid review - great product

Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[scorp1us]

The technological snooty should not be complaining about lack of OGG, while free and good, there is little reason for it to superceede MP3. Sotage capacites go up, which means the rational behind Ogg goes down, since they perform compartively at medium and even more so at higher bit rates.

The only real format is FLAC. Lossless compression. Anyone with a good ear (or a good system) can hear how much lossy compression sucks. Moving the industry to flac (50-30% WAV size, no loss) will do more for demand of players - they'll want more storage because the songs are bigger, that will drive the need for higher and higher capacities.

Of course, this all comes down to what is the speaker? Most of these are cheap ear-bud kinds of things that suck.

But my empeg (0 or days of battery life (car battery), 10-60 gigs, FLAC, OGG, WMA, MP3 by Rio Corp.) still takes the cake. And it gets hooked up to a decent system. It can stram MP3s across the net, via a built-in webserver. It is truely sweet.
But it took playing MP3s in my car (witha complete aftermarket sound system) to hear the difference. I'm actually ashamed to blast MP3s while driving. I'll throw in a CD. The bass is punchier, the treble is clearer.

Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[radish]

Rio Karma plays FLAC - check out the numerous other posts on here which give more details of it's specs.

Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[scorp1us]

Rio Karma and Rio Empeg are off the same code base.

Yes, if I load alpha empeg code in, it will play FLAC. But there are a whole host of other issues since the empeg is no longer officially supported.

The rio developers are kind enough to work on it in theor spare time since they all have empegs too.

Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[SenorCitizen]

Can you hear the difference between the original wav and an mp3 encoded with LAME 3.92's --alt-preset standard or --alt-preset extreme options? Even APS is supposed to be transparent according to listening tests, APX even more so.

Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[scorp1us]

I'll have to try those.

But remember cutting out sounds (the crux of lossy compression) does very much how the song is expericend when you have any kind of serious wattage. In theory, lossy compression should take into account the "experience" (Which ogg does better at at lower bit rates) This is easy to do on cheap small speakers, but becomes more of a problem with accuate mid and low range equipment.

I'd also venture to say that those settings you asked about approach a size that is comperable to FLAC, but FLAC is 100% intact.

Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[evilviper]

Let me get this straight:

OGG, while free and good, there is little reason for it to superceede MP3 [...] since they perform compartively at medium and even more so at higher bit rates.

Anyone with a good ear (or a good system) can hear how much lossy compression sucks.

You think MP3 and Ogg are close in terms of quality/bitrate, but insist you can hear the difference between lossless encodings, and absolutely ANY lossless codec, at any bitrate?

What's that smell? Is it??? Yes it is! I smell bullshit...

Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC

[SenorCitizen]

> I'd also venture to say that those settings you asked about approach a size that is comperable to FLAC Nope. APS is ~192kbps VBR, APX is ~256kbps VBR. The compression parameters have just been tweaked based on listening tests - this should be the ultimate in mp3 quality. Should be.

It doesn't say that in the article!

[Anonymous Coward]

From article:

"so simple even a frog could use this."

I couldn't find that anywhere in the article.

Damned frogs making stuff up.

Eh?

[gordgekko]

Wow, talk about being current. Review over a dozen flash based DMPs and three hard drive based DMPs. Yup, the future is expensive and limited flash!

I own a Nomad Zen NX and it kicks the crap out of every DMP listed there including most hard drive based players out there, including IMHO, the iPod. For sound quality and battery life it pummels the iPod though I concede the UI isn't as good. Also it is slightly larger and a bit heavier though IMO I think it looks better than the iPod.

CD players?

[W2k]

I want to know what happened to MP3-CD players and why no-one seems to care enough to review them anymore, let alone include them in large-scale comparisons such as these. I have an ancient AVC SoulPlayer DMP-201 which was cheap when I got it, and sells for even less ($99!) nowadays. Highlights in brief:

• It plays MP3 (VBR/CBR) and WMA burned to regular CD-R or CD-RW. No OGG, but then again, very few players do.
• It plays regular CD's! Yes, the kind you buy in a store, or the kind you have to keep around still because it's all your car's CD player supports.
• Storage: As many tracks as you can fit on a CD(-R[W]), which is to say, about 700 MB. That is, between 150-250 songs (my regular playlist is about 50 songs, though I can see how being able to store "only" 250 tracks may be a problem for some people).
• Battery life: 10-15 hours. Well in excess of what most flash or HD-based players can do as reported by this article.
• Media costs: Dirt cheap and easy to replace (CD-RW's are what, $1-$2 apiece?)
• Portability: Not as good as a flash-based player, for obvious reasons. Comparable to one of the larger HD-based players in width, but pretty thin. Fits in most pockets (goes without saying that newer MP3/CD players are smaller). Doesn't weigh much.
• Other: Great sound. Does not crackle up when batteries run low. Headphone and line-out stereo connections. Menu-based interface, lots of options. Upgradeable firmware.

Now, this is not to say that MP3-CD players are without their issues. Do I hear someone mention skipping? The DMP-201 has 10+ minutes of cache memory. No, you can't use it while jogging (unless your jogs are really short) but it's sufficient on a bicycle or at the gym. Again, like the storage space, this is a problem that will not affect everyone.

Re:CD players?

[/dev/trash]

Why is it you can use them for biking but not jogging?

Re:CD players?

[Saturninus]

I agree. I have a Panasonic MP3-CD player. I paid about $50 for it. When buying CD-Rs in bulk they come out to less than ten cents a piece. I get around 40 hours of battery life on two AA batteries.

Re:CD players?

[shione]

when you're jogging, everytime your feet impacts with the ground it shakes the cdplayer but when you're biking you're rolling on the ground so its mostly smooth with little up/down movement... that is of course assuming he's not dirt bike riding. :)

Re:CD players?

[Repton]

I have a Philips Expanium 431, which is an MP3-CD player that plays 8cm CDs. The player itself is about 9cm diameter and about two centimetres thick.

The downsides to the smaller CDs are less space (200MB) and reduced battery life (but it came with rechargables that you can charge in the unit). The upsides should be obvious :-) I see it as a comprimise between the solid state players (which are more portable, more expensive per megabyte, and need a computer to change the playlist) and the iPods, which are just more expensive (cheapest iPod was over NZ$600 last time I looked. This cost me NZ$200 (around US$120-130, I guess)).

And I go jogging with it and it has never skipped :-)

Re:CD players?

[/dev/trash]

Didn't the parent mention a 10 minute buffer? I'm assuming that the buffer would try to keep itself full.

And when I bike ride I hit more bumps and stuff when I jog.

Compact Flash players, besides FrontierLabs NEX?

[NoData]

It once was a geek favorite, and is still my workout companion: My old NEX II. I have been thinking about upgrading to the NEX IA, but the review in the posted article was less than overwhelming.

Here's my beef with every single portable player review I've ever seen: They completely neglect the interoperability and unlimited expansion of flash storage media. I love my NEX partly because it uses (relatively) cheap CompactFlash, that I can turn around and pop right into my Canon digital cam. AND, I can use a little flash reader to use the card as a universal storage medium anywhere. The review compares the NEX IA's storage as being less than a quarter of an iPod mini...but that's grossly unfair because the IA has a REMOVABLE card! AND they list its price at $250 WITH a 1 GB card, but you can get them brand new, bare bones for less than $100 from Choke Slam Media on eBay. The review also bitches about the IA's crappy battery life, but here's where knowing if they used a 1GB microdrive (battery hog) or flash card would be crucial (they ambiguously call it a Flash Drive..who knows what PC Mag editors think that is).

Anyway, I really would like a CF player that has a FM receiver (mainly to be able to listen to TV broadcasts at the gym). I'll only trust a flash player for working out. The IA also has a stoopidly designed headphone cord that come out the bottom of the device, making it hard to work with my Tunebelt armband case (highly recommend, BTW).

Any recs besides the Nex IA?

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

It works the same on a Mac as it does on the PC (which is to say it works great). I know. I have one.

Plug the fucker in, open the little disk icon that pops up, and copy your files.

Oh, you mean it be an iPod killer if it worked with iTunes. Yeah. Right. What do you think the chances are of that? Someone stepping right on Apple's foot--using their proprietary player/sync service to dislodge one of their more popular offerings from the top of the hill! Ha ha.

Not only that, but even if you do copy your iTunes organized MP3s to this device, it makes it a real PITA to navigate... Because of the directory/file stucture. Like I say, I know because I have one.

The best solution Iv'e found for using this player with Macs is using the drag + drop application that does ogg encoding from CDs. But I rarely use this with my Mac, (the encoding is done on my Win2k machine, 'cause it encodes a fair bit faster than my iBook), so no big loss.

Ogg Vorbis

[lcde]

Seems like a lot of people bitching about Ogg support. Didn't see this link posted

http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware

Slashdot error.

[Anonymous Coward]

Karma wh-...

Ah, fuck it.

The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[PCM2]

My iRiver IHP-120 holds 20GB, connects via USB 2.0, mounts as a filesystem and lets you organize your MP3s using the filesystem (unlike the Karma, which wants you to use its software), plays OGG, gets 12-14hrs battery life, is just a hair larger than the iPod and the same weight. Plus it has an FM tuner for those days you want to listen to NPR, and it records -- either to MP3 on the fly, or to 44KHz uncompressed WAV. And it has optical in and out.

Choosing between it and the Karma was tough for me, but I decided the iRiver had cooler features and was just a hair more open; not to mention that iRiver has a good track record for upgrades. They've publicly announced fixes for some problems with shuffle and playlist creation that should arrive in May, and by June the IHP series should have gapless playback like the Karma.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[Civil_Disobedient]

I have to admit, that's pretty sweet.

How does it do with audio recording? That is, can you adjust recording levels from the input source on the fly? I've been looking for something to use for recording concerts, and I don't always have access to a mixer.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[cubyrop]

Your iHP-120 also has a non-removable battery which iRiver has no plans to offer replacements for. Enjoy your paperweight.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[blincoln]

Is the case that comes with the iHP players leather, or something synthetic but leather-like? I would like to get one, especially since the support for the Karma seems to be pretty abysmal, but I don't buy leather products.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[PCM2]

It's still brand new to me, so I haven't really fiddled around with recording yet, but as far as I can tell the answer is: No. The UI while recording is ... not informative, to say the least. When I was reading about it online, somebody suggested that you'd probably want some kind of external mic preamp with a stereo mic. Oh, also, it comes with an internal microphone and a little plastic mic to plug into the external input, but both are mono. It supports stereo mics; you just need to supply one yourself.

And finally, there's apparently a (bug? feature? limitation?) where it will only record for about 90 minutes before forcing you to start over with a new file. That means it lets you record up to around 800MB in WAV format, and something like 200MB in MP3 -- I forget the actual numbers, but if you search Google you might find them. No idea why it was designed this way. I've not heard any indications yet that this might be fixed in future releases, but it's possible I suppose.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[VividU]

Howdy, Recording Engineer here.

The iRiver 120 can record using its built in mono mic or through its stereo mic/line input (Analog & Digital). They even supply a nice little external mono mic for you.

I would say iRiver is about 75% there. Hopefully they can address all the recording shortcomings through firmware upgrades.

- No input level metering
- .WAV recording time limited
- Rare glitches but even one is too much

If they address the three issues above than you have yourself a pro-level portable recording device.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[PCM2]

It doesn't feel particularly like leather to me -- not quality leather anyway -- but everything I've read says it's leather. It is, however, a pretty nice case. It gives you access to all the buttons and even the AC power and sync jacks.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[PCM2]

Ditto, the Karma. In the interest of competing directly with Apple, these manufacturers have likewise chosen compactness over battery replacability. Fortunately, both the Karma and the iRiver line have superior batteries to the ones in the current iPods. Myself, I suspect something cooler will come along by the time the runtime of these batteries has halved; for instance, a fully-functioning PDA/phone with an internal hard drive.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[line.at.infinity]

I was also interested in iRiver products when I was looking for a new mp3 player after my Rio Volt died. However I was too stingy for iRiver products:

iRiver IHP120 list price: ---- $400.00 (20 GB)
Apple iPod 20 GB list price: $350.00
Apple iPod 15 GB list price: $300.00
Apple iPod Mini list price: -- $250.00 (4 GB)

They're more expensive than Apple products. Plus the iPods are smaller and lighter, so I ended up choosing a mini.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[theLOUDroom]

Your iHP-120 also has a non-removable battery which iRiver has no plans to offer replacements for. Enjoy your paperweight.

1. The battery is user-replacable without damaging the case, unlike an ipod. (Being an EE it didn't take long before I decided to take mine apart.)
2. If you actually read the specs on the battery used in the ihp-120 (instead of talking out your ass), you'd see that it designed to withstand years of daily use(unlike the original ipod batteries).
3. I expect I'll be able to use an ipod battery when the time comes.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the IRiver IHP-120 is supposed to cost $400, On the Internet most sites sell it for under $350. It is still more than an iPod mini; however, all of its extra features make it a better deal in my opinion.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[theLOUDroom]

I would say iRiver is about 75% there. Hopefully they can address all the recording shortcomings through firmware upgrades.

- No input level metering
- .WAV recording time limited
- Rare glitches but even one is too much

I don't expect they'll be able to completely do away with the recording limit due to FAT32 file size limits.

One more problem: It needs a standby mode. The delay between pressing the button and actually recording is too large.

Overall, I'm very pleased with mine and my gf plans to use it instead of her portable MD recorder when recording events.

....oh yeah, and it would be nice if you could record from the radio.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[SenorCitizen]

My problem with the iRiver is that you can't browse the contents by the ID3 tag content - only filenames.

Well, unless you use the provided software to manually add every file you copy over to a separate database file, but that's too much work.

Also, iPod still has everything else beat with the UI.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[fa098h23fra]

Uhh, that's not true. if you right-click on the mounted iRiver drive you can select "Update DB" or something similar and it scans all the files and reads the tag info into the database. Mind you, there will be plenty of files that it fails on because of missing tags, but for the ones that do you can browse by artist, genre, title, etc etc etc.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[salimfadhley]

You need this:

http://wiki.stodge.org/index.php?page=iRiver+H-S er ies+Linux+Synchronisation

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

New firmware for the Karma is in the works that will make it show up as an external harddisk.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[anethema]

Actually, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ipod battery other than its low milliamp hour rating.

ANY Li Ion cell will do 3-5 hundred recharge cycles. If your device lasts 16 hours compared to 8, then you will recharge half the amount of times.

Therefore the battery will last twice as long.

This is the same battery technology in tons of mp3 players..many of which are non-replacable. Also same as in laptops..which obviosuly are replacable...just not cheap.

I dont understand why everyone bitches about this..its just the way it is. If you want a big bulky player find one that uses AA's... If you want a slgihtly less bulky one that has shitty batt. life, find a AAA one. Li Ion is just the best we have right now because of a SEVERE lack of research into batteries.

As far as using an Ipod battery, I doubt it..unless the voltage is the same, dimentions compatible, milliamp hour ratings where you want them to be, etc.

Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[theLOUDroom]

Actually, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ipod battery other than its low milliamp hour rating.

There's nothing wrong with the CURRENT ipod batteries. Note that I referred to the "original" ipod batteries.

Actually, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ipod battery other than its low milliamp hour rating.

Do you honestly believe that no one is researching battery technologies?
I expect companies like Panasonic spend quite a bit on research. I'd do some checking before saying that.

The problem is, you just aren't going to see batteries keep up with Moore's law. There's a limited number of chemicals they can play with.
It's like expecting the horsepower you can get from your car to double every 18 months: it just won't happen.

As far as using an Ipod battery, I doubt it..unless the voltage is the same, dimentions compatible, milliamp hour ratings where you want them to be, etc.

This gives me a clue just how little you know about batteries. The iriver and the ipod both use the same battery chemistry, therefore the cell voltage is the same. The only way the battery wouldn't work is if:
-they used a different number of cells (no good reason to use more than one cell in either device)
-the battery didn't fit (since the ipod is smaller and contains very similar hardware, i expect the battery coudl be made to fit.)

I wouldn't worry about the charging circuitry, as li-ion battery chargers are quite smart.

No Neuros?

[bishiraver]

Several of the players reviewed (Frontier Labs, BenQ) I have not even heard of before. The Neuros has more functionality than many of the players reviewed, including upgradable storage space and now USB2.0 (admittedly late). Their client software is open-source, and has a large following in linux. It supports OGG. It supports recording directly TO mp3. It supports identification of songs from line-in or radio. It has really long battery life if you do not interact with the player, because it queues songs in memory. Why was a Neuros not reviewed, is what I am wondering?

why the other players are not listed

[Anonymous Coward]

because pcmag makes money through ad $$.

and apple wont be advertising if they dont give them some play.
You know if Rio, Dell, or other far cheaper, feature rich products were included then the iCrap stuff would be realized to be overpriced overstyled toys.
iPod 40gig: $495
Nomad JB Zen 40gig: $267
Come on what dope ( ahem apple zealot) is gonna blow their dough on the iPod.

Re:why the other players are not listed

[Jeremy Erwin]

someone who prefers smaller dimensions, AAC capability, a larger screen, a better User Interface, better aesthetics.

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[abischof]

In that case, how do you rebuild the database to enable file searching?

Ogg Vorbis == iRiver

[aminorex]

The iRiver is the only device in the review list
that supports .ogg files. Since it has longer
battery life, is smaller and cheaper than the ipod
mini, I'm going to shelve my mini and get the iRiver.

The only positives of the mini are sound quality
and storage capacity. I'm glad I've got the
in-ear headphones, and will continue to use them!

Re:Ogg Vorbis == iRiver

[Anonymous Coward]

The Rio Karma also plays oggs. It's gotten pretty good reviews (so has the iRiver, though). I have a Karma, but I've never used an iRiver so I can't compare.

It's probably worth your time to check it out, though.

what about the neato factor?

[TubeSteak]

That thing definitely looks beefy, but not terribly styling. What about using some type of nonconductive foam-in-a-can? That'd solve most of the vibration related issues (though obviously not hardcore abuse). A little bit of foam padding (old mousepad) on the bottom for cushion...

That aside, are you saying that the mint tins aren't durable? Or that the electronics will fail if you use the tin?

Re:what about the neato factor?

[HardCase]

It's the tins. The electronics are plenty durable because the circuit board is very small. But the typical Panasonic volume control and the micro switch will probably break because tin doesn't provide them with enough support in a catastrophic flying event. Your choices are pretty limited for 10K stereo pots that will fit in a small tin (and not sound like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard) and the leads that were really designed for plugging into a PCB are kind of fragile. And if the lid pops open during its mid-air acrobatics and the battery starts flailing around, something will almost certainly break. That, and the tins are surprisingly non-durable when they aren't full of mints ;-)

I agree that the Hammond case isn't nearly as stylish as the Altoids or Penguin case. I guess my deal is that since I sell them, I'd just as soon not have one come back because the case wasn't strong enough to stand up. On the other hand, if somebody REALLY wants it in an Altoids tin, I'll build it that way for them...just so they know that they have to be pretty careful. I guess that's really the key to using a mint tin as a case. I always tried to be careful, but then I'd forget what was on the other end of my headphones and -zip- off it would go.

Also, you really should power the CMoys with two 9V batteries. I know that you can do it with one, but that only gives you about one volt of margin before the opamp starts to clip and if the rails become unbalanced (something that the resistor divider power supply is prone to do), then the margin can suddenly drop to nothing. The opamps that work best (OPA2132, 2134, etc.) need +/-3V just to operate. That leaves only 1.5V peak for the audio signal...OK if your cans are sensitive, but if you've got something like my Grado SR-125's, you'll be in trouble. Anyway, making a short story long, the other reason that I like the Hammond case is because it will let another battery fit in or a slightly larger PCB with a TI TLE2426 rail splitter to keep the voltage rails in balance.

That's my 2 cents on CMoy design ;-)

-h-

Re:what about the neato factor?

[TubeSteak]

well I can't disagree about battery power, but you didn't address the idea of some type of non-conductive filler. Apoxie is just something i dug up through google, but its features pretty much sum up exactly what i was thinking of. Basically pour it over everything and leave block out a space for the battery and the connector, the stuff is even water/heatproof. (Heat shouldn't be a problem w/the 9v battery right?)

I still haven't come up with any genius ideas to deal with the flying lid problem, but most (all?) of my headphones have 6~9 ft cords, so that doesn't worry me too much. Anyways, thanks for the intelligent answer and please let me know if you think something like that Apoxie has any readily apparent drawbacks. (It would make weak connections a non-issue, thats for sure.)

Re:what about the neato factor?

[HardCase]

I think that if you filled the box with Apoxie, a little piece of velcro would easily hold the lid closed. It would certainly solve the mechanical problems! And you're right, heat is not a problem with 9V. Even with two 9V batteries, heat isn't an issue.

Filling the tin is a great idea - maybe I'll give it a try and see what happens!

-h-

but iriver does that

[i_should_be_working]

kind of irritating that the review didn't point out that the iriver does play ogg.

more irritating that the review compared ipod to two mediocre players instead of iriver's hard drive player and rio's karma (both play ogg), which are considered better to many.

tangent: shure e2,e3 earphone frequency response

[jonathan_95060]

shure makes some of the best sounding ear buds around. Does anyone know where I can find a sound quality test that includes shure e2, e3 and e5 earphones? Graphs for Etys would be nice too.

I have E2s and love them. I'm curious to see how their accuracy compares.

Yes, ogg does sound better

[Venner]

Except ogg doesn't sound any better than mp3 above 128kbps

For part of a project I did a while back, I administered blind listening tests of several samples of music in various formats. If I recall; LAME VBR (nominal 128, 256), Ogg (nominal 128, 256), WMA8(128, 256), & the original wav.

Listening device was a set of Sennheiser HD600s piped from a MAudio Audiophile 2496(?). First I played the wav file for them to hear, then I played the other samples in random order, including the wav file. I eventually had around 100 volunteers. (17 years to 65 years, avg. 22 years) They were asked to rate each sample from 1 to 10 and comment on the sound if applicable. I also asked them to guess which one of the samples was the original wav, as a check on their hearing :)

Results: Most people could pick out the original wav. The few times they didn't, what they picked was the Ogg/256. The Mp3/256 came in next, but significantly under the Ogg/256. Next came a close grouping of ogg/128, mp3/128, and wma/256. wma/128 was at the bottom.

I (in my own subjectivity) have encoded a couple of albums with FLAC because I thought even the Ogg/256 [Well, now I generally use the -q tag rather than -b] didn't reproduce some of the original recording's nuances on my home audio system.

As an aside, I used "Duel of the Fates" as one of the samples, since earlier encoders had 'issues' encoding it correctly. The usual response to the WMA encodings of it was for the listener to screw up their face, look at me, and mouth 'yuck!' To be fair, I later did a smaller study on low bitrate encoding and wma did better.

The final point is that none of the above means a damn for a portable system...you probably wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference. But for playback on moderately good equipment, let the Ogg be with you. I just wanted to refute the parent comment's assertion.

Re:Yes, ogg does sound better

[yomegaman]

You must have used a bad encoder or something, because I don't believe that "most" people can tell the difference between a WAV and an APS lame file which would be under 256k average. Encoders make a big difference.

Re:Yes, ogg does sound better

[Venner]

"Most" was about 65/95. It was generally the older-than-25 crowd that didn't hear the difference. Since I was in college at the time, the bulk of my test candidates were also college students.

Now the ABR may be a very good point. The version of lame I used (late 2000/early 2001) barfed on

lame -q0 --abr 256 filein fileout

so I used

lame -q0 -b 112 -B 256 filein fileout

which did result in an average bit-rate on par with the ogg samples. (It is debatable that the ogg could have gone higher and lower than the mp3. ie, (10 + 90)/2 = (40 + 60)/2 . I was warned against setting the "-b" less than 112, as there were reports of over-compression with lame VBR below that threshold.)
Caveat emptor.

I also did not convert both back to wave and compare signal spectra, as I did with wma. Wma appeared to just discard certain frequencies in the middle of the audible spectra. Reminded me of Bose speakers.

Koss KSC-50/55s

[Qinopio]

Best $20 headphones out there, so I hear. Next best thing is the Sennheiser PX-100 or 200, which I have. The Grados were just too much at $60.

Misleading Headline.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Here it's talking about physical devices, I was looking for:

Fourteen Digital Music Players Reviewed:

1) Jim, NY: This 27 year old male sits on his couch doing nothing but playing hip hop albums on XMMS. Although his weight keeps him on the couch, don't overlook the speed of his mouse click.

2) Mike, CA: Mike is a superb digital music player. Combined with his playing skills, he is also superb at retrieving MP3's from P2P servers. Given a record like this, I'd have to say that Mike is an impressive player.

3) Joan, WA: .. . . . .

Bah!!

[Civil_Disobedient]

I wish product designers were forced to take classes in old 20's and 30's design thought. It kills me that people think that hunk of plastic shit is good looking.

You want your electronic device to look "cool"? Manufacture it in ONE DAMNED MATERIAL. No tacky bumper pads attached to the ends as an afterthought. If iRiver is so concerned about the abuse the player might take and insist on "shock-proofing" it, they could wrap the entire thing in the black rubber-plastic that made Glock firearms famous.

Just wrap everything in shiny aluminum or stainless steel. And keep the buttons to a minumum.

Re:Bah!!

[Kiryat Malachi]

Hell, let them see 50s design. The mono-color Bakelite shelled radios from that period have charm too.

Just drill it into their head that ornamentation is the devil when it comes to design, and that the simpler, generally the better.

Re:Bah!!

[blitziod]

i like my rio sport...it is lighter, takes a huge beating and can hold hours of music( with an extra 512 meg SD card) a 79.95 rio with an 80.00 sd card is a better deal for me than an Ipod. I use mine of course to work out and need an hours worth of music at a time, with a few playlists so i have a choice adn am not updating it every day. I would not mind an I-pod for listening at home, but then looks woudl not matter much. I would go with the cheaper player...OR just buy another hard drive AND a wireless media server to hook up to my home entertainment center for less money. I do KINDA like the I-pod mini though.

Re:Bah!!

[evilviper]

Just wrap everything in shiny aluminum or stainless steel. And keep the buttons to a minumum.

HELL NO!

First off, I hate shiny.

Secondly, the fewer buttons, the more functions every button has, and the more complicated it is to use the device. Some companies go overboard on having a button for everything, but most go the other direction, and have too few.

Returned my Karma for an IPod.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Rio Karma specifically for Ogg support, and the fact that the dock bay has ethernet and the Karma can act as a streaming Ogg/Mp3 server. The thing kicked ass on so many levels.

Until the thing literally *caved in* on me. The jog dial sunk into the Karma itself, and the thumbstick you use to navigate got stuck sideways. Did I drop it? Smash it? Mishandle it? No, I simply put it in and out of my pocket around 10 times a day and this was enough to destroy my Karma.

Luckily I bought it at Circuit City (whome I normally hate, but their return policy is the most kickass anwyhere. You could run something over and return it with NO HASSLES - Something that could easily happen to a player like this.) .. I decided to take a look at the IPod instead of getting a new Karma after reading more reports on Karmas having the same problems. I just knew the Karma wasn't built to last. When I open the IPod, I fell in love, the thing was half metal, very sturdy feeling, the gui was awesome, the base, while it didn't have ethernet, did the job. I had to buy a Firewire card for my Windows PC, which only cost $15 .. It links up fine, iTunes works swell .. Unfortunately it didn't support Ogg format so I reripper everything with EAC and LAME 3.0.6 --alt-preset standard (This is supposedly one of the best sounding MP3 formats for players having been done with a lot of testing) .. The tunes all sound just awesome, and im entirely in LOVE with my IPod.. The build quality of this thing is impossibly cool. I just love it. The only downside is the 7 hour battery life .. Which I can honestly say I havent run into yet .. But I sometimes worry I will .. But for now, it makes a music lover happy. 16gb out of 20 filled .. I may return it and upgrade to a 40GB in a year or so .. Or maybe a newer version. Apple did an amazing job with this player.

Ok, I may be stupid, but I don't understand this

[Phekko]

Why would you want a device with 20GB storage in it if you only have a battery life of 13 hours? Using the scientific and incredibly complex formula 1Mb equals 1min you come to roughly 60Mb per hour or 13 * 60 = 780Mb per charge. Ok, it's nice to have some choise but to me that means you get to play roughly 5% of your disk before you run out of juice.

I got me a Palm with AeroPlayer and my 256M SD is just about right for the TT battery. I would believe that for 13 hours of charge a 1G flash chip would be ideal. I guess everyone has their opinion on this and recording sure is a plus. That 100mbit ethernet and webserver sure sound nice. Hmm... Now that I think of it, maybe it's a neat gizmo after all. Now where to cough up the doe for it? =)

O/T, you git....

[adamofgreyskull]

Thanks to you, I have broken my thumbs trying to get 100% items on Metroid Fusion. Damn hyperspeed blocks..

But seriously, keep up the good work, I can't think of many more enjoyable ways to get crippling arthritis than Metroid :o)

Re:Compact Flash players, besides FrontierLabs NEX

[falltime]

I got the NEX IA and it is great - there review is ridiculous - they catagorize the NEX IA as Hard Drive based (bottom of the review) so clearly they bought the player with a microdrive. But in reality the NEX is a FLASH BASED player and as such it is the best! Its battery life is 2.5x what they got (with flash card). It is expandable, and with CF cards, putting music is as simple as drag and drop - WITHOUT loading drivers, software, etc.... They missed the mark with this review

Re:Ok, I may be stupid, but I don't understand thi

[RaboKrabekian]

Maybe because you don't always want to listen to the same music in one charge? 5% of my disk before I run out of juice means that I can go 20 days (about a month of listening at work) and not listen to the same music on any given day. Overkill? Yes, maybe. - but I like having choice. Some days I feel like listening to different kinds of music. I have my entire music collection on my player (in my case a Karma) and I think it's fantastic. The argument that storage capacity should equal battery life is inane.

iTunes for Archos

[meehawl]

If you use iTunes, the only handheld player that can help you is an iPod. You're stuck picking from Apple's line of products.

That's not true. My gf uses iTunes on OS9 to manage her Archos. It does playlists, syncing, all that stuff.

French WW2 Efforts - 500,000 Dead

[meehawl]

France was a door mat that said "Bienvenue!"

Actually over 200,000 French soldiers died in WW2 before and during the occupation, and 350,000 civilians were slaughtered. Remember at the start of WW2 France faced the most advanced army and airforce in the world and their regular forces crumbled. Their partisan efforts during the invasion disrupted German supply lines and communications. If you scale up the French casualties compared to the US casualties (~300,000/6000) you will see that because of the US's late entry to the WW2, their per-capita casualty rate was much lower than the French. Put simply, the French suffered, while the US grandstanded, and picked over the spoils of victory.

Of course, all the Western efforts pale in comparison to the Soviet Union, which sustained at least 13 million dead soldiers and at least 7 million dead civilians. The Soviets crushed the Third Reich - without them Britain and the US would doubtless have sued for a negotiated peace or ceasefire.

In point of fact, one way of looking at WW2 is as a continuation of the European Civil War begun during WW1 and interrupted by an armistice for a couple of decades during which conflict moved to the edges and the colonies rather than the centre. Finally during WW2 both the US and the USSR entered the war while the main protagonists were becoming exhausted, and their efforts proved decisive, with the result that no European nation won the European Civil War.

For Americans, it's like imagining that during the US Civil War, that Britain had entered the war on the side of the slave states while France and Germany decided to join the Union states. I think Gibson & Sterling's Difference Engine had some alternate history quite like this, with European intervention leading to a separate CSA and USA.

Re:French WW2 Efforts - 500,000 Dead

[Perl-Pusher]

The loser usually suffers more loses. That's why they Lose. France lost most of it's territory to Germany not once but twice. It's not funny, but neither is the french arrogance.

Re:French WW2 Efforts - 500,000 Dead

[theLOUDroom]

Put simply, the French suffered, while the US grandstanded, and picked over the spoils of victory.

That's not "putting it simply" that's deliberately distorting the truth.

The French were attacked and surrendered. WTF were we supposed to do, drop everything at right that second and fight for a country that wouldn't even fight for itself?
When the time came and we were attacked, we stood up and fought. That's what you should do, not cave in and be at the enemy's mercy. Having a lot of your people get killed does not mean you made good decisions and did the right thing.

The French surrender will always be a black mark on their history, the same way the internment camps are on ours.

Sound Quality Test?

[gordguide]

I did a quick link to the "sound quality test" from the original Slashdot post, and we see a lone frequency response test chart. Umm, that's a half dozen tests and a few thousand words short, folks.

What's worse, I can tell from simply viewing the graph that the lone "test" is invalid. So, off we go to the test portion of the article to see what's up, and more importantly, if there is any other real audio data other than that chart that might be useful.

Aha. In plain English, there it is:

" ... To verify the ear buds' frequency response, we devised the Ear 2.0, a life-size silicone rubber ear coupled with a calibrated microphone and sound level meter {Italics mine}. We played our test files into audio spectrum analyzer software and used the RightMark Audio Analyzer test suite (www.rightmark.audio.org) to verify our observations. ..."

And pretty much that's it. Not even a voltage/impedance measurement a 15-year old nerd could do to see what 3rd party headphones would work best. Oh, well.

Kids playing at a pro's game. I won't go into all the reasons why this is a silly idea, but for starters who told them that silicone and flesh/cartiledge have the same sonic absorption/reflection factor? Well, nobody, 'cuz they don't.

Where is the correction factor for the ear's own frequency response in direct near-field? No, it most certainly is not the same as the response from a sound in free air at a distance.

You could google for, i dunno, about a thousand long, confusing papers, but a nice short one that still gives the idea of how difficult (and how non-linear) this is can be found here:
National Library of Medicine

For the lazy, the short answer is a correct earspeaker has nowhere near flat response in order for us to perceive it to be "flat" compared to sounds from what amounts to many thousand times the distance away. In their test, a "flat" response would actually be the worst performer.

The chart linked actually states "Minimal deviation from 0db is ideal." That's out and out wrong without correction factored in.

The problem starts with the assumptions they make for the "calibrated" microphone; it's only "calibrated" at a specific distance and frankly I don't see how you could calibrate it with their fixture at near-field. Most likely they just used a pre-calibrated mic (typically these are calibrated for a 1metre distance in free air) and ran with it. That alone could account for the wild swings, let alone their test fixture's own anomalies.

The graph shows swings of up to 30+ dB in the midrange, where the ear is most sensitive. This is like the difference between way loud and inaudible, and if that were the case each of these headphones/earbuds would sound terrible, perhaps worse than terrible. Since they don't sound that bad, why did they not glean the test must be flawed? Nah, just publish it, nobody will know the difference.

Excuse me, but I think I'll leave PCMac to the computer stuff and the audio stuff to the audio guys. Take it all with a grain of salt unless you're just interested in the digital details. These guys can't be trusted with a microphone.

Re:Ok, I may be stupid, but I don't understand thi

[Propagandhi]

Choice and flexibility are the main reasons 20GB's of storage is worth it to me.

I can listen to the vast majority of my record collection at any time I wish, and I don't have to worry about switching anything out. If I want to take the Karma on a trip, all I have to do is take it's charger.

Re:Ogg Vorbis?-- No, but stick with Open Source...

[Kazoo the Clown]

Don't hold your breath waiting for Ogg players until someone starts making chips for it, such as this one for Mp3. It may be that not that many of the player manufacturers actually make the chips that do the encoding/decoding, they just buy what's available off-the-shelf and good luck finding Ogg ones, even if they wanted to build such a box.

In the meantime, it's probably a good idea to stick with open-sourceable players such as those that can run RockBox... 20G storage with recording for about $200-- and some have hacked in 60G drives plus more memory for cache which significantly reduces battery life.

What are you talking about?

[Xebikr]

Even a 2 minture search turns up the Ipod 20 gig at $400 and the iriver at $369. If you're going to be throwing list prices around, at least be accurate.

And yes I know that you can get either one for cheaper, but gig for gig and feature for feature, the Ipod repeatedly eats the IHP's dust.

Re:What are you talking about?

[line.at.infinity]

Oops, you'r right. The ipod 20 GB is $400. My memory was off there. But even in the link you give, technically the 20GB iRiver is list price $400. Also Amazon.com doesn't reflect academic discounts you can get from Apple.com. I got my mini for $230 with that discount. I agree, if you don't mind spending $400 on an mp3 player, and don't mind the extra size and weight tradeoff for the extra features, then an iRiver is a great choice.

Rio rules

[mnemonic_]

Interesting that Rio, originally from Diamond, is making the top mp3 player (imnsho), the Karma. One of (if not the) first mp3 players was the Rio PMP300, whose button design may have inspired the iPod's. Seems like Rio is still in step with preempting tech trends, with a player that supports OGG and FLAC, has two RCA outputs to connect to a home stereo system, and file transfers via ethernet.

Try bugmenot.com

[Psychic Burrito]

Try bugmenot.com:
Free Logs/PWs for many news sites.

for pcmags, it spits out:
l: Ecobot3000
p: twitty

And voilà, it works! :-)

Syncronising an iRiver H-Series with Linux

[salimfadhley]

I just bought myself an iRiver iHP-140. I chose it because of OGG Vorbis support and complete lack of DRM. If you want, this machine can act like a regular USB hard disk. If you want to load some music, just copy files onto it.

I've put together some notes on getting the iRiver H-Series (iHp-140, 120 and 110) to work nicely wtith Linux. Please take a look here.

latest firmware for the iHP-390T DOES support Ogg

[Anonymous Coward]

Look you muppet it does support Ogg...

Unfortunately you have to make a firmware choice; MP3 and Ogg or MP3 and WMA. The flash rom is not big enough to support loads of codecs.

Twit.

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[Christ-on-a-bike]

You can try iripdb

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[abischof]

I would if iRipDB supported Macs ;).

Re:They picked the wrong iRiver, too.

[PCM2]

My problem with the iRiver is that you can't browse the contents by the ID3 tag content - only filenames.

This was an issue I had with it at first, but decided it was actually a non-issue.

To explain to everybody else: The iRiver comes with software that scans the portable's drive and builds a database from your ID3 tags. You can then flip an option in the iRiver's menus and it will let you browse by the contents of this database, rather than by filenames.

There are a couple of problems with this, though. First, the software is Windows-only. Second, it only supports MP3s, even though the device itself understands OGG comments. Third, it's buggy. Apparently there are unnatural limits on the length of the filenames and the paths to the filenames.

Then I discovered that there are, in fact, a couple of projects either ready or in the works to build iRiver database software for other platforms:

• iRipDB is the oldest. It's written in C, and compiles on Linux. The easiest way to get it to compile on BSD or Mac OS X is to track down JFTW, which implements the missing routines needed to walk a filesystem. You'll also need the appropriate third-party libraries for OGG and ID3 support (unlike the supplied software, it handles both). It doesn't seem to have the filename/path limitations of the supplied software. It's command-line only and a little clunky, but thankfully the author has also supplied documentation for the database file format, so you can use this as a basis to write our own software in some other language, if you choose.
• This guy seems to have taken that spec and written something in Python, which requires the appropriate ID3 and OGG libraries for Python. I don't do much mucking around with Python myself, so having got the C version working I didn't bother with this one, though it might be superior.
• ihptool is another utility, written -- mysteriously enough -- in C#. Haven't looked at this one much.
• iFish wants to do it in Java, which sounds like a good, cross-platform idea, and he claims things like fast database updates that only write the changes; but so far hasn't released anything.

But in the end, after playing with this stuff for several days, I realized it was sort of a moot point. The only ID3 tags the iRiver database understands are artist, album, song, and genre. Most MP3s are named after the song anyway. How hard is it to then group them by album and artist? If you put them in folders calld "Artist-Albumname," you even save yourself a few clicks of that weird iRiver joystick. If you want to be super anal, you can even lump the artist folders under genre folders. In the end, the navigation is about the same.

I'm told the iRiver can do searches on the whole database, which might be handy. But I quickly realized that the main reason it would be handy was because ID3 tags are often corrupted. If you have albums by "Police" and "The Police," they'll show up in two totally different areas of the ID3 navigation. Not so if you manually threw them both into the same directory in the filesystem. There's no way to manually modify ID3 tags with the device; anytime you spot errors, you'll have to go back to the PC, update the tags, and rebuild the database.

In the end, I decided it was much more efficient, and much more forgiving of weird tags on downloaded MP3s, if I just managed the organization of the thing myself, using old fashioned files and folders.

P.S. And if that post doesn't earn a +1 Informative, I don't know what does!

This is why I don't read PC Mag....

[BestNicksRTaken]

I mean they left out the best players (and probably the only ones /.'ers are interested in) the iRiver iHP-140 and Rio Karma - Hell they even left out the Archos range!

Oh, they all play Ogg BTW....

This is true!

[porky_pig_jr]

In fact, German soldiers ate so many frog legs they just couldn't resist the allied invasion. A fact unfortunately missed by many WWII Historians.

What about digital restrictions management?

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital restrictions management has held up my purchasing plans for portable music players, for a stereo player for our cars, and for portable players. And more than likely, will hold up purchases of televisions in the future, until I know we won't be buying technology that prevents us from listening to or watching music/movies we paid for.

Does the article cover which units incorporate drm? Are there any comprehensive web sites that do the same?

While its possible to burn a cd with mp3's and take it to the local electronics super store to check to see if the units prevent playback (car stereos), it isn't possible to do this with portable stereos or personal players. Also, this eliminates the ease of, and savings through, searches over the internet for the same hardware.

So drm? or not?

Re:What about digital restrictions management?

[casuist99]

Just a thought - rather than asking everyone if the article covers units which incorporate DRM, you could READ the article.

That said, and so I'm not just being a typical /. poster, YES, the article mentions devices which use DRM.

I skimmed it, already owning a player, but for example the Sony NET/MD walkman incorporates DRM, and they even mention how it doesn't detract too much from the device features. For the MD walkmen (I own one), the DRM just prevents using the player as a portable hard drive for transferring music. Admittedly, this is a restriction. However, if all players incorporated this, I wouldn't see a HUGE problem with it. You have full control at your own computer which you'd use most of the time.

For transferring files (mp3 included), use a key drive or some such. The iRiver players (with a firmware upgrade) can funtion as USB mass storage and essentially become key drives with headphones.

In short, DRM doesn't ruin a player. I know it's the slashdot knee-jerk reaction, but I'm fine if the usability of my player is retained.

Re:What about digital restrictions management?

[guidryp]

I don't care about using the player as a means to transfer music. I have 96MB flash player. If I want to trade files I am not going to use a 96mb flash player.

What I care about is the really awful DRM software that comes with it that you are forced to use rather than a simple drag and drop model that it should use.

There may be a DRM argument for the big HD players, but for small flash players it does nothing but inconvenience the legitimate use.

So for me DRM does ruin the player. I end up leaving the same tunes on there for months because the software is so bad I am loathe to use it.

I will never buy another DRM player.

Soviets

[meehawl]

The loser usually suffers more loses.

I think you are using bias selection to justify your preconception. The Soviets lost the most during WW2 by a huge margin, but they were one of the victors. Overall, the "score" in WW2 in terms of military casualties was

Allies / Axis
17.2 million / 5.4 million

Therefore it seems that the Axis was a lot more "efficient" at warfare than the Allies. Or a lot less wasteful. And yet they lost.

Re:tangent: shure e2,e3 earphone frequency respons

[WaltFrench]

You'll find charts on the Ety's from their website. They also have some comments about accuracy... I interpreted it as a claim that you want to reproduce the typical response of a high-end audio system, rather than strictly neutral, because all the material that you'll listen to has been tuned to be played thru the former.

That may be your typical marketing lies to cover up the high-end rolloff, but it certainly has a ring of truth to it and it'd seem very possible to put out a lot more energy at the high freq's if they wanted to. Most of the issues with these micro plugs seems to be on the bass end, which looks and sounds very respectable.

this writeup is awful.

[corian]

...The editor's choice among the models compared includes Apple iPod Mini and iRiver iFP-390T. The editors ...

As you admit in the second snippet, there was more than one editor. And these editors made more than one choice. Plus, the decision was already made before publication. So you while you said "the editor's choice ... includes", you SHOULD have said "the editors' choices ... included".

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[dimfeld]

iripdb's source is said to be POSIX compatible, so you should be able to compile it with no problem on OS X.

What were they using

[Pingsmoth]

as their test machine?

iTunes was also agonizingly slow; ripping a CD at 192 Kbps with error correction took 53 minutes. Musicmatch did this in about 15 minutes.

I have a slow G4, at 1GHz, and it rips a CD at 192 Kbps, using VBR, with error correction, in just a couple of minutes. I guess if it's PCMag they were probably using a PC, but still...

Re:Does it have the iPod battery problem?

[DakotaK]

My Karma experience is a bit mixed. Normally, I love it. The USB 2.0 won't work for some reason anymore (not a problem - I normally used the network interface anyway). Also, about three days ago I was in my car, and the tracks got all sorts of fucked up, it'll display one song and play another. I'm sure this isn't a big deal as to I'm going to delete the offending tracks and reupload them. Overall though, the Karma's pretty intuitive. I'm not sure I'd still 100% reccomend it given the problems/gripes I've had, but it's still worth a serious look.

WMA/AAC/ATRAC3 beats MP3?

[Chazmati]

Most people are content to stick with the evergreen MP3 format, perhaps unaware that second-generation audio codecs such as Microsoft's WMA, the consortium-driven AAC, and Sony's ATRAC3 can compress a song file to about half the size of an equivalent MP3 file.

Did anyone notice this quote from the link? I wasn't aware that WMA beat MP3. I thought Microsoft just bumped the levels up 3dB on WMA files so they sounded 'better'. Is this bull?

I mean, if your encoder isn't up to snuff, then I'd believe it. But MP3 quality can be very high; IIRC it was tested by professionals in double-blind tests and they couldn't tell 128kbps apart from uncompressed 44.1 kHz 16-bit digital.

ipod killer

[sgtron]

if you're looking for an ipod killer" i think i have the site for you.

Sony ATRAC

[Saturninus]

Why doesn't Sony just release a hard drive based player that reads their propetary ATRAC format? From what I hear ATRACs take up way less space than MP3s. They could possibly win out in the war over propetary sound formats.

Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has some glibc dependencies which rule out the BSDs, don't know if that includes OSX. I've got a nearly finished iriver DB manager tool which can update existing databases as well as create new ones from scratch, I'll release it when it's had a little more polish.

Target Demographics

[TiggsPanther]

"Target demographics" (and falling outside them) are often a part of the proble, though. being a geek who can't stand sport and hase an incredible eclectic taste in music and TV (but one which doesn't usually correspond with what's mainstream) then I find myself always outside someone's target demographic.

But this doesn't really encourage me to want to play ball. It's hard to want to support entertainment industries that show me very little advantage. especially here in the UK, my interests are quite often catered for as an afterthought with a grossly inflated pricetag.

They sell for too much with extra features I don't need or want. Yet won't go for a decent (and robust/high-quality) budget option most of the time.

Tiggs

iRiver HP120 rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, iRiver can't be bothered supplying wh*res to these magazine guys and they leave out the best MP3 player out of their review! Huh!

I have had the HP120 for three months now and I love it to bits as much as my iBook.

And what do we do when one of these batteries dies

[jotaeleemeese]

Why they don't make it easily replaceable?

Why?