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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."
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!
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?"think of it as evolution in action"
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.
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.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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?
Th
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
Celebrate Excellence!
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?
Picture 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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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.
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.
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
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
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.
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?
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
GPL Deconstructed
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:
:) )
... and lots of third party software like Opera (which is *real* good and usable), streaming radios clients, etc...
* 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...
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)
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.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
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.
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
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien