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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."
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.
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"
earbud quality != player sound quality
It's a great player that competes in the same market as those test, and it plays Vorbis and FLAC.
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.
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...
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!
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...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I know first hand, I have one.
Here is the firmware for it.
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!
"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"?
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.
has an FM reciever...
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
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.
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.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
That is the Rome MP3 player. Tech Report Review
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.
C-x C-s C-x k
"If you use iTunes, the only handheld player that can help you is an iPod."
This is just not true.
--Richard
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
It really could be an iPod-killer if only it supported Macs -- all the software downloads on the support page are .exe files :(.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
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?
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.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I own a Rio Nitrus. Some of the things I like about it are:
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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
Great argument!
~SpermanHerman
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.
Is there a "least likely to be taken from you at gunpoint" category?
Z
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
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.
- 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.Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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 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.
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.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
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.
Da Blog
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.
... 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. ..."
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:
"
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.
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.