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MP3 Player Shoppers Guide
An anonymous reader writes "Says this three-part rundown of the latest DAPs "When Sony execs crowed a few weeks ago that their latest MP3 players were THE iPod Killers one thing was obvious. They were oblivious to the fact that the term "iPod Killer" had already gone from clever market-speak to running joke." Still, quite a few neat players here and I bet most don't scratch up as bad as iPods do."
They won't put a dent in the iPod sales, either.
This issue is user experience. You can add all the gadgetry you want, but it becomes a complex tool. People want their music device simple, easy to navigate and elegant. They don't want the kitchen sink thrown into the tool.
The iPOD represents and is a way of life. Anything other than the real thing is not worth the effort, and Sony will discover this pretty soon. Others did discover this long time ago...including Dell and Microsoft.
Looks like sony wants to have their cake and eat it too. If its not legal to rip their music. Then how is their MP3 player supposed to be filled? I guess its ok to rip OTHER peoples music.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
Are those players at least DRM-free and how about the Linux driver support? This are some if the things that are becoming increasingly important purchase criteria for devices.
If I had the cash allocated for an mp3 or ogg player right now I would go with the Neuros 442. It's got a 40 GB drive, lets you record audio and video from numerous sources, tonnes of features. Plus the company supports open source development. Shouldn't we all be supporting a company like this? Or has someone here had bad experience with Neuros?
Look at the new video formats supported by iTunes and iPod Video. The H.264 320x240 AAC format will quickly become a standard much like the MP3. Everyone is converting funny videos, music videos, TV-show episodes and full length movies into H.264.
QuickTime is now installed on most Wintel computers from using the trojan horse iTunes. QuickTime is far more popular today than Real and close to Windows Media. And QuickTime 7 with H.264 is fricking excellent. Even Sony disitributes their stuff using QuickTime today.
And you can easily encode your own (and DRM-free) stuff into H.264 with QuickTime or with open source stuff like mencoder. Much like iTunes and iPod allows you to use ripped and even pirated MP3s in your collection
Steve Jobs is a truely excellent player. This part of the game will be really fun to watch.
And do keep in mind that the Sony rootkit could in theory come in from a USB device like it does from a CD. I would go with iPod. Apple is not likely to make the same mistake that Sony did. Or I would hope not.
Sony will only have an XYZ killer when they abandon Digital Restrictions Management. Who wants to buy restrictions?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
In my case, having my entire collection is even better since the only place I use my iPod is in my car (connected to my Alpine head unit via an adapter). On a long drive, it's nice to have my entire collection to choose from.
Just because you don't want or understand why somebody would want their entire collection doesn't mean it's not a valid thing to want. Your understanding is irrelevant.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
People who think they need to carry around their 'entire music collection' are being pretty anal. Build a 'playlist,' stuff it in your player, and go out and enjoy listening to it. The only people who need to carry their entire music collection with them at all times are the homeless.
It really depends on your usage. If I were jogging, or commuting, I might want a limited storage flash player. I have a CD player in my car for that, and a dozen burned CDs. Yet I also have a 20gb Archos MM. I use it for a portable HD, usually having ~10gb of music on it. I rarely use it for an MP3 player. Unless I'm on a trip. Nothing sucks more when on a road trip than having to listen to the same damn songs over & over. Well, ok, listening to the radio or not having any music at all would suck more, but just barely.
Different devices for different uses. That's the beauty of Apple's ipod scheme. They have an ipod for just about every possible use, and most price points. All using a similar interface. When my Archos bites the dust, I'll most likely get some flavor of ipod.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
I briefly looked at the list, and I didn't see any player supporting AAC format (Of course, I guess that apple don't license their format for other players). All my music collection is managed by iTunes, and most of my files are AAC. If I wanted to buy a portable player, what choices I have other than iPod?
The iPod Killer must come with an iTunes Killer!
perception is reality
HD-based players are still too pricy for the average consumer. Yet the price of them hasn't changed significantly in years. Surely the drives in them are cheaper and easier to produce than they were in 2001 - so why has the price not come down significantly?
Instead, the consumer is forced to make ridiculous compromises like "will you pay $100 less and get 1/10 the storage?" Or, "How about $200 less, and you don't get a screen or any control over the playlist either."
I look over that list, and pretty much all of them, within their subclass, are IDENTICAL. The only difference is the brand name and the particular shape of the player. And, in fact, it seems like the entire industry is becoming LESS innovative, not more, especially with Rio leaving the market. I couldn't even tell you the difference between most of those.
And then people wonder why Apple has all the market share. It's the only brand name most people can name, the only one they've heard of, and none of the other models offer ANYTHING substantial to recommend themselves over it. And in the meantime, no one seems willing to try to open the market up a bit by making good players available at affordable prices.
It seems like, once again, an example of the music industry collectively shooting itself in the foot, and then whining about why no one else lives in the same world they do.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
The only people who need to carry their entire music collection with them at all times are the homeless.
Nobody needs to carry music anywhere. MP3 players are about fun. I think it's more fun to just slap every CD I have into my hard drive MP3 player and not worry about shuffling playlists back and forth.
Is it seen as a USB mass storage device ? If not, you have failed. I do not want to see any kind of your proprietary software on my PC to get access to your device.
I am suprised that the iAudio X5 was not mentioned: its a superb device, marred by only 2 possible flaws that I know of:
Maybe the fact that you cannot buy it in retail stores was a problem for the reviewers. Even so, video support, Ogg, USB host, full USB mass storage implementation, long battery life ... its hard not to gush.
I believe the grandparent was using the term Trojan Horse in the classical sense, rather than the malware sense. iTunes is used to sneak in QuickTime. A lot of people now have QuickTime installed as a result of iTunes requiring it who would not have installed it as a stand-alone download. It does not imply that anything underhand or illegal was done.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Plenty of models have FM radio but what's so hard about AM? I want to listen to talk radio and have MP3 as a backup for when hosts I don't like come on. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who want to listen to sports broadcasts.
One main thing kept me from buying an iPod when I was MP3 player shopping.
The fact that you need to use an app (like iTunes) to load music onto it that you want to listen to.
To me, a hard-drive based digital audio player should be able to play music copied to it via Windows Explorer or Konqueror or whatever file manager you prefer to use, on whatever operating system you prefer to use.
Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.
I don't like paying that kind of money for a device and feeling restricted.
Which was why I took my $300 and went with a different player. What I ended up with actually does more, as it turns out, than the iPod, and does it cheaper and it works the way I want it to.
Drag, drop, play. Simple. No annoying applications necessary, no annoying and unnecessary compulsory synchronization with my computer.
Personally, I think the iPods are pretty slick, but that one thing is enough to make me unwilling to shell out my bucks for it.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
Shouldn't we all be supporting a company like this? Or has someone here had bad experience with Neuros?
No, people just don't care. Recording? Most people don't care. Most walkmans couldn't record, and portable CD players sure couldn't. Didn't stop them being sold. Open source? Who care, most people aren't interested in futzing with the internals. I suppose it's a good product for people who like Linux, though. So would have been an open source (open firmware?) walkman back in the 1980s. Most people wouldn't have cared to buy one, though.
My wife has had a Soniqcast Aireo 1Gig for 10 months. She (and I) LOVE it.
It has an FM tuner, as WELL as a built in FM transmitter, adjustable to ANY FM Freq (not just 5 or so).
Think that is neat, that is nothing compared to the built in 802.11b wireless! you can leave your Aireo in the car, and have it sync up with your PC in your house late at night. Or, if you're sitting near a WAP out and about, you can connect up to your audible.com account and download books, or newspapers over the internet!
Sonicast is now selling a 20Gig model with similar features. (or will be soon)
The only 2 donwfalls are that the interface on the player is so-so, and you need MS Windows to Sync playlists.
http://www.soniqcast.com/
I personaly enjoy my Archos AV480, no wireless or FM, but It can store/play/record video, and works well with Linux, MacOSX, or Windows.
-=Down Syndrome in Maine
I fail to see why including an FM tuner in a personal digital audio player is some great "feature." I use a personal MP3 player precisely because commercial FM radio sucks the sweat from a syphillitic donkey's testicles. WhyTF do Creative and iRiver think that's a killer addition to the capabilities of their products? Now, a digital audio player with integrated XM/Sirius real-time receiver (not recorded from a base-station), and a user-replaceable Li-ion battery pack - that'd be an iPod "killer."
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
Although I can't speak for the person who posted the grandparent comment, I can say that I have about that amount of music on my iPod and I'm glad it's all there. I don't listen to all of it, but depending on my mood I'm glad I have the choice of listening to any particular subset. I usually do this by setting the iPod on shuffle. When it starts to play something I don't really feel like listening to at that moment, I hit the "next track" button. This is entirely adapative. The songs I listen to change as my mood changes, and my mood changes as the songs change.
This wouldn't be nearly so nice if I tried to guess my mood a day in advance while sitting at my computer. I'm very happy to carry my entire music collection.
I haven't seen one yet in person (they're only available for sale at Wal-Mart online, right?) but I considered the MobiBlue, and my impression is that the cube isn't a very good shape for carrying around-- 1" by 1" by 1" may not seem big, but in a jacket or jeans pocket I would guess it would get annoying fast. The "stick" style of the Shuffle and many others seem a lot more appropriate for portability.
BTW I bought a Shuffle-- not that it's the best or has the most features, but the refurb 1 gig models going for $99 on the Apple site were hard to pass up.
Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.
You might have missed the point of the iPod. Remember that computers are great at handling large amounts of tiny pieces of information, and great at performing rule-based actions. Managing your MP3 player manually is like editing your web site using a text editor. Sure, you have 100% control. Sure, your HTML looks exactly like you want it to. But it just doesn't scale. Have more than N pages, you need a content management system. iTunes is your content management system for music. Stop micromanaging, give up control, gain command.
--Bud
Great, have fun not having the advantage of auto-filling the music player with specially designed playlists. I can fill my iPod with highest-rated songs, or songs of a certain decade, etc. You're missing the whole point of a metadata-based jukebox application.
It feels weird to me that you feel "limited" by iTunes. I would feel limited having to use the FInder to manually drag-and-drop files to the iPod. I like that iTunes auto-syncs my songs whenever I plug the player in whenever I add new music to iTunes. If I set a rating on my iPod, it will appear in iTunes next time I sync, my playcounts will update, etc. You won't be able to do that in Konquerer or Explorer.
"Sufferin' succotash."
But that's my point... I shouldn't need to use a specialized utility to put music files on what basically amounts to a portable USB hard drive.
If the player can't play files simply dragged and dropped onto it, it's broken.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
Great, have fun not having the advantage of auto-filling the music player with specially designed playlists.
:-)
Ugh, no thank you. I have my entire CD collection ripped and on my Archos player... that's around 2300 tracks. I like to be able to find things when I want them. I don't want some application automatically moving things to and from it.
I wouldn't be able to stand that.
Besides, iTunes doesn't work on Linux.
I can fill my iPod with highest-rated songs, or songs of a certain decade, etc. You're missing the whole point of a metadata-based jukebox application.
Not at all.
I have every song from every CD I own on my Archos Gmini. With the "Arclibrary" app on the player itself, I can browse through things by genre, by release date, by artist, or by album. I can create playlists on the fly with just about any computer-based music player I have seen, and load them on my player, or I can use the player itself to create playlists.
I'm not missing a thing, trust me.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
The Archos Gmini 400 player I have can do all that too, and it doesn't require me to use any one app. It can work with some computer-based music playing programs for playlist/metadata management, but it isn't required to.
Myself, I drag-and-drop actual files onto it, but then, I keep ALL my music on it all the time, so that isn't very labor intensive. Whenever I get a new CD, I rip it and add it to the music already on it.
Where playlists are concerned, I make those most of the time on the device itself, a lot of times by genre or artist, depending on my mood. I have a bunch of different playlists on it that I cycle through and play around with.
And I'll bet it doesn't take me any longer to do it on the Gmini 400 than it does you on your iPod.
That's the difference. Flexibility. It has the same capabilities, but doesn't shove one-way-and-one-way-only in your face if that's not the way you want to do it.
I can load music on my Archos player and listen to it... from ANY computer I've tried, regardless of what music apps are installed on that computer, regardless of operating system... Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Can your iPod do that?
Oh yeah. I have several of my favorite DVDs ripped that I can watch on my Archos player too. It also has a line out adapter to display video on a TV if I want to play something that others can enjoy as well.
And the Gmini 400 has a voice recorder on it.
And a 10 hour battery life that recharges pretty quickly.
My point isn't so much a plug for my player of choice as much as it is to say that iPods and iTunes aren't exactly the be-all-end-all of digital audio players. They're good, but the majority of their popularity is due to the marketing genius of its makers, not its usability and flexibility and quality.
For slightly less money I wound up (after doing quite a lot of research) purchasing a device that is actually quite a bit more user-friendly and totally cross-platform, and has more capabilities to boot.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
The reason there are no competitors to the iPod is because the iPod got it right way before anyone else. Like with any technology, a competitor has to be twice as good or half the price to really make any headway. The fact is that no competitor will EVER be twice as good or half the price because the iPod has already maximized both.
I'm not sure how it gets easier than putting in a new CD, ripping it, and then plugging in my player's USB cable and copying the album to it.
I suppose I could rip directly to it, and skip a step.
I guess I don't follow what you're saying. How does adding the necessity for a proprietary app make things somehow "easier"?
???
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
For most people, simplicity is the argument here. Your average file manager doesn't do ripping of songs to audio files, so you're going to have to use an auxiliary app anyway (proprietary or not) - just using iTunes (or for that matter Windows Media Player or any other half-decent media player) makes it simpler by keeping the number set at 1.
;)), and so I'm happier with a DB-based player, but that doesn't mean that I'm in front of the rally to destroy FS-based players forever. There's no perfect solution, and both clearly need to be around for the foreseeable future.
Both database-based and filesystem-based players are about copying from the hard drive to the device. FS-based players are great because you're not being locked down to one computer, or a class of apps that can write to the database. DB-based players are great because of faster indexing (it's being indexed piece-by-piece as you copy tracks over) and because of a better mold when it comes to abstractions. The necessity for an auxiliary app is to make more features available (things like Smart Playlists or even keeping a track in multiple playlists at once) without resorting to messy abstractions. (I have no idea how to replicate Smart Playlists with *just* the file system, but I do know that symlinks would do it for keeping one thing in multiple places.)
In the end, it's all about choosing what's right for you. If you are set on wanting to keep it all in the file system, or if you simply just want a flat list or simple folder hierarchy, or if you simply want to avoid hokey database-updating apps (I can't tell from your comment if your beef is with non-open-and-documented DBs or with an auxiliary app needed to maintain it in the first place), well, then you don't need the extra features and the extra hassle with a DB-based player. Good on ya. But that's no reason for blowing off the other approaches. I use Smart Playlists heavily (could you tell?
Did GP poster say Fairplay DRMed AAC? No? Well then, isn't AAC an open format? At least as open as MP3 or anything a Sony 'iPod Killer' is going to support. I know I rip all my CDs to AAC. It isn't lock-in. It's lack of support from vendors. And if those vendors want to steal iPod marketshare, they'd better make switching as painless as possible. Re-ripping an entire CD collection will not be painless. They'd better get on the ball as far as importing from an iTunes library goes too, otherwise, they're going nowhere. And it isn't like reading a simple "iTunes Music Library.xml" file is hard. They're selling half the product you get with an iPod. All they've got is hardware. It's no wonder they all fail.