Yep, I'll second that. I just bought mine today (Circuit City didn't even have it out on the floor yet, I had to convince them that they really had one in stock, and to check in the back...) and I love it. All my mp3s are encoded with variable bit rate, which is IMHO the only way to go. Maximum quality without sacrificing much in file size. The Expanium works great with them too.
My one complaint so far is that even with the skip protection buffer on, there's still about a 2 second pause in between tracks when playing mp3s. This is annoying on those CDs where two tracks may run together without any break. Seems like if the thing is buffering ahead of itself, it ought to be able to get rid of the gap. But then, I've already whipped up a script to automatically re-convert those instances from two separate tracks to one big track for the Expanium. Perl rocks.;-) The script automatically reformats directories/filenames from my mp3 database into an iso image that the Expanium can understand, then burns it. I'm in the middle of making 3 CD-RWs for my business trip tomorrow. About 25-30 hours of music for the plane/hotel. Nice.
Guess I just couldn't wait til December. This may be the last portable CD/mp3 player I buy...
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My one complaint so far is that even with the skip protection buffer on, there's still about a 2 second pause in between tracks when playing mp3s. This is annoying on those CDs where two tracks may run together without any break. Seems like if the thing is buffering ahead of itself, it ought to be able to get rid of the gap. But then, I've already whipped up a script to automatically re-convert those instances from two separate tracks to one big track for the Expanium. Perl rocks. ;-) The script automatically reformats directories/filenames from my mp3 database into an iso image that the Expanium can understand, then burns it. I'm in the middle of making 3 CD-RWs for my business trip tomorrow. About 25-30 hours of music for the plane/hotel. Nice.
Guess I just couldn't wait til December. This may be the last portable CD/mp3 player I buy...