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#1
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MP3 Players
As Frank wrote, consumers do the cutest things. So I want to be a
consumer for a few hours at a time when I'm on a long drive or flight. I have a cheap and crummy MP3 player, a TrekStor iBeat emo that I've been using for a couple of years since I left a slightly better one on a plane and it was never recovered. I have a couple of trips coming up and was thinking about a small upgrade, particularly since the battery in my present one which used to be good for about 8 hours of playback now poops out after about six. I record music radio shows on my computer and then transfer those to the player when I go on a trip. Unlike most consumers who want 5,000 songs on their player, I typically have eight to ten "songs" which are 1 to 3 hours long loaded on my player. Mostly they're 128 to 192 kbps MP3 files - no need to get any better than that given the source (an on-line stream) and the listening environment. I'm only listening with half a brain anyway. So I picked up an Eclipse 180 player at Micro Center the other day. It was $18 plus a $10 rebate. A year ago they had practically a whole aisle of players, this time there were only about half a dozen. But how could I go wrong for $8. It has 4 GB of storage (my present one has only 2) and does all the right things. I'm not a "light and day difference" kind of a guy but this one really sounds a whole lot better than the iBeat emo playing the same file and listening on the same headphones. But . . (there's always a but) there are two annoyances. First is that the buttons aren't very responsive. Press a button and it takes a couple of seconds (which seems like an eternity) before something happens. When I'm driving, I want to be able to select a program to play in a quick glance and don't want to keep watching it and waiting for it to react. The other annoyance is that it comes pre-loaded with about 20 songs, some pictures of the bands, a short video, the documentation, and a few Windows programs for organizing files on the player and converting video and audio formats. While it's possible to load it by dropping files from the computer into the player (some of these things require iTunes or Windows Media Player to load them), I can't get rid of the pre-loaded garbage. I can delete the songs, videos, and programs, but the next time I power it up, it re-loads them, apparently from internal memory that can't be accessed from the outside. Space isn't a big deal - all this stuff totals less than 200 MB, so I could probably squeeze one more program on it if I could recover that storage space. But those songs clutter up the screen so there are always a few button presses (and the sluggish response) before I can get to my folder of radio programs. I found a pretty detailed forum about MP3 players, so I posted my needs and wants there, as well as my budget ($30, in a community that spends hundreds of dollars on these things but seems to understand the rest of ous). It appears that the darling of that forum in my price range is the Samsa Clip Zip or Clip Plus. They look OK on line, but I know that every forum community seems to have its favorite products (certainly it's true here) so I'm wondering if anyone here has a different idea as to what I should get. I'll probably keep the Eclipse, at least through my upcoming trips, and see if I get used to it. It's only $8 (and I could, and would take it back if I really didn't want it). Just wanting to see if anyone here has any experience or bias. -- For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com |
#2
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
Looking around online, the Samsa Clip doohickeys will play .wav and .flac files, though they sem to require Windows Media Player to load them. No word if they'll handle 24-bit files.
Why do I care? It'd be nice to be able to take remastered 78s and LP cuts to the radio station without having to burn a CD for one or two songs. Peace, Paul |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/15/2013 5:32 AM, Mike Rivers wrote:
As Frank wrote, consumers do the cutest things. So I want to be a consumer for a few hours at a time when I'm on a long drive or flight. I have a cheap and crummy MP3 player, a TrekStor iBeat emo that I've been using for a couple of years since I left a slightly better one on a plane and it was never recovered. I have a couple of trips coming up and was thinking about a small upgrade, particularly since the battery in my present one which used to be good for about 8 hours of playback now poops out after about six. I record music radio shows on my computer and then transfer those to the player when I go on a trip. Unlike most consumers who want 5,000 songs on their player, I typically have eight to ten "songs" which are 1 to 3 hours long loaded on my player. Mostly they're 128 to 192 kbps MP3 files - no need to get any better than that given the source (an on-line stream) and the listening environment. I'm only listening with half a brain anyway. So I picked up an Eclipse 180 player at Micro Center the other day. It was $18 plus a $10 rebate. A year ago they had practically a whole aisle of players, this time there were only about half a dozen. But how could I go wrong for $8. It has 4 GB of storage (my present one has only 2) and does all the right things. I'm not a "light and day difference" kind of a guy but this one really sounds a whole lot better than the iBeat emo playing the same file and listening on the same headphones. But . . (there's always a but) there are two annoyances. First is that the buttons aren't very responsive. Press a button and it takes a couple of seconds (which seems like an eternity) before something happens. When I'm driving, I want to be able to select a program to play in a quick glance and don't want to keep watching it and waiting for it to react. The other annoyance is that it comes pre-loaded with about 20 songs, some pictures of the bands, a short video, the documentation, and a few Windows programs for organizing files on the player and converting video and audio formats. While it's possible to load it by dropping files from the computer into the player (some of these things require iTunes or Windows Media Player to load them), I can't get rid of the pre-loaded garbage. I can delete the songs, videos, and programs, but the next time I power it up, it re-loads them, apparently from internal memory that can't be accessed from the outside. Space isn't a big deal - all this stuff totals less than 200 MB, so I could probably squeeze one more program on it if I could recover that storage space. But those songs clutter up the screen so there are always a few button presses (and the sluggish response) before I can get to my folder of radio programs. I found a pretty detailed forum about MP3 players, so I posted my needs and wants there, as well as my budget ($30, in a community that spends hundreds of dollars on these things but seems to understand the rest of ous). It appears that the darling of that forum in my price range is the Samsa Clip Zip or Clip Plus. They look OK on line, but I know that every forum community seems to have its favorite products (certainly it's true here) so I'm wondering if anyone here has a different idea as to what I should get. I'll probably keep the Eclipse, at least through my upcoming trips, and see if I get used to it. It's only $8 (and I could, and would take it back if I really didn't want it). Just wanting to see if anyone here has any experience or bias. Are you just trying to **** me off? See my post awhile ago called *Road Noise Cancelled* 8/26/2013 and my followup if you want to or don't. :-o |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/17/2013 1:40 PM, HIO wrote:
On 9/15/2013 5:32 AM, Mike Rivers wrote: As Frank wrote, consumers do the cutest things. So I want to be a consumer for a few hours at a time when I'm on a long drive or flight. I have a cheap and crummy MP3 player, a TrekStor iBeat emo that I've been using for a couple of years since I left a slightly better one on a plane and it was never recovered. I have a couple of trips coming up and was thinking about a small upgrade, particularly since the battery in my present one which used to be good for about 8 hours of playback now poops out after about six. I record music radio shows on my computer and then transfer those to the player when I go on a trip. Unlike most consumers who want 5,000 songs on their player, I typically have eight to ten "songs" which are 1 to 3 hours long loaded on my player. Mostly they're 128 to 192 kbps MP3 files - no need to get any better than that given the source (an on-line stream) and the listening environment. I'm only listening with half a brain anyway. So I picked up an Eclipse 180 player at Micro Center the other day. It was $18 plus a $10 rebate. A year ago they had practically a whole aisle of players, this time there were only about half a dozen. But how could I go wrong for $8. It has 4 GB of storage (my present one has only 2) and does all the right things. I'm not a "light and day difference" kind of a guy but this one really sounds a whole lot better than the iBeat emo playing the same file and listening on the same headphones. But . . (there's always a but) there are two annoyances. First is that the buttons aren't very responsive. Press a button and it takes a couple of seconds (which seems like an eternity) before something happens. When I'm driving, I want to be able to select a program to play in a quick glance and don't want to keep watching it and waiting for it to react. The other annoyance is that it comes pre-loaded with about 20 songs, some pictures of the bands, a short video, the documentation, and a few Windows programs for organizing files on the player and converting video and audio formats. While it's possible to load it by dropping files from the computer into the player (some of these things require iTunes or Windows Media Player to load them), I can't get rid of the pre-loaded garbage. I can delete the songs, videos, and programs, but the next time I power it up, it re-loads them, apparently from internal memory that can't be accessed from the outside. Space isn't a big deal - all this stuff totals less than 200 MB, so I could probably squeeze one more program on it if I could recover that storage space. But those songs clutter up the screen so there are always a few button presses (and the sluggish response) before I can get to my folder of radio programs. I found a pretty detailed forum about MP3 players, so I posted my needs and wants there, as well as my budget ($30, in a community that spends hundreds of dollars on these things but seems to understand the rest of ous). It appears that the darling of that forum in my price range is the Samsa Clip Zip or Clip Plus. They look OK on line, but I know that every forum community seems to have its favorite products (certainly it's true here) so I'm wondering if anyone here has a different idea as to what I should get. I'll probably keep the Eclipse, at least through my upcoming trips, and see if I get used to it. It's only $8 (and I could, and would take it back if I really didn't want it). Just wanting to see if anyone here has any experience or bias. Are you just trying to **** me off? See my post awhile ago called *Road Noise Cancelled* 8/26/2013 and my followup if you want to or don't. :-o I mean :-) -- Here In Oregon Twitter: I don't tweet, I leave that to the birds. MySpace: Then put a lock on it. Facebook: Ever hear of the term identity theft? |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/17/2013 4:01 PM, PStamler wrote:
Looking around online, the Samsa Clip doohickeys will play .wav and .flac files, though they sem to require Windows Media Player to load them. No word if they'll handle 24-bit files. I read a very negative review of the Sansa ClipZip somewhere, maybe on Amazon where I didn't expect there to be a lot of technical knowledge. This person was griping because, he said, you needed to use Rhapsody to move files to it. I asked about that on this seemingly more knowledgeable forum that I found, and they said that wasn't the case. You could drag and drop or copy and paste. Why do I care? It'd be nice to be able to take remastered 78s and LP cuts to the radio station without having to burn a CD for one or two songs. I took this Eclipse that I just bought on its maiden voyage today, flight from Washington to LA, then drive down to San Diego. It worked fine and didn't run out of battery. Thing is that this rental car I have (a Nissan Altima, but I guess Hertz buys the cheap ones) doesn't have a USB port so I had to run it with a cable from the headphone jack to the Aux jack on the car radio. The level was a bit low (I had to ACTUALLY TURN UP THE VOLUME CONTROL HEAVEN FORBID) to get it up to the level of broadcast radio stations, even the classical station. But I had to do that with my old one, too. It does WAV, MP3, and FLAC, but I never tried it with 24-bit files. Remind me to try that when I get home next week. -- "Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then |
#6
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/17/2013 4:01 PM, PStamler wrote:
Looking around online, the Samsa Clip doohickeys will play .wav and .flac files, though they sem to require Windows Media Player to load them. No word if they'll handle 24-bit files. Why do I care? It'd be nice to be able to take remastered 78s and LP cuts to the radio station without having to burn a CD for one or two songs. Peace, Paul Hmm, couldn't you use a usb thumb drive? Are you limited to dumping the audio from the Samsa Clip doohickey via that tiny ear- bud connector? == Later... Ron Capik -- |
#7
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/18/2013 9:52 PM, Ron C wrote:
Hmm, couldn't you use a usb thumb drive? Are you limited to dumping the audio from the Samsa Clip doohickey via that tiny ear- bud connector? Yes, when I'm on an airplane, or in my own car that doesn't have a USB thingy, nor even an external analog audio input jack. == Later... Ron Capik -- -- "Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then |
#8
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
"Ron C" wrote in message ... On 9/17/2013 4:01 PM, PStamler wrote: Looking around online, the Samsa Clip doohickeys will play .wav and .flac files, though they sem to require Windows Media Player to load them. No word if they'll handle 24-bit files. Why do I care? It'd be nice to be able to take remastered 78s and LP cuts to the radio station without having to burn a CD for one or two songs. Peace, Paul Hmm, couldn't you use a usb thumb drive? Are you limited to dumping the audio from the Samsa Clip doohickey via that tiny ear- bud connector? Not a general limitation. I've used my Clip and Fuze to move software. It appears to a PC as a mass storage device - IOW a thumb drive. |
#9
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
Mike Rivers wrote "TURN UP THE VOLUME CONTROL HEAVEN FORBID) to get it up to the level of
broadcast radio stations, even the classical station. But I had to do " :facepalm: !!!! |
#10
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
I used to own the 16GB Sansa View - thought it was the best thing on earth with a headphone jack at the time! lol
Sansa's achilles heel was definitely it's firmware/OS. Thing froze up in shuffle mode, took forever to power up/shutdown, etc, failed to display album art you "know!" you added to your songs, etc. Feature-wise, as non-wifi digital media players, they were hard to beat. |
#11
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
A year ago they had practically a whole aisle of players, this time there were only about half a dozen. Probably because the modern cell phone takes the place of the mp3 player as well as countless other electronic devices that are becoming extinct. |
#12
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/20/2013 11:54 AM, Arny Krueger wrote:
I've run that configuration, and its downside if there is one, is that the micro SD card really slows down the time the player takes to reindex the file library after you update it. Doesn't seem to affect actual usage. Oh, yeah, and another thing - does it have any built-in capability for setting the order in which the files play? I think this Eclipse plays them in the order that there were loaded. I could occasionally get my old one to play in the order I wanted to hear them by betinning the file names with a number, and then loading themon in numerical order. But sometimes they got sorted in alphabetical order (could have been that's the order I had them in when I dragged them from the computer to the player) and got all of the shows of the same name playing one after the other before going on to another collection of all the same different name. The Eclipse can read a playlist file (and presumably follow it) but it takes some software running ot the computer to create it - at least for the first one so I can see what it looks like. But it's probably not a plain text file with the list of file names in order. That would be too easy. -- "Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then |
#13
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
"Mike Rivers" wrote in message ... On 9/20/2013 11:54 AM, Arny Krueger wrote: I've run that configuration, and its downside if there is one, is that the micro SD card really slows down the time the player takes to reindex the file library after you update it. Doesn't seem to affect actual usage. Oh, yeah, and another thing - does it have any built-in capability for setting the order in which the files play? In digital music player lingo, that would be a playlist, and yes the Sansa players support them There are any number of ways to create playlists, Google is your friend. Sansa provides software for computers to facilitate using their players, but most functions can be performed without it being loaded. There are also freeware playlist creators for Sansa players. |
#14
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/21/2013 5:52 AM, Arny Krueger wrote:
Sansa provides software for computers to facilitate using their players, but most functions can be performed without it being loaded. Apparently that's the way it is with all of them. I guess that since files go on to a disk in arbitrary places (been that way for 30 years or so now) it's necessary to make up a list the player can read to tell it what to look for next. I'm not opposed to the concept, I just wish I could just make up a text file of file names and not have to install and learn (so simple that only a child can do it) another program just to make up that file. -- "Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then |
#15
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 15 Sep 2013, Mike Rivers wrote in
rec.audio.pro: I found a pretty detailed forum about MP3 players, so I posted my needs and wants there, as well as my budget ($30, in a community that spends hundreds of dollars on these things but seems to understand the rest of ous). It appears that the darling of that forum in my price range is the Samsa Clip Zip or Clip Plus. They look OK on line, but I know that every forum community seems to have its favorite products (certainly it's true here) so I'm wondering if anyone here has a different idea as to what I should get. I have a Sansa Zip Clip. I like it. I used to have a 4-GB iPod Nano. I generally boycott Apple products, but I got this one in exchange for some computer repair work. The Nano is actually a very nice, elegant little machine. My only problem with it was that I wanted to carry more music than 4 GB. I lost the iPod several months ago, and I really didn't want to pay the price of a new iPod, so I looked around for an alternative, and the Zip Clip was my choice. I wanted the largest capacity for the least money. I bought an 8-GB unit, intending to add a micro SD card for more space. I had read about a program called MediaMonkey which seemed to do the good things I liked about iTunes, namely, the ability to create playlists on the computer and sync them to the Sansa ZC. I ran into a few problems along the way. There seemed to be some conflict in the combination of (a) my computer, (b) the ZC's firmware, and (c) Mediamonkey - the result being that it would take up to an hour to run a sync operation. The thing that fixed it for me was to install the Rockbox alternate firmware. Everything works well now, and a sync takes only seconds now. Then I had a problem with the micro SD card. I bought a 32-GB one so I could store most of my digital music library on the ZC. Turned out that the card just didn't work well with the ZC - it would sometimes be visible to the device, but then it would disappear. I then tried a 16- GB card, and that worked fine, so I've stuck with that, and it's plenty of storage for my purposes. So, anyway, I'm very happy with the ZC, but I had to jump through some hoops to get to that point. |
#16
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message ... "Mike Rivers" wrote in message ... On 9/20/2013 11:54 AM, Arny Krueger wrote: I've run that configuration, and its downside if there is one, is that the micro SD card really slows down the time the player takes to reindex the file library after you update it. Doesn't seem to affect actual usage. Oh, yeah, and another thing - does it have any built-in capability for setting the order in which the files play? In digital music player lingo, that would be a playlist, and yes the Sansa players support them There are any number of ways to create playlists, Google is your friend. Sansa provides software for computers to facilitate using their players, but most functions can be performed without it being loaded. There are also freeware playlist creators for Sansa players. Does it support the common .m3u playlists? Trevor. |
#17
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
PStamler wrote:
Why do I care? It'd be nice to be able to take remastered 78s and LP cuts to the radio station without having to burn a CD for one or two songs. My inclination is to do just that.... burn a CD, label it, add it to the station library for the next person that might want it. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#18
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
Scott Dorsey wrote:
PStamler wrote: Why do I care? It'd be nice to be able to take remastered 78s and LP cuts to the radio station without having to burn a CD for one or two songs. My inclination is to do just that.... burn a CD, label it, add it to the station library for the next person that might want it. --scott Some folk DJ's are receiving around two thousand CD's annually. Some station's physical libraries are bursting at the corners. Cataloging those burnt discs won't go happily, and the space will be reclaimed almost at once by the head librarion. Take 'em in on a USB stick/iPod/MPS player; play 'em and take 'em home so you'll be able to find 'em next time. -- shut up and play your guitar * HankAlrich.Com HankandShaidriMusic.Com YouTube.Com/WalkinayMusic |
#19
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/22/2013 10:42 PM, hank alrich wrote:
Some folk DJ's are receiving around two thousand CD's annually. Some station's physical libraries are bursting at the corners. Bluegrasscountry.org is all digital now. They just moved into a new studio last week and the "folk" DJs had to have a small riot to get them to bring over a couple of turntables. They get all the new bluegrass recordings loaded as soon as they come out, but the folk people have to fend for themselves. I haven't seen the new setup yet, but in the previous studio, if you wanted to plug in an MP3 player, you had to pull a DAT or cassette player off the shelf (none of either of those in the new studio) and plug in the MP3 player in its place. No patchbays in the on-air studio. -- "Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then |
#20
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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MP3 Players
On 9/15/13 8:32 AM, Mike Rivers wrote:
As Frank wrote, consumers do the cutest things. So I want to be a consumer for a few hours at a time when I'm on a long drive or flight. I Mike, look no further than Miffy. It's you. Here's a pic of my friend showing off hers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/3401325...9995/lightbox/ http://www.itechnews.net/2009/08/20/...fy-mp3-player/ -- Matt |
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