MP3 jukebox or CD Walkman or ??? for great sound (classical music)

[Texica]

Hi

Hope this is not too off-topic. If so feel free to ignore.

I am about to leave Europe for an extended stay in Asia. It is very
important to me to be able to listen to classical (mainly
Baroque/vocal) music during my trip. However there is no way I can
take my hi-fi system with me.

Could any of you help me decide what my best option is between:
- a plain vanilla CD walkman
- an MP3 CD walkman
- a hard-drive based MP3 jukebox player

Here is what I am looking for
- great sound quality
- gapless playback
- some mechanism to associate related tracks and play them in the
right order (playlists?)
- limited weight and good portability
- reasonable price tag (not more than $400)

I have read several reviews on the web as well as posts to relevant
newsgroups. It looks like the iRiver IHP 120 could meet my needs.
However sound quality seems to be an issue
(http://www.whooper.co.uk/iRiveriHP-120.htm) as well as gapless
playback.

What would you recommend me to buy?
Many thanks for your help

Texica

[Paul Rubin]

(Texica) writes:
> Could any of you help me decide what my best option is between:
> - a plain vanilla CD walkman
> - an MP3 CD walkman
> - a hard-drive based MP3 jukebox player

I don't see any reason to get a vanilla CD walkman--an MP3 cd walkman
costs about the same or just a few bucks more, and you don't have to
carry anywhere near as many discs around. In fact in Asia, lots of
mp3 cd discs are readily commercially available (a lot of them are
probably bootlegs though).

An HD player is nicest but costs a lot more. They also tend to be
battery hungry. I think I'd rather carry something less expensive and
less techy-looking, that attracts less attention.

> I have read several reviews on the web as well as posts to relevant
> newsgroups. It looks like the iRiver IHP 120 could meet my needs.
> However sound quality seems to be an issue
> (http://www.whooper.co.uk/iRiveriHP-120.htm) as well as gapless
> playback.

I'm not sure what the gapless playback issue is. The iRiver, like a
lot of these gadgets, has an internal, non-removable lithium ion
battery, and I think I'd find that intolerable. If you're travelling
around, you may not always have easy access to AC power for
recharging, and also, if the battery fails (which happens a lot), the
unit becomes useless until you can get it repaired. Other than that,
the iPod seems to be the unit of this type that everyone likes.

I have a Panasonic SL-SV550 am/fm/mp3 cd player and find its feature
set (limited) and sound quality satisfactory. However, it won't play
at more than medium volumes (I do NOT want to blast my ears, but the
output level is sometimes just too low for unstrained listening), and
it has an annoyingly-placed on-off button that easily gets pressed by
accident in my backpack, turning on the unit and draining the
batteries. Aside from that, it's nice; it can play MP3's for
something like 30 hours on a pair of AA cells (I usually use
rechargeables) and the AM/FM capability is nice for listening to the
news and stuff like that, handy for travelling. If I were doing it
again I'd shop for a different model with similar basic
characteristics but without the bugs.

[Marc Heusser]

In article >,
(Texica) wrote:

> Hi
>
> Hope this is not too off-topic. If so feel free to ignore.
>
> I am about to leave Europe for an extended stay in Asia. It is very
> important to me to be able to listen to classical (mainly
> Baroque/vocal) music during my trip. However there is no way I can
> take my hi-fi system with me.
>
> Could any of you help me decide what my best option is between:
> - a plain vanilla CD walkman
> - an MP3 CD walkman
> - a hard-drive based MP3 jukebox player
>
> Here is what I am looking for
> - great sound quality
> - gapless playback
> - some mechanism to associate related tracks and play them in the
> right order (playlists?)
> - limited weight and good portability
> - reasonable price tag (not more than $400)

If you leave for an extended stay, you'll want many tracks.
Take a look at Apple's iPod and iPod mini - you might like them :-)
(They work with Windows and Macs).
http://www.apple.com/ipodmini
http://www.apple.com/ipod

HTH

Marc

--
Marc Heusser
(remove the obvious: CHEERS and MERICAL...until end to reply via email)

[William Sommerwerck]

> An HD player is nicest but costs a lot more. They also tend
> to be battery-hungry. I think I'd rather carry something less
> expensive and and less techy-looking, that attracts less attention.

The iRivier HD players run up to 16 hours on a charge. They're small, and have a
corded remote that lets you operate them while they remain hidden in a pocket.

If you're worried about sound quality, an HD unit makes more sense, because you
can transfer 25 CDs to a 20GB drive as uncompressed WAV files, _without_ having
to use lossy encoding.


> I have read several reviews on the web as well as posts to relevant
> newsgroups. It looks like the iRiver IHP 120 could meet my needs.
> However sound quality seems to be an issue
> (http://www.whooper.co.uk/iRiveriHP-120.htm) as well as gapless
> playback.

The majority of listeners who've posted comments have strongly preferred the
iRiver to the iPod. On its own, through good headphones, I find the sound of the
iRiver to be exceptionally clean, transparent, and natural. There is nothing
about its sound that is immediately "wrong-sounding." It is absolutely NOT
either "tiny" or "tinny."

I listened to the first 10 minutes of the first act of "Die Walkure" on the
iHP-120 and the Sony D-555 Discman, using Sennheiser 580 Precision 'phones,
switching at appropriate points. (I have no idea what the "best-sounding"
Discman is or was (if there is/was such a model), but the D-555 was certainly
the fanciest Discman ever made.)

Both "sounded good." However, I judged the D-555 to be brighter,
harder-sounding, and sometimes a bit "edgy." The iHP-120 gave a noticeably
better presentation of the recording's ambience -- it was more coherent and
"related" better to the direct sounds.

I'm thoroughly familiar with this recording played through Apogee Divas driven
by Krell electronics. Though neither the Sony nor the iRiver's playback through
the Sennheisers matches the sound of my main system, neither is either in any
way a grossly inferior presentation. The iRiver is especially pleasing and
realistic.

This reviewer is almost certainly dead wrong. I'm a fussy listener (I used to
review for Stereophile, and I've made many live recordings of classical music),
and I've never owned to any portable audio device that has given me more
listening pleasure than the iHP-120.

The iRiver does not have gapless playback. This is a problem ONLY with operas or
other works with tracks inserted at points where there aren't natural breaks in
the music. I've asked iRiver to fix this (it's theoretically doable by altering
the firmware), but gotten no reply. You can correct this yourself with software
that lets you splice WAV files, or by transferring each CD as a single large
file.


> I'm not sure what the gapless playback issue is. The iRiver,
> like a lot of these gadgets, has an internal, non-removable
> lithium-ion battery, and I think I'd find that intolerable.

It would be nice to have a removable battery like a cell phone's, but then the
unit wouldn't be quite so small. The real issues are how often the battery needs
replacement (iRiver claims it's good for five years, even with daily use -- I
find this hard to believe), and the cost/difficulty of replacing it.


> If you're travelling around, you may not always have easy access
> to AC power for recharging...

The iRiver comes with a tiny universal charger that works from 90V to 250V. I
don't know if they have a car charger. But it you're "travelling around," you
probably have an inverter.

[Logan Shaw]

Texica wrote:
> Here is what I am looking for
> - great sound quality
> - gapless playback
> - some mechanism to associate related tracks and play them in the
> right order (playlists?)
> - limited weight and good portability
> - reasonable price tag (not more than $400)

I haven't used one, so I can't say anything about the sound quality,
but one hard disk based player nobody has mentioned yet is the Rio
Karma.

From the reviews I've found, it supports gapless playback in all
formats and user-editable (on the device) play lists. And user
reviews say that the manufacturer's claim of a 15-hour battery
life is really true. It supports more formats than most any
other player, including my favorite format, FLAC, which is lossless
and therefore could be useful if you are concerned about sound
quality.

List price is $350 and street price seems to be as low as $250.
The only down side I've heard is that build quality isn't as
good as it could/should be, and a number of the units have failed.
And it only has a 90-day warranty. But I suppose you could buy
it with an extended warranty that would long enough to get you
past the steep part of the "bathtub" failure curve. (I.e., if
it works for 1 year, it is like to work for quite some time.)

- Logan

[Texica]

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience!

> If you're worried about sound quality, an HD unit makes more sense, because you
> can transfer 25 CDs to a 20GB drive as uncompressed WAV files, _without_ having
> to use lossy encoding.

25 CDs might be a bit short for a 5 months stay. Do you have any
experience of recording classical music as MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WMA?
Which one is better? What bit rate would you recommend?

I guess the IHP 140 could be another option. Any experience with that
one? I guess it is exactly the same device as the IHP 120 but with a
larger HD.

> I'm thoroughly familiar with this recording played through Apogee Divas driven
> by Krell electronics. Though neither the Sony nor the iRiver's playback through
> the Sennheisers matches the sound of my main system, neither is either in any
> way a grossly inferior presentation. The iRiver is especially pleasing and
> realistic.

What about the iRiver's build? Some reviewers pretend it looks flimsy.
Do you feel it could break easily?

> The iRiver does not have gapless playback. This is a problem ONLY with operas or
> other works with tracks inserted at points where there aren't natural breaks in
> the music. I've asked iRiver to fix this (it's theoretically doable by altering
> the firmware), but gotten no reply. You can correct this yourself with software
> that lets you splice WAV files, or by transferring each CD as a single large
> file.

How long is the gap between tracks? I often listen to Bach cantatas
and passions. I feel that noticeable gaps could somehow ruin the
listening experience. What's your view?

[Texica]

> I haven't used one, so I can't say anything about the sound quality,
> but one hard disk based player nobody has mentioned yet is the Rio
> Karma.

This is indeed another serious contender. Unfortunately I haven't seen
any serious review (i.e. non purely technical) of that player yet.

I really wonder what the sound quality is like.

> It supports more formats than most any
> other player, including my favorite format, FLAC, which is lossless
> and therefore could be useful if you are concerned about sound
> quality.

That's a great point. Do you know of other suche formats? It is
unfortunate that the iRivier players do not support it.

> The only down side I've heard is that build quality isn't as
> good as it could/should be, and a number of the units have failed.

And it has a strange look too.
I guess competition will be hotting up in the coming months too and
other companies will be launching new products.

Thanks for your help.

[Arny Krueger]

Texica wrote:
> Hi
>
> Hope this is not too off-topic. If so feel free to ignore.

It's right on topic. Portable audio is an important segment.

> I am about to leave Europe for an extended stay in Asia. It is very
> important to me to be able to listen to classical (mainly
> Baroque/vocal) music during my trip. However there is no way I can
> take my hi-fi system with me.

True if you are currently bound to outdated technology.

> Could any of you help me decide what my best option is between:
> - a plain vanilla CD walkman
> - an MP3 CD walkman
> - a hard-drive based MP3 jukebox player

> Here is what I am looking for
> - great sound quality
> - gapless playback

dream on

> - some mechanism to associate related tracks and play them in the
> right order (playlists?)
> - limited weight and good portability
> - reasonable price tag (not more than $400)

> I have read several reviews on the web as well as posts to relevant
> newsgroups. It looks like the iRiver IHP 120 could meet my needs.
> However sound quality seems to be an issue
> (http://www.whooper.co.uk/iRiveriHP-120.htm)

It seems like he is having a hard time getting playback that is loud enough.

> as well as gapless playback.

dream on

> What would you recommend me to buy?

CD players and hard drive players strike me as being vastly different
animals. The hard drive player has to be preloaded with music, while you
carry around a goodly number of pre-recorded disks to listen to with the CD
player. You can hit a sort of middle ground if you have a CD player that
plays MP3 CDs.

The capacity of hard drive players for uncompressed files has been vastly
understated as it relates to most real-world recordings. A standard CD can
hold no more than 74 minutes of music which translates into 800 megabytes.
Indeed 800 megabytes will fit about 25 times into a typical 20 GB hard
drive player. However very few CDs whether or classical or popular have 74
minutes worth of music on them. A typical 12 track pop CD running about 3.5
minutes per track is only about 450 megabytes, which translates a capacity
of 44 CDs for a 20 GB player.

Most people only record their favorites on their hard drive players, so the
actual useful capacity might be more like 100 CDs, with the chaff never
being loaded. A CD player plus 100 CDs is considerably larger and heavier
than a hard drive player. The hard drive players as a class of devices also
have play list features that allow the listener considerable flexibility for
arranging the playback order to suit. The attractiveness of these features
will sway you one way or the other.

The one area where portable hard drive and flash memory players seem to vary
quite a bit is perceived sound quality. There are three main sources of
ambiguity in this area - one being the fact that a lot of MP3 and other
perceptually-coded files seem to get loaded and these are inherently
sonically degraded to varying degrees. Another variable relates to the
actual amount of audio signal that is delivered to the headphone jack,
European players being among the worst cases as a class of devices due to
legal constraints intended to avoid ear damage. Finally the listening
devices are themselves an important variable. They vary in terms of
sensitivity and over-all sound quality. It is possible to have a relatively
expensive player and then pay even more than the price of the player for the
listening devices.

If you want a specific recommendation, I see two ways to go - either for a
small, relatively pricey unit like the iRiver iHP-120 or 140 running around
$400 , or for the far less expensive, heavier and bulkier but still
great-sounding Nomad Jukebox 3 - available on eBay with factory warranty for
well under $200. In either case, Futuresonics ear monitors (AKA Sennheiser
IE3) are recommended for their great sound, good sensitivity and reasonable
price (about $150).

About that gapless playback? Dream on!

[Arny Krueger]

Texica wrote:
>> I haven't used one, so I can't say anything about the sound quality,
>> but one hard disk based player nobody has mentioned yet is the Rio
>> Karma.
>
> This is indeed another serious contender. Unfortunately I haven't seen
> any serious review (i.e. non purely technical) of that player yet.
>
> I really wonder what the sound quality is like.

A client bought one. I listened to it casually while setting up the computer
interface. I perceived that it wasn't capable of playing all that loudly.
The client shortly returned it to the dealer he bought it from, defective.
It's kinda chunky.

[Marc Heusser]

In article >,
(Texica) wrote:

> Thanks a lot for sharing your experience!
>
....
> 25 CDs might be a bit short for a 5 months stay. Do you have any
> experience of recording classical music as MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WMA?
> Which one is better? What bit rate would you recommend?

IF you go the iPod route: It will also play mp4 (aka AAC) files, which
are superior to mp3 at the same bit rate.
It also supports play lists, searching etc well.

You could even test it for free:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ - works on Macs and Windows
machines. You get roughly the same interface as on an iPod, the same
playlists, the same encoding, you'll also hear the gaps as on an iPod.

It is definitely possible to listen to classical music (even in mp3 at
128 to 192 kbit/s joint stereo, I do that with classical piano music
which is rather critical - mp4/AAC at 128 kbit/s is good enough) - this
will give you some 60 MB/h or roughly a 1:10 compression from CD.
Of course this does not replace the CD in all circumstances, but it is
definitely good enough for 5 months abroad.

>
....
> How long is the gap between tracks? I often listen to Bach cantatas
> and passions. I feel that noticeable gaps could somehow ruin the
> listening experience. What's your view?

See above, and try it for yourself.

HTH

Marc

--
Marc Heusser
(remove the obvious: CHEERS and MERICAL...until end to reply via email)

[Ricky W. Hunt]

"Texica" > wrote in message
m...
>
> 25 CDs might be a bit short for a 5 months stay. Do you have any
> experience of recording classical music as MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WMA?
> Which one is better? What bit rate would you recommend?
>

I haven't tried listening on a great monitoring system but for everyday
listening I can't accurately pick a MP3 encoded using the LAME encoder
(assuming it's set up properly) from the original CD. And file sizes are
only slightly larger than the "default" 128kbps of most other encoders.

I use Exact Audio Copy. I set mine up according to this info:
http://eac.forgiven5.com/eacsetup.htm. A little work but worth it.