[mkr5000]

Other than using my computer, why in the ^&%$ isn't there a quality
MP3 player (meant for a component system) on the market?
ANYWHERE?

I know there are CD players with MP3 capability but I'm talking flash
drive 2gb - 4gb, a nice LCD readout and menu like you see in all the
portable stuff.

These little devices, although they can be interfaced to home audio,
sound like garbage when you do it.

They're meant to drive headphones.

There's no reason why you can't do a player in a larger package with
some quality audio drive for a pair of RCA jacks but it doesn't
exist !

Or does it? Please give some leads if you know of anything.

I suppose I may have to use a computer but I don't want a tank sitting
on my shelf.

[Richard Crowley]

"mkr5000" wrote ...
Other than using my computer, why in the ^&%$ isn't there a quality
MP3 player (meant for a component system) on the market?
ANYWHERE?

I know there are CD players with MP3 capability but I'm talking flash
drive 2gb - 4gb, a nice LCD readout and menu like you see in all the
portable stuff.

These little devices, although they can be interfaced to home audio,
sound like garbage when you do it.

They're meant to drive headphones.

Or perhaps your high-quality playback system is revealing the
deficiencies of the lossy MP3 compression. That seems far
more likely to me than "meant to drive headphones" Especially
when some players (iPod, for example) have line-level outputs
which bypass the headphone driver chip.

There's no reason why you can't do a player in a larger package with
some quality audio drive for a pair of RCA jacks but it doesn't
exist !

Or does it? Please give some leads if you know of anything.

They will make and sell whatever the marketplace wants.

[Michael Black]

mkr5000 ) writes:
Other than using my computer, why in the ^&%$ isn't there a quality
MP3 player (meant for a component system) on the market?
ANYWHERE?

"Quality" and MP3 is an oxymoron.

MP3s are by definition lower fidelity than previous formats. In order
to get all those songs into such a small space, something has to give
and it's audio quality. You need to look at that long before you think
the headphone output is the issue.

MP3s are great if you want a lot of music in one place. They are also a
great way of shuffling songs around digitally, so it doesn't take four
megs for a 4 minute song. In such circumstances, people are willing to
make sacrifices, and they sacrifice sound quality. It doesn't matter,
since MP3s were originally mostly used in computers where people connected
their sound cards to "computer speakers" that were horrible, or on portable
players where the headphones weren't necessarily so great and surrounding
sounds likely masked a lot of limitations.

You're bound to have "better sound" with MP3s that don't compress so much,
but then you lose that neat ability to make the song use as little ram
space as possible. That will be the limitation long before the use of
a headphone jack.

That said, there are starting to be "stereos" that have connectors for
USB and slots for cards. You just have to pay attention.

Michael

[mkr5000]

It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those lipstick size
players is as good what you could get from a state of the burr brown
op-amp designed for line output.

Now do you dig what I'm saying?

Gee, I wonder if this little Sandisk piece of crap is using a dual
polarity power supply?

MP3's CAN sound a lot better than this crap.....I just don't want to
use a friggin PC to get there.


Am I "paying attention" yet?

(just kidding).

[Richard Crowley]

"mkr5000" wrote ...
It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those lipstick size
players is as good what you could get from a state of the burr brown
op-amp designed for line output.

Perhaps not. But what we are saying is that the difference
between un-compressed CD data and compressed MP3
is likely completely swamping out any audible difference
between a high-end analog system and the analog parts
of a little portable player.

Perhaps the reason nobody makes a "high-end" MP3
playback device is that the format isn't worth the trouble.

[Michael Black]

"Richard Crowley" ) writes:
"mkr5000" wrote ...
It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those lipstick size
players is as good what you could get from a state of the burr brown
op-amp designed for line output.

Perhaps not. But what we are saying is that the difference
between un-compressed CD data and compressed MP3
is likely completely swamping out any audible difference
between a high-end analog system and the analog parts
of a little portable player.

Perhaps the reason nobody makes a "high-end" MP3
playback device is that the format isn't worth the trouble.

Maybe an analogy would help (or maybe not).

You never saw high end 8-track players, though there were some units
for use at home, component type, and I seem to recall even some recorders.

But since the 8-track system was quite limited to begin with, all the bells
and whistles and silver plating meant nothing, since it could never
fix up the basic limitations of 8-track.

Michael

[Mark D. Zacharias[_2_]]

"mkr5000" wrote in message
...
It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those lipstick size
players is as good what you could get from a state of the burr brown
op-amp designed for line output.

Now do you dig what I'm saying?

Gee, I wonder if this little Sandisk piece of crap is using a dual
polarity power supply?

MP3's CAN sound a lot better than this crap.....I just don't want to
use a friggin PC to get there.


Am I "paying attention" yet?

(just kidding).


I'm pretty sure the headphone output of my iPod Nano is equalized for the
earbud headphones that came with it. Sounds much better through the sync
cable than using the headphone output to the same system. Regarding yours,
I'd be looking at getting the USB output into the stereo somehow.

I find that high quality MP3's can be pretty darned good, sound
quality-wise. A LAME-encoded VBR is pretty transparent sonically as far as I
can tell, though a DBT might reveal some limitations.


Mark Z.

[Arny Krueger]

"mkr5000" wrote in message


It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those
lipstick size players is as good what you could get from
a state of the burr brown op-amp designed for line output.

The largest components in portable players a

(1) The battery
(2) The hard drive, if there is one
(3) The display


First off, commercial DAC chips, even the really high quality ones, are
often very tiny.

Secondly, DAC chips are generally not designed to drive line level outputs.
The problem of driving a line level output is up to the op amp buffer that
generally follows the DAC.

The most common reason why portable players have limited output voltage
capabilities is item number one on the list, above.

[Arny Krueger]

"Mark D. Zacharias" wrote in
message
et
"mkr5000" wrote in message
...
It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those
lipstick size players is as good what you could get from
a state of the burr brown op-amp designed for line
output. Now do you dig what I'm saying?

Gee, I wonder if this little Sandisk piece of crap is
using a dual polarity power supply?

LOL!

MP3's CAN sound a lot better than this crap.....I just
don't want to use a friggin PC to get there.

The best portable player I have is my M-Audio Microtrack. It's a little bit
short on having a full-featured music library, but it does a heck of a job
of recording and playing back. ;-)


I'm pretty sure the headphone output of my iPod Nano is
equalized for the earbud headphones that came with it.

Proably not, but something that is easy enough to measure.

Sounds much better through the sync cable than using the
headphone output to the same system.

Probably has something to do with what the synch cable was driving.

Regarding yours, I'd
be looking at getting the USB output into the stereo
somehow.

USB outputs on portable players are generally not intended for real-time
recording or playing using the internal circuitry of the portable player.
They generally *view* the portable player as being a storage device.

I find that high quality MP3's can be pretty darned good,
sound quality-wise. A LAME-encoded VBR is pretty
transparent sonically as far as I can tell, though a DBT
might reveal some limitations.

Get the bit rate up to like 192 kb, and the sound can be very good.

[perstromgren]

On 19 Dec, 17:26, mkr5000 wrote:
Other than using my computer, why in the ^&%$ isn't there a quality
MP3 player (meant for a component system) on the market?
ANYWHERE?

I would too be interested in such a gizmo. In my case it need not be
very high quality sound, as long as the thing can play music in mp3
from a USB stick I would be happy. Does anybody know if such a thing
exist?.

Per.

[Geoff]

mkr5000 wrote:
It's hard to believe that the DAC conversion in those lipstick size
players is as good what you could get from a state of the burr brown
op-amp designed for line output.

Now do you dig what I'm saying?

Gee, I wonder if this little Sandisk piece of crap is using a dual
polarity power supply?

MP3's CAN sound a lot better than this crap.....

I think this is where you expectations are unrealistic. They can't - though
they can sound worse on a really crap player. And putting them though a hifi
will demonstrate that.

Try an MP3 data CD on a set-top player that plays MP3s to prove it.


geoff

[Dave Platt]

In article ,
geoff wrote:

MP3's CAN sound a lot better than this crap.....

I think this is where you expectations are unrealistic. They can't - though
they can sound worse on a really crap player. And putting them though a hifi
will demonstrate that.

That depends very much on the specific MP3.

From what I've heard and read, MP3 and other lossy-encoded formats can
do encoding which is quite difficult to tell from the PCM original
(e.g. Red Book CD material). This requires a relatively high encoding
bit rate and the use of a good encoder.

On the other hand, if the bit rate is too low, then the sound quality
certainly suffers, and you can hear the degradation over *any* decent
playback system. At low encoding rates (or with poor encoders) the
degradation from the lossy encoding is probably worse than the degree
of distortion introduced by the use of a small, battery-powered MP3
player.

My guess is that with much material and many MP3 encoders, 128kb is
probably on the "encoding losses are worse than player distortion"
side of the river.

Try an MP3 data CD on a set-top player that plays MP3s to prove it.

Alternatively... take a good track of Red Book CD music, encode it to
MP3 at a variety of rates, do a software decoding back to .WAV format,
and then burn the original and each of the encoded/decoded tracks to a
single CD-R.

Play them on your own preferred component CD player, alternate between
the tracks, and see how it sounds.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

[Geoff]

Dave Platt wrote:

Alternatively... take a good track of Red Book CD music, encode it to
MP3 at a variety of rates, do a software decoding back to .WAV format,
and then burn the original and each of the encoded/decoded tracks to a
single CD-R.

Play them on your own preferred component CD player, alternate between
the tracks, and see how it sounds.

A procedure demonstarted many many times over many years.

Even at maximum encoding rate there is a quite discernable difference with
good gear. Usually in the form of a musically less significant part being
given more prominence that in the uncompressed PCM. All sort of different
encoders and players.


geoff

[Michael Black]

perstromgren ) writes:
On 19 Dec, 17:26, mkr5000 wrote:
Other than using my computer, why in the ^&%$ isn't there a quality
MP3 player (meant for a component system) on the market?
ANYWHERE?

I would too be interested in such a gizmo. In my case it need not be
very high quality sound, as long as the thing can play music in mp3
from a USB stick I would be happy. Does anybody know if such a thing
exist?.

Per.

Look at Radio Shack, or that sort of store.

Here in Canada, "The Source by Circuit City" (what used to be Radio
Shack here in Canada before Circuit City bought the standalone Canadian
company, which Radio Shack objected to and forced Circuit City to change
the name to something other than Radio Shack), there have been a number of
small stereo units that boast USB and card connectors to play MP3s from
them. I've seen at least one in the under $100 range (which obviously doesn't
say much, but it suggests where such things are appearing). I'm
sure there have been both house brands, and well known brands with such
connectors. (And they do specifically mention USB and card connectors,
so these aren't merely the "MP3 Player ready" boomboxes that are now
appearing which merely add auxiliary phono jacks to plug the headphone
out of your player into).

What's kind of odd is the multiplicity of units now appearing, but without
complete overlap. I've noticed DVD players with card connectors, for
displaying those photos from the card from the camera. But since they
make no mention of it, I assume they don't play MP3s that are on those
cards.

Likewise those nice nifty portable DVD players don't seem to yet have
card connectors for playing MP3s, or at least from the descriptions, no
auxiliary inputs so you can use the monitor for some general purpose.

Michael

[Arny Krueger]

"geoff" wrote in message

Dave Platt wrote:

Alternatively... take a good track of Red Book CD music,
encode it to MP3 at a variety of rates, do a software
decoding back to .WAV format, and then burn the original
and each of the encoded/decoded tracks to a single CD-R.

Play them on your own preferred component CD player,
alternate between the tracks, and see how it sounds.

A procedure demonstarted many many times over many years.

Even at maximum encoding rate there is a quite
discernable difference with good gear. Usually in the
form of a musically less significant part being given
more prominence that in the uncompressed PCM. All sort of
different encoders and players.

This is the procedure to use. It is the one that the pros use, but it is
only used by a only few very savvy amateurs.

(1) Encode a .wav file into a MP3

(2) Decode the MP3 back into a .wav file

(3) Make sure the levels and the timing of the .wav file created in step 3
is just right with some editing software. Correct as needed.

(4) Compare using bias-controlled exact comparison software such as that
available for free download at www.pcabx.com .


If more people actually did this, a lot of fulminating prose on audio
newsgroups would just like go away.

See the Hydrogen Audio forum for a working example.