MP3 Player

[The-Ice-Man]

I need an MP3 player. Part of my job as compare involves playing background music for the bar I work in. At the moment all I have is a crappy CD player and a shitty selection of CDs to work with. To improve things I've bought a 3.5mm jack to phono lead so I can plug an MP3 player into the bar's sound system. But I need a good MP3 player to use.

 

At the moment all I have is a borrowed Creative Zen Mosiac, which I've just found out is pretty shit. It's the 8GB version and is about half full. I made a playlist with a few hundred tracks, and it took about five minutes to display the list when I selected it. I've also found that if a track is playing, it will skip whenever you use the menu to do something. It basically doesn't have enougth memory to be able to play music and operate the menu at the same time, which is precisely what I need to be able to do.

 

So what I need is an MP3 player that can handle having litterally thousands of songs on it, and be able to scroll through them and load big playlists quickly, without lag, or skipping or anything. Any ideas? It has to be at least 16GB I reckon, maybe more, sound good, and be fast and reliable. It of course needs to have a screen and support playlists, filters etc.

 

BTW, anyone who says Ipod will be raped.

[Lucandrake]

Really? iPod has been the only choice for me ever.

 

It does everything your asking for, most other mp3 players do the song part right, but not anything else your asking for. Only other option I can think of is a Zune.

 

", and be able to scroll through them and load big play lists quickly, without lag, or skipping or anything"

^Most cheap Mp3's don't do anything like this, I had 6 different ones before my iPod, all from Samsung, Sony, and some other shit company (Coby much?). They all sorted songs in a horrible fashion, memory was lackluster, and in one extreme case would take up to a minute to load lists. They just aren't reliable for me.

 

Your experience with the Creative Zen Mosiac, is pretty much world-wide with most other Mp3s.

[VT-Vincent]

Over the years, I've used multiple iPods (nano, Classic, iPhone, etc.) and I have to say they have been the best by far. I know a lot of people see their connection to iTunes being a downside, but it's one of the better pieces of software I've seen for this purpose. At least with an iPod, you can be assured your product will be supported for a long time just due to their size in the market.

 

Most of the other MP3 players I've used over the years had much worse interfaces who's shittyness was only matched by whatever software they bundled with it. The only clear alternative I would see as being viable would be the Zune. At least for now, Microsoft seems pretty committed to the product. On the downside, the Zune software is absolutely abysmal. It's like crossing the worst of Media Center and WMP into a single product... I have to wonder what they were smoking when they made that monstrosity.

[solidius23]

Ipod all the way i have really had just about every brand of mp3 player and the ipod was the easiest and best interface to work with.

i mean in my closet right now i have a zune classic, a zune nano, an archos, an iriver and a sansa my first was a creative zen so yeah i have ran the mp3/pmp gambit

[The-Ice-Man]

You have all now been raped. I was looking at the Zune HD, and was impressed, but unfortunately it's the same as ipod as to why I won't buy one. Their 'marketplace' is itunes all over again. 'You will buy all your music from us or die. With Microsoft Points. And you must use our shitty software' Don't think so. I've never payed for an mp3 in my life, and I like nothing better than dragging and dropping files in Windows Explorer, I hate all kinds of sync software. Then there's it's restrictions in file formats and it's price tag.

 

As for ipod, I won't buy anything Apple, ever. Their policy of restricting users in various ways over the years has always appalled me. I will never line their pockets by buying any of their products. Besides, my sister has an ipod touch, and she tells me the battery life is crap. I'm going to need long battery life. Whatever player I go for will be used at least five hours a night, and I don't want to be recharging every five minutes. Plus, ipods are too expensive too.

 

The Samsung P3 has good reviews, and isn't too expensive, but I'm concerned about it's redraw rate when loading large playlists. A small amount of lag isn't the end of the world, but if it makes the sound skip, it's no good, and if it takes more than 30 seconds to load a playlist, it's no good too.

[L.S.D]

You have all now been raped. I was looking at the Zune HD, and was impressed, but unfortunately it's the same as ipod as to why I won't buy one. Their 'marketplace' is itunes all over again. 'You will buy all your music from us or die. With Microsoft Points. And you must use our shitty software' Don't think so. I've never payed for an mp3 in my life, and I like nothing better than dragging and dropping files in Windows Explorer, I hate all kinds of sync software. Then there's it's restrictions in file formats and it's price tag.

 

As for ipod, I won't buy anything Apple, ever. Their policy of restricting users in various ways over the years has always appalled me. I will never line their pockets by buying any of their products. Besides, my sister has an ipod touch, and she tells me the battery life is crap. I'm going to need long battery life. Whatever player I go for will be used at least five hours a night, and I don't want to be recharging every five minutes. Plus, ipods are too expensive too.

 

The Samsung P3 has good reviews, and isn't too expensive, but I'm concerned about it's redraw rate when loading large playlists. A small amount of lag isn't the end of the world, but if it makes the sound skip, it's no good, and if it takes more than 30 seconds to load a playlist, it's no good too.

I thought you can put your own MP3 into your Ipod, Iphone? That is what i'm doing for my songs.

[The-Ice-Man]

Sure, you can these days for the most part, but that doesn't undo their evil, and I still won't shell out over £200 for one.

[Inky]

if you refuse iPods and Zunes then your stuck with shit. that's all there is to it.

[VT-Vincent]

Also, another thing to be aware of is that the entire iTunes music store is now DRM free. All music on it is distributed in non-protected AAC and as such, can now be used on many devices. To the best of my knowledge, the Zune marketplace still has some half-assed DRM on music (which they will dump in a year with the service and screw everyone, a la "Plays for Sure", PressPlay, etc.)

 

I can understand why you don't like Apple, they have a lot of corporate ethics issues. Unfortunately every company of that size or larger does. They'll do whatever it takes to get ahead in the market. To be honest though, at least in the content distribution market I think Microsoft has a lot more to answer for. Starting a DRM-laden music store and dumping it a few years later, thus screwing all of their users is unacceptable. To Apple's credit, this never happened with iTunes and they even gave the option of upgrading to DRM-free for existing users for a very low price.

 

As far as Microsoft is concerned, once they make the initial sale you can go f*** yourself.

Edited April 20, 2010 by VT-Vincent

[emsley]

Laptop.

[The-Ice-Man]

Laptop.

Overkill for work. I don't own one so I'd have to buy one, and if I'm gonna buy a laptop I'd want a good one, which would be expensive, and then I wouldn't want to take it to work.

 

If I had a gun to my head and my only choice was Zune or ipod I'd choose Zune. It looks better than the ipod in a number of ways, but it's the software that really puts me off. I can always avoid the marketplace and stuff, but in the reviews I've seen they all say you HAVE to install and use the software package, and set up a marketplace acount, or you can't use the Zune. Is this completely true? Can it not just be recognised by your PC as a mass storage device and have files copied to it? That's what I like. Having to install software on your PC just to get music onto a device would be incredibly annoying to me.