Do you have a portable Options

[Dead Goon]

I've got a 20GB 2nd Gen iPod.

I regret buying it now as I've never even got close to filling it to capacity (should have gone for 10GB, maybe even the 5GB version) and I haven't even listen to it for several months now - I'm not 100% sure where it is to be honest

This post has been edited by Dead Goon: Aug 22 2004, 20:31

[pika2000]

-Rio PMP300 32MB Yep, the original Parallel port one.
-Rio 600 64MB
-Sony DC-J01 (CD)
-Sony D-NE9 (CD)
-Panasonic SL-SX430 (CD)

[ElementDave]

I'd be curious to know how many of you think we're likely to see portables of the future with support for lossless codecs, or think we're more likely to go straight to uncompressed audio once storage capacity is sufficient. I don't know whether the additional expenses associated with the implementation of the appropriate decoding support and then having to deal with the licensing issues, etc., for at most a 40% increase in audio capacity, would be of any cost benefit to companies versus simply increasing the storage capacity by an equivalent amount.

[DreamTactix291]

Rio Karma supports FLAC and it might support WAV. My H120 supports WAV. But neither are large enough to really want to put entire lossless collections on them. And the larger files cause the HDD to spin up more resulting in reduced battery life per charge.

[setSuna]

Yeah, I have a Rio Karma.
Which also supports OGG. The only thing I don't like about it is it is only 20gbs! I have 45gbs of music, so... eh. I am looking into getting a 60-80gb player, but I dunno if there are any good ones, and the ones I have seen are extremely expensive. So, eh, I don't know what I am going to do.

[pika2000]

Hard-drives will continue to grow in capacity, and shrink in size. However, the risk for failure would probably still there. This is why I try to stick with a removable media (ie. CD). The next step would be a portable MP3/DVD player. Although not as big in capacity as HD-based players, and size is still "CD-size", imagine the amount of music you can put thanks to the cheap price of DVD blanks. Hopefully, a manufacture would start developing this kind of portables, although doubtful since it seems every manufactures form Taiwan and Korea are making a "me-too" HD MP3 players.

[gorgekko]

I have a Nomad Jukebox Zen NX (30GB) that I bought used. Outside of a front that occasionally pops off because of Creative's stupid way of ensuring the battery is user replaceable, I'm fairly satisfied with it.

I may go with a larger iPod in the next year or so.

[Matyas]

Nex II with two CF Type II Cards (128Mb and 512Mb).
I think that with the nowadays cheap flash cards there is no need to wait for mpc or ogg support in players, since you are free to store mp3 192kbps music on your cards, and still you got a plenty of music on a single card.

[Q-W-Y]

Yeah, I have a Rio Karma.
Which also supports OGG. The only thing I don't like about it is it is only 20gbs! I have 45gbs of music, so... eh. I am looking into getting a 60-80gb player, but I dunno if there are any good ones, and the ones I have seen are extremely expensive. So, eh, I don't know what I am going to do.

Try neuros..

Neuros II 80 GB bundle USB 2.0
Price: $480

[Digisurfer]

Try neuros..

Neuros II 80 GB bundle USB 2.0
Price: $480

This is the first time I've seen this player mentioned. After a quick glance at the site, I have to say that is one really sharp looking player. I've been debating between the iPod and iRiver 40GB units as a birthday presetn for the wife, and now the Rio Karma since I just switched to FLAC permanently tonight. The thing that has been making me lean towards the iPod is simplicity, as well as the extras. For example I really like the idea behind the all in one FM transmitter / power cable made by Monster for car use. I also like the fact that it's easily rechargeable via firewire and USB (wife will be using it in car and at work, and much more often than me). One thing that turns me off though is the battery life and their replaceability. How does the Neros II 80GB fair in this regard, and how well does the built in FM transmitter work? I welcome all opinions!

[Q-W-Y]

Try neuros..

Neuros II 80 GB bundle USB 2.0
Price: $480

This is the first time I've seen this player mentioned. After a quick glance at the site, I have to say that is one really sharp looking player. I've been debating between the iPod and iRiver 40GB units as a birthday presetn for the wife, and now the Rio Karma since I just switched to FLAC permanently tonight. The thing that has been making me lean towards the iPod is simplicity, as well as the extras. For example I really like the idea behind the all in one FM transmitter / power cable made by Monster for car use. I also like the fact that it's easily rechargeable via firewire and USB (wife will be using it in car and at work, and much more often than me). One thing that turns me off though is the battery life and their replaceability. How does the Neros II 80GB fair in this regard, and how well does the built in FM transmitter work? I welcome all opinions!

FM transmiter works very well, it has also possibility of connecting external antena.
Look there: Neuros MyFi forums

[Digisurfer]

Cool, big thanks for cluing me in to the Neuros player. It looks like an awesome option with a bright future. And, in case anyone is curious, I just read that the firmware for it went open source yesterday. So it's future just got even brighter (have fingers crossed for more playback formats such as FLAC & MPC, plus gapless support).

Read up on open source firmware/software here: Link

[wkwai]

But IPOD seemed to have some conformance problems with MP3..

Really? Care to elaborate and/or provide links? As I'm about to buy one for my wife and we have never owned a portable before, I would really like to hear more about this. Especially since everything we have is in MP3 format (more than half a mix of LAME --aps and --ape).

There was a recent discussion ( a few weeks ago) about IPOD distorting MP3 files.. I too had similar problem.. You can search the forum for it.. (I couldn't remember where..)

[pilot52]

Maybe It's nothing to do with the poll but,

Does ifp-300s(iriver flash type player) plays ogg vorbis

in the american firmware?

i live in korea, but i don't have time to test the american firmware

forgive me that i'm not good at English

This post has been edited by pilot52: Sep 3 2004, 12:36

[kennedyb4]

Recently purchased a MuVo tx 128meg. Excellent unit for running. Holds about twenty APS files.

I had some concerns about output power prior to buying but it has more than enough oomph to push my KSC - 35's.

[Rip Van Woofer]

I guess it's a function of age (I'm 50) but having portable music isn't a big thing to me anymore. My Walkman-style CD player mostly gathers dust. Sometimes I bring it to the gym. For most of the activities I enjoy such as bicycling and fly-fishing a portable would either be an intrusion or a danger. I don't even use the in-dash CDP much in my car except for long trips (but then, I drive a WRX and that's entertaining in itself!).

Sometimes I'm tempted to get an iPod just because they're 'cool' and I'm a Mac user.

[krmathis]

This thread is OLD, so I have switched portable player already.
Previously I had an 40GB iPod, now I have an iPod mini. I'm very happy with it!

[simpl3x]

I'd be curious to know how many of you think we're likely to see portables of the future with support for lossless codecs, or think we're more likely to go straight to uncompressed audio once storage capacity is sufficient.  I don't know whether the additional expenses associated with the implementation of the appropriate decoding support and then having to deal with the licensing issues, etc., for at most a 40% increase in audio capacity, would be of any cost benefit to companies versus simply increasing the storage capacity by an equivalent amount.

I don't have a player now since nothing will hold the amount of music I am currently busy encoding. I am using Apple Lossless, and have purchased a Lacie terabyte disk system to hold the several thousand CDs. My estimation is that my music will occupy about 600 gigs. I agree that lossless compression is the future of consumer audio, and would really like to get something like a pro system which could feed directly to a dac. My time is limited, so I chose to go directly through iTunes rather than encoding with something like Flac and ripping via Nero. The convenience of labeling albums automagically, and ripping reasonably well is good enough for my needs. I have come to get much more use (and value) out of my collection than I would have ever with the music in CD form.

I am considering transcoding to AAC 256 for general listening, but the music will likely require a 200 gig player. I have thought about hacking a spent iPod to accept a standard hard disk, until then I'll feed my system via and Airport Express.

[dedalus]

I don't have a player now since nothing will hold the amount of music I am currently busy encoding. I am using Apple Lossless, and have purchased a Lacie terabyte disk system to hold the several thousand CDs. My estimation is that my music will occupy about 600 gigs. I agree that lossless compression is the future of consumer audio, and would really like to get something like a pro system which could feed directly to a dac. My time is limited, so I chose to go directly through iTunes rather than encoding with something like Flac and ripping via Nero. The convenience of labeling albums automagically, and ripping reasonably well is good enough for my needs. I have come to get much more use (and value) out of my collection than I would have ever with the music in CD form.

I am considering transcoding to AAC 256 for general listening, but the music will likely require a 200 gig player. I have thought about hacking a spent iPod to accept a standard hard disk, until then I'll feed my system via and Airport Express.

That's a large project to be undertaking with a proprietary codec and questionable ripping software. It's a good thing that Apple Lossless is just that, because you will likely be transcoding it down the line, maybe not to FLAC but that is the most likely candidate. Ripping in EAC secure mode, offset corrected, is certainly worth your time as well since you are already knee-deep ripping - what? - 1500 albums?

[DonP]

One thing that turns me off though is the battery life and their replaceability. How does the Neros II 80GB fair in this regard, and how well does the built in FM transmitter work? I welcome all opinions!

I can't find the thread on their forum at the moment, but the word was the batteries are standard types (NiMH AA for the flash pack, some Lithium Ion for the HD) which are user replaceable if you are handy with a screwdriver.. voiding the warrantee, but if it was under warantee, the battery would be free. Post warantee they had some replacement price that was low enough that is probably wouldn't pay to do it yourself other than to save the shipping time.

FM transmit has a little hiss compared to headphones, but not anything you would notice in a car. Initially it was too quiet, so the company added a transmit volume control in a firmware update. They are pretty responsive to user feedback.

[DonP]

I'd be curious to know how many of you think we're likely to see portables of the future with support for lossless codecs, or think we're more likely to go straight to uncompressed audio once storage capacity is sufficient. 

It isn't just storage size; it's battery life, access time, etc. On a P4 desktop, compressing and writing flac is faster than writing uncompressed wav to disk.
If it turns out to use less juice to decode half size files than to read full size ones, then the advantage is with lossless.

edit: plus, while storage gets bigger, it seems there is always a smaller format coming out a few steps behind in capacity which will tempt the audio toy makers.

This post has been edited by DonP: Sep 25 2004, 20:21

[Tangerine]

Yes, Archos Gmini 400

[tangent]

This poll probably needs to be restarted.. it's > 2 years old and most people might have changed their portables by now.

I'm using a Nokia 6230 with a 512MB MMC card. Plays AAC (no HE though ) and MP3s. I think that's the best option for me since I don't like carrying too many different devices around.

[ckjnigel]

The answer is yes: I'm in day 12 with my Rio Carbon, abetted by Sony EX71 canalphones.
Oh, and, increasingly, aided by files specially processed for street listening with Audacity. I suppose that belongs in a new thread, but I wonder if others have experimented with compression, renormalization and amplifying of CD rips in Audacity. I'm hearing things in Vivaldi and Ravel I'd never suspected were there -- very exciting!

[screaminghell]

This poll probably needs to be restarted.. it's > 2 years old and most people might have changed their portables by now.

Agreed.... I'm not using my iRiver iMP-400 CD based player anymore, since I got a Creative Zen Xtra 60 GB a few weeks ago. I've got two low capacity flash players also, mainly used as USB sticks these says though.