Do you have portable 'mp3' audio player?
'mp3' in quotes because some players support or will support different formats.

Personally, I don't have one yet, and I'm waiting for Vorbis support. That's my minimum demand...
Musepack support for quality music would be nice also, but I'm not sure how realistic it is to hope portable support for MPC.. Of course AAC also would be fine. WMA - who cares.

If there's not gonna be nice portable players, I'll go for PocketPC.


Edit. I'm not anymore waiting for Vorbis support, although it is always a plus. Now I'm more interestd in AAC-support.

I'm very happy with my Rio 800, though it appears it will only ever support the mp3 codec. I'm a bit disappointed in this, but it was rather cheap; how could I expect it to have indefinite economic utility? That'd be asking a bit much. As a consumer in the capitalist economic system I'm supposed to believe that buying something new every two years is a good thing, right?

I'm waiting for one with a documented software upgradeable decoding section so anything can be supported. The versatility to play mpc, ogg, mp3 or any other format no matter how obscure it might be is what I need before I get one. Either tha or just mpc support

I have a Rio 500 and Rio Volt. I'm happy with mp3-only support, I've neither the desire nor the time to rip 50 GB of music again.

I own a Rio 500 and an iRiver Imp-250, both of which are serving me well. Looking forward to Vorbis support for my iRiver though

I don't see the point with supporting WMA. Why is having WMA support something to brag about? all it shows is how stupid the hardware manufacturer is and how they wasted so much time on supporting it.

still waiting for vorbis support...

i built an old K6-166 with 1 Gig HD into my car.
It plays mpc, mp3 , ogg.. does it count as a "portable" too ?

Meista

A *documented* software upgradeable firmware? You'll probably be waiting forever...

Well, something a tad more universal at least. I'd be perfectly happy with something that could use winamp input plugins. Of course, this would mean that users wouldn't need to upgrade to newer hardware just to get new media support, so companies might not like this as much. A CD based player with this kind of support would get $300 or so from me though, so the player price could be bumped a little to compensate, IMO. Maybe ina few years we could get DVD+R support. 4.7GB on one disk, hell yeah!

I own a Dioneer. It's a firmware upgradable cd player. The manual claims that it optionally supports aac , but its web doesn't say a word about it

That's a cool idea... wonder why nobody's implemented anything like that yet...

yeah, my friends and I had the same idea. Would be very cool!

Probably because of a few reasons.
1) I imagine they can get away with a lower cost DSP in the units if they optimize the firmware code for their dsp and use proprietary stuff. You'd need a decent processor to make sure you could handle whatever codecs people throw at the device. Nothing too powerful really, but it probably couldn't be a basic DSP and at this point you're probably looking at something more akin to a pocket PC, but with more storage space.
2) The forced upgrade I mentioned before. flash cards and the like have been around since before the original RIO. Why do we still see devices with a limited amount of fixed storage instead of completely modular systems? Cost and forced obsolescence. 64MB not good enough to handle your 192Kbps files? Sorry, have to shell out for a brand new player.
3) I think this obsolescence is probably also the reson behind the lack of new codec support in the firmware updateable players. They'd rather put money into making new things than making older things more useful. It's all about those new sales.

Perhaps I'm being too cynical here, but really it must come down to economics. If they could make a 50GB unit that plays every single codec, both lossless and lossy and sell it for $200, you can bet it'd be on the market. Not very many people are willing to dump a bunch of money on these units, so cost limits what goes into them in order to help guarantee decent sales.

I own the original Rio 300, original Expanium, SlimX, and my Compaq Ipaq. I love my SlimX and use it with my Ety ER-4Ps.

An iPod.

First I bought a Rio Volt. No Power and lousy EQ curves. Next I bought a Intel Pocket Concert. This had more power bur ate batteries for breakfast and also had a very audible buzzing sound on softer passages of music.

It also had a 15.5Khz rolloff but I couldn't really hear this with the Sony earbuds I was using at the time.

I wound up buying a Sony D-FS18 cd player. It plays cd-rw discs and allows me to use Shibata-sans eq and a light crossfeed filter for a HRTF. Power to burn and greater than 20 hours with NiMH batteries at full power.

I can only carry about 20 tunes when I run, but the sound is very good.

Yikes, Sony is evil .

I got one of those AVC Soul players (almost the same as the Rio Volt) and am fairly happy with it. For the price, it's not bad at all. Yeah, the EQ rather sucks and it doesn't get very loud, but its very light on batteries.

Compare it to one of the first generation players like the Genica, it's unimaginably better... but the players are improving all the time.

I own an iRiver SlimX, and am quite impressed by its performance. In addition to the many features it already has, it may turn out to be the first portable player to support Ogg Vorbis (through an upcoming firmware update).

Right now, as I write this, Paul Van Dyk's "Politics Of Dancing" (Disc 2) is absolutely killin' it in my SlimX.

I got a Rio Volt CD/MP3 Player and I am perfectly happy with it. Sure, there are some small downsides like the display or the somewhat limited volume... but all in one it does it's job well and iRiver even announced to provide Ogg Vorbis support with a future firmware!

I don't care about recent memory-based players - don't use it for jogging and the memory is much too small and overpriced. I prefer the CD based solution over memory and hard disk, because of it's flexibility and cheapness and I realy don't need gimmicks like an integrated receiver, 20 hours anti-shock memory, a cigarette lighter, the ability to watch a DVD on the lcd-display, a GPS locator , etcetera...

Yeah, I got the Rio Volt too. I'm very happy with it. They seem to have been continuously updating the firmware, and with each new version great new features are added.

I listen to it through Grado SR-80s and a homemade headphone amplifier (CMoy pocket amp on Headwize.com)...

I couldn't ask for a better sounding, more convenient portable system...

I own an Archos Jukebox Recorder. It came with a 6.5 g drive, which I have upgraded to 30 g. All of my own encodes are mp3s (alt preset extreme) and they sound fabulous. Besides the capacity, the best thing about this player us that it has digital (S/PDIF) output so you can bypass the cheap analog path (which actually sounds as good as any mps player I've heard) when connecting to your home stereo. The unit handles mp3s only - this is becuase the Micronos (sp?) DSP chip only does mp3. My impression is that chip makers are only going to build-in encoder/decoders that are marketable (mp3/WMA/???). The AJBR (as their generally called) is firmware upgradable for track-handling and sound adjustment, but not for encoding.

@sdiamond
How did you manage to upgrade to 30 Go? I'll soon receive a "standard" 20 Go...

I just got a RioVolt SP90 for my birthday a few days ago. So far, this thing has been great. So great I am switching from using Musepack to MP3's again (encoded using --alt-preset standard of course).

Only drawbacks of this unit is the low maximum volume, no official firmware updates (even though unofficially there is a hack that will allow you to use SP100 and iRiver updates, works great, I use those), and a stupid remaining time issue with VBR files (showing that a 5 minute mp3 is 8 minutes long for example).

I'll keep using this until it goes obsolete (meaning Sonicblue or iRiver release a new product supporting OGG or Musepack, instead of a firmware update that provides playback support for those formats).

I can only imagine what it would be like to someday have portable DVD players that play Musepack or (gasp) lossless files.

jace112,

Here's a link about doing upgrades on the Archos Jukebox. the article is about a Jukebox 6000, but it worked well for my Jukebox recorder. I've done two of these (20 gig from 6.5, and 30 gig from 20 gig) and haven't had any problems.

http://www.funmp3players.com/reviews/modify/

If you haven't already, check out the forum at this site too. There are excellent comments and suggestions.

@sdiamond
I check it out !!!
Really cool...
Thx

I am waiting for Ogg Vorbis support as well. Seems that the floating point issue makes things complicated for current dsps. MPC should be supported, i wonder if hardware manufacturers can contact a .com site to deal with mpc license issues? Or quite simply musepack marketing sucks I would also like small stand alone players, for example many VCD players can also play mp3. VCD players are at least half the size of typical dvd players, and they are also (at least) half the prize

I am waiting for Ogg Vorbis support as well. Seems that the floating point issue makes things complicated for current dsps. MPC should be supported, i wonder if hardware manufacturers can contact a .com site to deal with mpc license issues? Or quite simply musepack marketing sucks I would also like small stand alone players, for example many VCD players can also play mp3. VCD players are at least half the size of typical dvd players, and they are also (at least) half the prize

When I see a iPod with Ogg Vorbis support for under 100 e (this forum doesn't support Euro symbol?), I'm going to buy it.

I've got a Sony E-10 Network Walkman 128MB. Mp3 and Atrac Support

I currently own the iRiver ChromeX IMP-150.

I love it.

My girlfriend got a couple of months before that an also really nice (but a bit less nice ) RioVolt SP-90 from me as a birthday present (by the moment she got it, it was already upgraded to IMP-100's 2.10 iRiver's firmware... ).

Both players are nice, but the IMP-150 owns it by far with the nice display and nice remote it brought along...

I'm having some wet dreams about the famous Ogg Vorbis support possibly coming... but I am happy now as it is, and it won't make me lose any sleep if I don't get it...

I bought the IMP-150 for 100 euros in Spain, btw. Worth every cent.

My first and current audio player is a Panasonic SV-SD80, with SDMI built inside

With 96kbps AAC, being able to fit 9 cd's on the 512mb SD card is nice, but the bundled Realone-bloatware is a pain really.

The real good thing, is that the unit makes a very good necklace B)

I doubt it's easy to do, but does anyone know if ISO AAC files can somehow be converted and imported for that player ?

I'm a memory base audio player designer. I have many audio player sample that i can use. But I mostly like that one manufacted by ourselves with my mp3,mpc and aac supported firm ware. Vorbis support is hard to implement because it's too flexible and needs too many RAM.

Please, tell me, where can I buy the portable mpc player you're mentioning ?

I have a NexIIe, an Iriver SlimX 350, and for the car a JVC KD-SH99.

as soon as the wonderful ipod supports ogg vorbis, i'll buy one cause i like it a lot!

Samsung's Yepp 700H which I have loaded with mp3PRO files. It works fine, and I'll use it until all the other wishes in this thread have been fulfilled and a "universal" player comes along.

Later.

I'am happy with my SlimX, but will be more happy if iRiver eliminates presence of evil wma and asf in my player and replace it with MPC or at least OGG. Or will provide different firmwares.

ARCHOS JUKEBOX STUDIO 20 GHZ !!!

the best

mine would have to be:
- huge hd (20 gigs minimum), something that can be easily used as a portable hd
- vorbis, mpc, ape player
- complete rg support

!!!! sorry 20 Go!!!

My HP Jornada 525, PocketPC, Hitachi SH-3 with 128 MB CF-Card works ok for me at the moment (of course I use it mainly as calendar, address book, calculator, and so on). Annoying is the high power consumption, and the small, built in (not changeable) rechargeable battery. It's only possible to play about 2.5 to 3 hours of music with the screen switched off. Then the thing has to recharge for two hours. The second thing I hate about it is, that it's too slow for OGG. Although there's a player around, I can't play OGGs :-( Perhaps there will be more optimised ogg-code in the future?

Regards, fileman.

i have a sony net md and i'm happy with it (mz-n505)

I have IPAQ PocketPC and can play wav, mp3, ogg, wma.

Can mpc's aac's mp4's be played on it ???? (!) If yes, how?

I can play OGG files perfectly on my IPAQ PocketPC!

I can play OGG files perfectly on my IPAQ PocketPC!

Am I the only one with a Nomad Jukebox 3 20 GB? Very happy with it by the way, especially with the sound quality. Made all my old MP3's sound like sh*t but that 's probably Blade's fault ;-).

Musepack OK, but lossless is pointless (unless it's DVD player).

If you're on CDs, with lossless you can store the same songs than a CD audio, or a few more.
CDAudio uses full 2352bytes/sector for audio (CD capacity aprox 800Mbytes) while lossless is data and it uses 2048bytes/sector + ECC codes, so space that can be used is 700Mbytes. Unless you want more disc reliability on cheap discs, there is no point on doing so....

IMO lossless is made for HD archiving.

I was just about to buy one (smartcard or compactflash based), when I decided to upgrade my mobile... I know have a Siemens SL42e (unlocked and upgraded to SL45i after firmware upgrades) and it can play MP3 very well.

Plus it use a MMC for storage, up to 128MB I am sure it would be possible for Siemens to add support for Ogg with a new firmware update. Time to email them.

I highly recommend it to anyone

I think you are out of luck then You'll never get it this cheap

I own a Dioneer DCP100 and am quite happy with it - I believe it is a good value choice.