Sorry for the weird subject line, and I apologize if the answer to this question is common knowledge. If it is, it'll be news to me!

I posted in a other thread that I'll be getting my first DAP in the near future. I'm mostly going to be using it at work just to pass the time. I'll be listening to music, but also to audio books and podcasts of radio programs, and that's where my question comes in.

Say I'm listening to a 2 hour long program and I'm an hour in, and either I'm going to lunch or going home for the day. Can I shut off the player and then pick up where I left off later? I don't know if that's a laughable question or not, but I don't know the answer since I've never messed around with a DAP before. If you were listening to a long track like that on a PC using Foobar/Winamp/etc. you could just pause the track and come back later or stop it completely and then just drag the 'seek bar' to approximately where you left off at, so you could basically be back to where you were in a matter of seconds.

How would you do this with a DAP? Being powered by batteries you obviously don't want to leave it 'paused' for 16 hours (in the case of going home for the day), and having to fast-forward through an hour+ of material sounds pretty lame..... so how do you accomplish what I've described? Or can you?

CDPs could do this ten years ago, so it would be absurd if this isn't possible with modern DAPs.

edit: grammar

iPods can - in the file info box in iTunes, under the Options tab, there's an option to "Remember playback position". Check that box, and then when you pause that track on your iPod, it will start playing at that position (give or take a couple seconds) the next time you listen to the track.

Note that you don't have to leave the iPod on that track - you can listen to other tracks, and then the next time you come back to the "paused" track, it will pick up where you left off. This works on MP3s, AACs, and audiobooks - I routinely use it on 4 hour MP3s (captured Internet radio streams) and it works great.

Apparantly, with iPods, you can tag specific tracks as ones that you pick up where you left off. I haven't tried it yet. (Now that you remind me, I'm going to do that right now with my 1967 Bayreuth.)

It depends on the DAP of course. I have quite a cheapo thing, and it doesn't even have a real stop button - only pause. If I shut it sown or stop it while in the middle of a file, it will always resume where it left when it powered down.

DAPs, like PCs, have non-volatile memory, so it's quite easy to store playback position while its powered off. Many DAPs also make it easy to forward through hours of audio very quickly.

Anyone own a DAP that doesn't resume?

Since you put it that way it makes me feel better.

Like I said, I didn't know if it was a laughable question or not.... until now!

It was a reasonable question. There might be some DAPs that don't have a resume feature, but I would think that they are a very small minority. Perhaps some will answer my query, and then you'll know what players to avoid.