Fourteen Digital Music Players Reviewed 497
prostoalex writes "The PC Magazine reviews 14 digital music players that can play MP3, WMA or AAC files. The editor's choice among the models compared includes Apple iPod Mini and iRiver iFP-390T. The editors decided to conduct a single review of both Flash- and HDD-based music players. Of special interest is the battery life test as well as sound quality test. Even though the entire article is published online in HTML, the summary of the features is available in PDF only."
I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod (Score:5, Informative)
Rio Karma is noteably absent (Score:3, Informative)
Karma has OGG (Score:4, Informative)
It has about 13 hours of battery life, and can talk by USB 2.0, USB 1.1, or even 100mbit ethernet. When I plug it into the ethernet, it runs a webserver with a java applet that allows you to send and receive software.
It works on any operating system with a VM/java plugin without a hitch. I use it in Linux and didn't have to set up anythign when I got it.
Don't know why they didnt review it...
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:1, Informative)
check out this site:
http://www.millerpc.co.uk/shop/news/octobe
since you work in the computer industrie, you should be able to patch a mp3 player
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:3, Informative)
The iRiver H120 [iriveramerica.com] and H140 are iPod-killers with better looks, cheaper prices, and Ogg/Vorbis support.
-JemThis beggars belief... (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't even review the Rio Karma? Are they smoking something? If there's one player out there which has repeatedly been shown to be the genuine iPod beater it's the Karma, yet a supposedly "thorough" group test doesn't even mention it.
For the uninitiated:
* 16 hours battery life
* 20gb capacity
* Smaller than an iPod
* Plays AAC, WMA, MP3, FLAC, OGG, and more (Audible coming soon)
* Fully supports GAPLESS Vorbis, FLAC and mp3 playback. This is unique among portable players and a very big deal for a lot of people.
* USB2.0 & Ethernet connectivity
* Fully supported under Windows/Mac/Linux - works on any platform with Java & Ethernet
* Best of class sound quality
* Full 5-band parametric EQ
* On the fly playlists, Rio DJ (randomisation, new tracks, old tracks, most played etc)
* Crossfade between tracks
* The thing just ROCKS
I will be writing to the editor...
The iRiver plays Ogg (Score:3, Informative)
I know first hand, I have one.
Here is the firmware [iriver.com] for it.
Re:Rio Karma (Score:2, Informative)
One con for it is that it is not USB2.0 High Speed. So when you transfer a gig, it takes some time.
Bah! (Score:5, Informative)
Give these guys a thesaurus! What do they think the "kind" column is for in "view options"?
And is it really worth reading a review that sees anything worthwhile in: "The 3.4-ounce iPod Mini has more EQ selections than any other player"?
Re:I dont use apple earbuds with my ipod (Score:3, Informative)
Technically true, but poor-quality or poor-fitting earbuds are the biggest factor (by far) of inferior sound quality.
The best thing to do is find some good-quality earbuds that fit your ears well. It will make a huge difference, no matter the player.
Unfortunately most people don't do that. Therefore, I can see the point of a consumer magazine rating players by earbud quality.
Re:Rio Karma (Score:2, Informative)
iRiver iFP-390T (Score:2, Informative)
What about the Neuros? (Score:5, Informative)
It seems odd that they didn't include a review of the Neuros [neurosaudio.com] Audio unit. I have the unit with the 20G hard drive, and although the firmware is a little wobbly, it's a great unit with a cool feature called HiSi [neurosaudio.com], or "Hear it - See it" that lets you identify a song on the built-in radio or even on a P.A. system through the internal microphone.
Dedicated software for iFP-390T? No! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This might be off-topic (Score:2, Informative)
Holy Mary! (Score:4, Informative)
Do yourselves a favour - buy the cheapest player and get a pair of headphones for $30. It'll sound way better than anything with the supplied headphones.
I think I'll be sticking with my 'old school' MiniDisc Walkman (and yes it is a Sony, so yes I can call it a Walkman) and my Grado SR60s. Mmmm. Expensive.
Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment? (Score:2, Informative)
This is just not true.
--Richard
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about the Neuros? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:4, Informative)
If you want a hard drive ogg player, Neuros is the obvious solution. USB 2.0 in 20-80 gig models. Pick the storage you want. They've opened their sdk and they have the best customer service and response going. http://www.neurosaudio.com and browse the forums.
Re:This might be off-topic (Score:5, Informative)
I have a Digisette DUO-DX AR-496 digital music player. It supports MP3 and WMA and AudioBook formats, though I've only used it with MP3. Note that it can also record MP3s on the fly, using an audio-in jack. Useful if you want a digital tape recorder in a pinch. It also has a headphone jack and sounds great as a stand-along portable player.
It comes with built-in 96 MB flash memory. It has an expansion slot for an MMC upgrade. Note that the manual and website might just mention a 64 MB upgrade, but I -confirm- that it works with a 256 MB MMC. With about 350 MB of music on it now, I have more music than battery life (which is about 5 hours).
I drive a convertible, and I would never consider putting a custom stereo into it. My wife has a nifty iPod, but her stereo retransmit thingy gets a lot of static, and the whole arrangement is much more cumbersome than a single unit I can drop into the built-in tape player. Despite what some reviews of the product have said, you can skip tracks without taking the thing out of the tape deck.
While I would have tried a 512 MB MMC if I had found one, I think 256 MB were the largest made before the shift to SD whatever, which it does not support. I would eventually like more space than I have now, but it is perfectly usable as is for my commutes to and from work, with the nice variety of happy music I can sing to on a nice Spring drive in a convertible in Texas. It makes commuting fun.
Missing choices - Rio Nitrus - Rio Anything (Score:4, Informative)
I own a Rio Nitrus. Some of the things I like about it are:
Re:This beggars belief... (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to talk something up at least be correct.
Karma: 2.7 * 3.0 * 1.1 = 8.91 cubic inches
iPod: 4.1 * 2.4 * 0.62 = 6.1008 cubic inches
If "size" = "height" then, yes, the Karma is smaller. However the iPod is smaller in the other two dimensions and smaller in overall volume. If Apple wanted the iPod to be 33% larger I am sure they could add more battery life too.
Re:Microsoft offering a competitive environment? (Score:2, Informative)
Funny, my now-ancient Creative Nomad 6GB player works just fine with iTunes for both MacOS and MacOS X. I haven't tried it with Windows, but I assume it works with iTunes there as well.
I'm not "stuck" doing anything. There's always an off switch. Interestingly enough, that's pretty much what became of that old Nomad. I didn't use it much, so I turned it off and stuck it in the closet with the rest of the junk that doesn't work.
Re:This beggars belief... (Score:3, Informative)
This line item is wrong.
By cubic volume, it is 50% larger than iPod (not the mini, either). Most of the difference is in the thickness. A 20GB iPod is 40% thinner.
I'll grant all the other things though, it does look like a nice feature set.
Re:FM support (Score:3, Informative)
I have the iFP-380T (128MB), the cheapest model with line-in recording. To be honest, I haven't used it a lot. Most of my time is spent at my home or office computer where I can listen to all my mp3s or radio streams but I do use the iRiver at the gym. I've also used it a bit for voice recording, just "notes to self" kind of stuff. I've been happy with the recording capability. Since the flash players are so small, they have to use just a few controls to do everything. This takes some getting used to but once you learn them, the number of steps required to do any particular task is not onerous.
I haven't tried firmware updates yet to add support for other file formats or USB Mass Storage support but I've very glad the options are there.
Re:Forget Ogg, I want FLAC (Score:3, Informative)
The picked the wrong iRiver, too. (Score:5, Informative)
Choosing between it and the Karma was tough for me, but I decided the iRiver had cooler features and was just a hair more open; not to mention that iRiver has a good track record for upgrades. They've publicly announced fixes for some problems with shuffle and playlist creation that should arrive in May, and by June the IHP series should have gapless playback like the Karma.
Re:The picked the wrong iRiver, too. (Score:3, Informative)
And finally, there's apparently a (bug? feature? limitation?) where it will only record for about 90 minutes before forcing you to start over with a new file. That means it lets you record up to around 800MB in WAV format, and something like 200MB in MP3 -- I forget the actual numbers, but if you search Google you might find them. No idea why it was designed this way. I've not heard any indications yet that this might be fixed in future releases, but it's possible I suppose.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:3, Informative)
So, even if they put out a good product you won't use it, why? Because of the image? Then, you're as image concious as the 'yuppies' you hate.
Apple hardware is more expensive than its competitors and it doesn't offer any distinct advantages. Apple sells the brand and the image, not the product. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that -- Nike and The Gap do it too -- but you can't expect a freethinker to buy into some corporate marketing campaign.First, Apple is barely, if at all, more expensive than comparable PC hardware. Second, they also engineer the hell out of their products as well as branding them. A well funded marketing department doesn't necessarily mean a starved engineering department. e.g. SCSI, FireWire, Bluetooth, 802.11g.
And as for 'freethinkers,' I would expect they wouldn't let marketing affect their decision one way or the other. They'd decide on the merits of the product.
Yuppies buy for status, not for practicality.The same can be said of geeks. Where is the practicality in mini-ATX? Overclocking? Case mods?
Apple products buy status and image above all else.No, no they don't. Yes, there's strong status/image thing there but the fact is, at least since the release of OS X, that Apple has a strong computing platform for home use to computational science. They're putting out hardware and software that can get the job done.
Apple isn't a threat to you. If you open your mind a bit you may recognize that they produce good products at decent price points. Just because they're not your bag doesn't make them charlatans.
French WW2 Efforts - 500,000 Dead (Score:3, Informative)
Actually over 200,000 French soldiers died in WW2 [wikipedia.org] before and during the occupation, and 350,000 civilians were slaughtered. Remember at the start of WW2 France faced the most advanced army and airforce in the world and their regular forces crumbled. Their partisan efforts during the invasion disrupted German supply lines and communications. If you scale up the French casualties compared to the US casualties (~300,000/6000) you will see that because of the US's late entry to the WW2, their per-capita casualty rate was much lower than the French. Put simply, the French suffered, while the US grandstanded, and picked over the spoils of victory.
Of course, all the Western efforts pale in comparison to the Soviet Union, which sustained at least 13 million dead soldiers and at least 7 million dead civilians. The Soviets crushed the Third Reich - without them Britain and the US would doubtless have sued for a negotiated peace or ceasefire.
In point of fact, one way of looking at WW2 is as a continuation of the European Civil War begun during WW1 and interrupted by an armistice for a couple of decades during which conflict moved to the edges and the colonies rather than the centre. Finally during WW2 both the US and the USSR entered the war while the main protagonists were becoming exhausted, and their efforts proved decisive, with the result that no European nation won the European Civil War.
For Americans, it's like imagining that during the US Civil War, that Britain had entered the war on the side of the slave states while France and Germany decided to join the Union states. I think Gibson & Sterling's Difference Engine [amazon.com] had some alternate history quite like this, with European intervention leading to a separate CSA and USA.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry to be argumentative, but you have no idea what you're talking about. OGG vs AAC has nothing to do with DRM. Apple adds a FairPlay DRM wrapper around AAC, they could certainly have done that with OGGs. You're right that they could and should allow the iPod to play OGG, but AACs can just as easily be non-drm. The cds you rip yourself into AAC won't have DRM. And you can even burn your own CDs with music you buy from the iTMS.