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."
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rio Karma
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Each manufactuer is picking exactly one to align with... and nobody's pushing OGG from that side of the business.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be fooled into thinking that the slashdot population is at all representative of the real world.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:4, Insightful)
The amount of effort required to port a decoder to a particular portable music player is probably way more then the rewards of a few more people buying their product.
The amount of protential profit must be at least the amount spend on development tools, employee salaries, etc, if not more.
Trust me on this. They aren't going to go through the effort if it ends up making them lose money doing it.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:5, Insightful)
No?
Well I don't hear it either. That's because ALMOST NO ONE CARES. Outside of a small minority of the Slashdot crowd, there is basically no consumer demand for Ogg Vorbis. Deal with it.
(Well, that's sure to burn some karma...)
Re:Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? Ogg Vorbis? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Missing choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:3, Insightful)
OGG isn't "where it's at" because everybody is too afraid to "innovate" and blaze a new path by taking a chance on an unknown, even a higher-quality, less expensive one. You'd think Apple would try this, but they are heading towards DRM, rather than away from it. But there's no reason iTunes and the iPod can't support BOTH. You can have DRM for songs you buy from iTMS, and no DRM on your own CDs you burn.
Watch for "DRM Creep", just like the rumored RIAA "Price Creep" that claims that iTMS will be selling tracks for $2.99 soon.... the sky's the limit, if the market will accept it.
Once the Pandora's Box of DRM is open, it can't be shut again -- and it can only go one way. I know you all love Apple, but it's going to happen. Because if I was in power, *I'D* certainly do it, and I'm not nearly as cutthroat as the RIAA. They've already started complaining about the
Once you realize you're a frog in a pot of water and the government and the big corporations have their hand on the temperature knob, the better off you'll be able to protect your own rights.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Apple likes to make money. They don't make money if one person downloads a song and gives it to hundreds of friends in whatever format they want, especially if the format is freely changable thereby allowing them to put the files on non-iPod music players
2) RIAA would sue them into the next century if they tried to do otherwise.
CD players? (Score:5, Insightful)
- It plays MP3 (VBR/CBR) and WMA burned to regular CD-R or CD-RW. No OGG, but then again, very few players do.
- It plays regular CD's! Yes, the kind you buy in a store, or the kind you have to keep around still because it's all your car's CD player supports.
- Storage: As many tracks as you can fit on a CD(-R[W]), which is to say, about 700 MB. That is, between 150-250 songs (my regular playlist is about 50 songs, though I can see how being able to store "only" 250 tracks may be a problem for some people).
- Battery life: 10-15 hours. Well in excess of what most flash or HD-based players can do as reported by this article.
- Media costs: Dirt cheap and easy to replace (CD-RW's are what, $1-$2 apiece?)
- Portability: Not as good as a flash-based player, for obvious reasons. Comparable to one of the larger HD-based players in width, but pretty thin. Fits in most pockets (goes without saying that newer MP3/CD players are smaller). Doesn't weigh much.
- Other: Great sound. Does not crackle up when batteries run low. Headphone and line-out stereo connections. Menu-based interface, lots of options. Upgradeable firmware.
Now, this is not to say that MP3-CD players are without their issues. Do I hear someone mention skipping? The DMP-201 has 10+ minutes of cache memory. No, you can't use it while jogging (unless your jogs are really short) but it's sufficient on a bicycle or at the gym. Again, like the storage space, this is a problem that will not affect everyone.Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like Xeroxing something - you can do it no matter what kind of photocopier you use. ; )
Bah!! (Score:3, Insightful)
You want your electronic device to look "cool"? Manufacture it in ONE DAMNED MATERIAL. No tacky bumper pads attached to the ends as an afterthought. If iRiver is so concerned about the abuse the player might take and insist on "shock-proofing" it, they could wrap the entire thing in the black rubber-plastic that made Glock firearms famous.
Just wrap everything in shiny aluminum or stainless steel. And keep the buttons to a minumum.
Re:Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis?Ogg Vorbis? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ok, I may be stupid, but I don't understand thi (Score:3, Insightful)
Sound Quality Test? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's worse, I can tell from simply viewing the graph that the lone "test" is invalid. So, off we go to the test portion of the article to see what's up, and more importantly, if there is any other real audio data other than that chart that might be useful.
Aha. In plain English, there it is:
"
And pretty much that's it. Not even a voltage/impedance measurement a 15-year old nerd could do to see what 3rd party headphones would work best. Oh, well.
Kids playing at a pro's game. I won't go into all the reasons why this is a silly idea, but for starters who told them that silicone and flesh/cartiledge have the same sonic absorption/reflection factor? Well, nobody, 'cuz they don't.
Where is the correction factor for the ear's own frequency response in direct near-field? No, it most certainly is not the same as the response from a sound in free air at a distance.
You could google for, i dunno, about a thousand long, confusing papers, but a nice short one that still gives the idea of how difficult (and how non-linear) this is can be found here:
National Library of Medicine [nih.gov]
For the lazy, the short answer is a correct earspeaker has nowhere near flat response in order for us to perceive it to be "flat" compared to sounds from what amounts to many thousand times the distance away. In their test, a "flat" response would actually be the worst performer.
The chart linked actually states "Minimal deviation from 0db is ideal." That's out and out wrong without correction factored in.
The problem starts with the assumptions they make for the "calibrated" microphone; it's only "calibrated" at a specific distance and frankly I don't see how you could calibrate it with their fixture at near-field. Most likely they just used a pre-calibrated mic (typically these are calibrated for a 1metre distance in free air) and ran with it. That alone could account for the wild swings, let alone their test fixture's own anomalies.
The graph shows swings of up to 30+ dB in the midrange, where the ear is most sensitive. This is like the difference between way loud and inaudible, and if that were the case each of these headphones/earbuds would sound terrible, perhaps worse than terrible. Since they don't sound that bad, why did they not glean the test must be flawed? Nah, just publish it, nobody will know the difference.
Excuse me, but I think I'll leave PCMac to the computer stuff and the audio stuff to the audio guys. Take it all with a grain of salt unless you're just interested in the digital details. These guys can't be trusted with a microphone.