Collectors Snap Up Early MP3 Players

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like vintage MP3 portables are the hot new collectible for old radio connoisseurs. On the cover of this month's edition of Antique Radio Magazine is Sony's first DAP, the Vaio Music Clip. The cover article is the second part of a series showcasing the first players by Sony, RCA, I2Go, and Intel (remember the Pocket Concert?). Part one, which was published in the December 2004 edition, covers the first flash unit the Eiger Labs MPMan F10 (the Rio PMP300 was second), and the first hard drive player the Personal Jukebox PJB-100. CNET also wrote about these first players last January, offering more details on the MPMan and the PJB-100"

Title is incorrect.

[AtariAmarok]

This is about digital music file players, not just MP3 players. The article even mentions that the first item, the Sony, would not play MP3's.

Re:Ahhh... inconvenience

[cgenman]

I hate to be the one to say this, but it's true. Lots of music that is mixed sounds best for the medium that it was composed, recorded, and mixed for. Vinyl was made and tweaked to sound good recording symphonies, and lots of jazz / early rock recordings were made and tweaked to sound good on vinyl. That's why a lot of the classic recordings just sound better on record. Get one of Thelonious Monk's greatest hits albums on vinyl and CD, and listen to both, alternating every 5 minutes. The vinyl just sounds better.

Now take a copy of a modern electronica song, like Orbital, or modern pop, like Brittany Spear's Toxic. These sound better on CD than they do on record. Ignoring the limiting lots of CD mixers choose to use these days to screw up the sound, CD's are "crisper," and better at making sharp buzzes than warm tones. They're also better if you've got 30 different tracks going at once... Tragic Kingdom on vinyl would not sound as good.

I'm convinced most of the stuff from the 80's was mixed for the radio, which is why Aha's Take On Me still sounds good when you've got interference coming in from rainclouds. Most modern music doesn't hold up against rain when broadcast.