MP3 players....

Joined
Jul 14, 2000
Messages
3,278
hi all,
i was in a local electronics retailing establishment (the store) the other day and came across an mp3 player that caught my eye.now ive got this urge to buy one (but not unitl after blade)
so what can i get for 200 bucks?
thanks,
Maurice
 
yeah, i posed the same question in chat,and got the same answer.lol.

guess i should have been clearer
smile.gif
 
Hello,

If you don't mind a MP3 CD player (size wise), consider the TDK Mojo. I mentioned it and reliable 'net retailer in this thread here:

http://www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum57/HTML/000492.html

You may be swayed by some of the posters to go MD, instead.

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"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.", King Lear, Act I, Scene 4.
 
Check out www.cnet.com for some pretty good reviews. You could look at www.audioreview.com as well. I've found that most reviewers are very biased in their opinions (I've got the best one, this one sucks, MP3's vs. MD, etc.).

I have a Creative Labs Nomad IIMG (bought at www.solutions4sure.com). I got mine for ~$250. I like it for the small size and the magnesium case that I can use as an emergency fire starter (just kidding). It has an FM tuner (which I rarely use). I never used the included headphones since I prefer the earbud type. The control buttons are pretty small, but I don't mind that too much. One gripe I have is there is a dedicated "delete" button on the unit that is very easy to accidentally press. The delete funciton requires a confirmation (the play button) to actually delete the track, but I've done it twice already. @#$%*&^! I use a Mac, so the software that I use is different from the PC. Both systems are supported by the included software. I'm not particularly fond of the way the included SoundJam (Mac) organises the files. I'm going to change to iTunes soon. I also found that the tracks must be loaded in the order that they are to be played.

Overall, I like my purchase. It's small and light, has good sound, and has good starting memory (64MB). I had bought a 64 MB SmartMedia card for a total of 128MB (~2hr) at www.newegg.com and am happy with the storage capacity of the unit at this point. It can take up to 128MB Smart Media cards.

The Nomad II (sans "MG") has a better button layout but no FM tuner or built-in memory. The max Smart Media card size is 64MB. I'd look for another unit that has more memory capacity. My friend has a Rio (don't know which model) that seems to be pretty good. Memory prices are cheap right now, so it's a good time to buy those flash cards.

gm
 
I would say that if you have a CDRW drive, the best deal would be a Rio Volt MP3/CD player or the unbadged Soul MP3/CD player (same as the Rio Volt).

Why? CD's hold up to 10 hours worth of MP3s and the player supports DirectCDs. This means you can drag and drop or erase mp3s on a CDRW just like if it were a hard drive or floppy. Consistent firmware updates have improved the featureset of the player (e.g., the original used to have up to 40 sec of anti-skip, but after the update, you can select up to 60 seconds).

The price? If you search online, the Soul player can be had for roughly $135. No messy jukebox software or anything needed. Just drop mp3s on to a disc and you're ready to go. 15 hour battery life, too.

[This message has been edited by fmann (edited 06-02-2001).]
 
fmann,
sounds good.
so i just take mp3 that are on my machine,drag em to the cd,and burn?

life is good.
biggrin.gif

ill be hunting for one after blade show.
 
Please consider the TDK Mojo if you like anti-skip protection, up to 8 minutes when playing MP3 files. In fact, play time goes beyond 15 hours when you are playing MP3 files instead of wav.files being played at double speed. Also, the ID3 Navitrack technology allow you to sort by title, album, artist, genre, directory, and playlist instead of the one folder directory the the Rio Volt has.

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"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.", King Lear, Act I, Scene 4.
 
Yeah. But if you format a CDRW in DirectCD format, you just drag and drop the files to the cdrw and Windows takes over. No need to use EZ CD Creator, or anything. A DirectCD CDRW is treated by windows as another hard drive, floppy disk, etc..

That is if you have Direct CD installed.

I don't know about the directory sorting though -- my brother has my Volt and he's in London.

[This message has been edited by fmann (edited 06-03-2001).]
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by fmann:
Yeah. But if you format a CDRW in DirectCD format, you just drag and drop the files to the cdrw and Windows takes over. No need to use EZ CD Creator, or anything. A DirectCD CDRW is treated by windows as another hard drive, floppy disk, etc..

That is if you have Direct CD installed.

I don't know about the directory sorting though -- my brother has my Volt and he's in London.

[This message has been edited by fmann (edited 06-03-2001).]
</font>

My copy of Adaptec EZ CD creator 4.0 has Direct CD as an option to install. My only quip about CD-RW is that the capacity of a RW cd is less than a straight CD-R, and I {/b} have had issues with Direct CD being able to read RW discs that it just made. I also prefer not to have Direct CD enabled during start up (with a r/w cd in the burner drive), kind of slows start up with my Pent II 450. In any case the TDK MOJO does read CD/RW discs as well. The Mojo also has a blue backlit 4 line display to support more text, assumably for sorting by song title, artist, album and genre.

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"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.", King Lear, Act I, Scene 4.
 
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