Need MP3 recommendations

C

Charlie_K

Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
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Recently I lost my MP3 player, and the model has long since been discontinued. I need a new one, but there are so many different models available I have no idea what to look for. Can anyone recommend a good model that's acceptably reliable and not overly fragile?
 
Is your phone not an option? Having a dedicated mp3 player is pretty rare now a days. 😀
 
I prefer a separate music player, primarily due to battery drain. Nowadays, I work from home and use my cell phone for business. I often drain my cell phone battery on lengthy conference calls. So having music on a different device is useful.

I use a 5th Gen iPod Touch with 32GB. I have ~35 years worth of CDs stored on the hard drive of my Windows PC using iTunes lossless format I use a more compact MP3 file format for the iPod and it holds most of my collection. Backups consist of a spare hard drive stored in a fireproof container plus the CD's themselves. I think I have maybe half a dozen electronic albums with no CD associated with it. The only downside is I have to boot up the Windows machine to update the collection. I normally use Linux.

I kind of drifted into that setup and see no need to change it. Which is good, because I'm locked into iTunes unless I want to re-load all those CD's in a different format.
 
knarfeng said:
I prefer a separate music player, primarily due to battery drain. Nowadays, I work from home and use my cell phone for business. I often drain my cell phone battery on lengthy conference calls. So having music on a different device is useful.

I use a 5th Gen iPod Touch with 32GB. I have ~35 years worth of CDs stored on the hard drive of my Windows PC using iTunes lossless format I use a more compact MP3 file format for the iPod and it holds most of my collection. Backups consist of a spare hard drive stored in a fireproof container plus the CD's themselves. I think I have maybe half a dozen electronic albums with no CD associated with it. The only downside is I have to boot up the Windows machine to update the collection. I normally use Linux.

I kind of drifted into that setup and see no need to change it. Which is good, because I'm locked into iTunes unless I want to re-load all those CD's in a different format.
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Good to know and all, but unfortunately for me iPod isn't a viable option to go with.
 
And old cell phone can be a good option. I'm setting up my old Samsung S4 Mini for this with a 512GB card. You or a family member or friend might have something viable lying around collecting dust, or you can find something on swappa or ebay for very cheap. The advantage with a cell phone, other than screen size (which may or may not be an advantage), is that even an older one is essentially a mini-computer, making it faster and more capable than a simple mp3 player. You also have your choice of player software, where with an mp3 player you're stuck with what's built in.

C Charlie_K What was your old mp3 player? What are you looking at in a new one? Tiny one with buttons, larger one with touch screen? How much $$$, how much music, do you need a microSD slot, etc?
 
Planterz said:
C Charlie_K What was your old mp3 player? What are you looking at in a new one? Tiny one with buttons, larger one with touch screen? How much $$$, how much music, do you need a microSD slot, etc?
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An old Phillips GoGear Vibe. Very dependable for the last 7 years. I'm looking for something similar. Something stick-shaped with buttons for navigation and controls. How much I'm willing to spend depends on how reliable/durable it is, how unlikely the screen is to get F'ed up in the pocket, and at least 8 gigabytes of space.
 
Charlie_K said:
An old Phillips GoGear Vibe. Very dependable for the last 7 years. I'm looking for something similar. Something stick-shaped with buttons for navigation and controls. How much I'm willing to spend depends on how reliable/durable it is, how unlikely the screen is to get F'ed up in the pocket, and at least 8 gigabytes of space.
Click to expand...

I had a Sandisk Clip somethingorother years back. Great player until it got destroyed by my own negligence. Played FLAC files, and had a good equalizer that I could tune to my preferences. Had a decent amount of amp/preamp that made it potentually louder than, say, my phone. You could view music by folders if you wanted, not just by artist/album tags. I suspect the newer ones are the same. The Sport ones sacrifice a microSD slot for waterproofness. If 16 or 32GB is enough, I'd go with a Sport model over the Clip Jam, which has a smaller, inferior screen. The one thing that I really didn't care for with my old Clip is that while the microSD slot gave me a lot of expansion for more music, it took f o r e v e r for music to load on it when I swapped it out or connected it to my computer. I don't mean transferring, I mean the player scanning the card for everything on it. Forget about putting music on it before listening on it to your way to work or working out or whatever. More like you'd do it the night before and hope it was done by the time you woke up. Swapping music to the internal memory was quick though. Just don't expect to "hot swap" SD cards and play them immediately.

The Victure seems pretty similar. I can't speak for the file system or playback features though. 4 stars with 9000+ reviews on Amazon, more than any Sandisk. And cheaper.

Those are the ones I see that are similar to your old Phillips.
 
Another vote for the Sandisk Clip. I have 3 over 10 years old and still working. Don't use them much anymore but they all work when needed. I have a 32 GB card in one so tons of music.
 
I lost my zune and have most of my cds on an external hard drive. Can’t get them to download on my iPhone.....
 
Charlie_K said:
Recently I lost my MP3 player, and the model has long since been discontinued. I need a new one, but there are so many different models available I have no idea what to look for. Can anyone recommend a good model that's acceptably reliable and not overly fragile?
Click to expand...
Hello there,
I have two Sony Walkman MP3 players: NW-A800 series, it is an older model in very good condition, battery is still holding decent charge, and NWZ-E584 overall very good condition, still holds charge well. If you want to take them they yours absolutely free, just let me know how to get in touch with you for shipping information.
 
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Again, Sandisk Clip Sport. Before that I used Sandisk Clip Plus which was the previous model. Why?

I too like a separate battery for tunes so my phone doesn't die but any player achieves that. Main reason I use these is that they play .flac files. All my collection is lossless cd-rips in flac format. I do not want to store mp3-version duplicates of the 40,000+ songs I have. Drag & drop easily puts my flacs on the player and off I go. The clip is handy too. I have a 16GB micro-sd in mine so it can store lots of these larger flac files.
 
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