DescentBB

Thinking about pulling the trigger on an iPod Shuffle. Any new owners? Good earbuds on iPods or should I shop a higher end pair? Do cops stop folks for having earbuds in? Also, what's the ultimate wake-up-and-motivate-for-a-soul-sucking-job songlist (list a song)?

Sunn o)))

White2

No, I mean stuff that won't make me wanna cross into oncoming traffic.

Meh, I don't think the shuffle's worth it.
Grab an iPod mini if you want one.
And I love the earbuds.

Defender x2.
Although I'm a Mac fanboy, I think $99 *is* a bit much to pay for a flash mp3 player (read: think. I haven't owned a flash mp3 player). A normal iPod (or mini, for that matter) was 100% worth it at the previous price and is even moreso now that's it's down $100.

The earbuds have the best quality-size ratio I've ever heard in headphones. Actually, they're second to my other set of headphones If you like to listen while you drive, you may want to look into investing in an FM transmitter, I believe you can pick them up for fairly cheap.

I recently wrecked my iriver h120(note to all current and future HD-based mp3 players... don't drop it while its reading the disc). 400 dollar paperweight.

most of my collection are ogg vorbis, 99% ripped from cd's I own.

Im pondering redoing the lot in another format, dependant upon which player people would recommned.

The thing I liked about my previous player was that I just needed to drag the music onto the thing, and It can play it, no need for software to transfer playable music onto it, and that would be a big requirement for any replacement.

so, any impressions?

Get something that supports FLAC if you're REALLY into music.

DCrazy wrote:Get something that supports FLAC if you're REALLY into music.

Read my post, and then re-think the worthiness of FLAC in portable audio players...

Rio Karma.

Plays OGG, FLAC, MP3, WMA, maybe others. Comes with TONS of accessories, including a dock with an Ethernet port (!). Its UI supposedly out-does the iPod for usability, and various review sites say the battery lasts a good while, although not quite the advertised 15 hours. MSRP is $299.99, can be found for as little as $240, maybe less if you're lucky. I want one.

OGG forevar! Or at least until something better comes out.

fliptw wrote:Read my post, and then re-think the worthiness of FLAC in portable audio players...

The only thing I can possibly think of is that you believe FLAC files would be too big for anything but an HDD-based player, and those are to risky to be worth it. Other than that I see no argument against FLAC in your post.

Flac is worthless for portable audio considering that 1) they're like 5 times bigger than lossy audio formats (which is a concern if you're going flash-based over hdd-based) and 2) the supposed better audio quality is pointless given the whole system isn't audiophile quality by any means.

I tried both Monkey's audio (.APE) and FLAC format songs. Monkey's audio is by far superior. Smaller size and lower CPU usage. Also there is no difference between the quality of the two formats. Now, all we need is a player to support the .APE format

Well one can wrap FLAC (or any other format) within OGG, thereby reducing the filesize further while maintaining the exact audio quality as if it had been converted to OGG in the first place.

Here's an idea: why not use good ol' MP3s and be done with it?

I love the earplugs on the iPod. Better sound quality than of most other players. Even beat my larger Sony earphones I bought for playing D3.

Is it possible to buy the iPod earphones separately? I recently purchased a 512 MB Flash-based player, and the set that came with it is of pretty poor quality; plus, the hard plastic is murder on my ears.

iPod headphones are like $49 or something insane. I don't know if they sell them online but any Best Buy or Circuit City should have them. Then again, comparing quality, iPod earbuds sound better than 1/4 the quality of $200 studio headphones... more like 1/3 or 1/2, so I guess one's getting a good deal.

But about the format debate, why not just use mp3? Even for not-so-diehard audiophiles, 192-300 kbps sounds good.

iPod earbuds suck.

get a normal iPod; much more bang for your buck, and it's not THAT much bigger than the mini

You *will* need more space than you think so buy at least a mini if not the full iPod instead of the shuffle.

Then toss the so-so apple earphones and upgrade to a pair of these.

does anyone have any info on apple's warrenty for the ipod?

I believe it's 1 year and you can purchase extra years. It's that way for the computers, not sure about the iPod.

Yea 1 year, but the battery may be an exception. I just bought another iPod and the warranty paper doesn't mention the battery specifically but I seem to remember it's covered differently...or at least it was.
I know they recently had to improve their pay-for-out-of-warranty-replacement policy on the battery because people got upset at having to buy a new iPod when the battery failed prematurely but just out of warranty.