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I currently have an Archos Jukebox 6000 (6gb) and it's about as heavy as a brick. It's getting a bit long in the tooth, starting to get finicky. It's time to update my technology and get some more capacity... and did I mention it's like a freaking brick?

Can anyone suggest a good MP3 player with reasonable capacity and a decent price? There are WAY too many choices out there, even some pointers on what to avoid would be helpful. I'm not real big on the IPod, especially with all the DRM crap they've implemented, but if it can be worked around I'm open to it.

zoom

tho I currently own an createive zen touch.

DRM is only a problem on the iPod for the songs you bought on iTunes. Everything else is fine.

I use a RIO Forge 512mb. While it doesn't have a lot of storage space compared to the iPod and look-alikes, it is as light as a feather and comes with a shoulder strap for athletics. I use it when I run, bike, and work out and I love it.

Yeah, the 512 just flat isn't enough... Unfortunately. I need more.

I also have the creative Zen Touch. It works great for me and has 20Gb storage capacity.

WarAdvocat wrote:Yeah, the 512 just flat isn't enough... Unfortunately. I need more.

How about the Rio Carbon 6Gb ... only 3.2 ounces ...

http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_ ... ?model=306

Looking better.

I'm actually leaning towards the Zen at the moment...OTOH, Spend a little more and get a 60 gigabyte+ Portable Video Player...

Decisions Decisions... I mean what could be more motivating that pr0n on the treadmill!

I have the Creative Zen Micro and I like it alright. I guess if I charged it more often I'd get more use out of it. But I forget to connect the usb all the time until it's too late

Still, it's a great MP3 player. You have to turn the sensitivity down to the lowest setting though or you'll be all over the place.

I love my iPod Photo 30GB. The click wheel really does live up to all the hype; the iPod isn't cluttered with butons, and unlike the Creative player the speed at which you move your finger directly affects the speed at which you scroll through the menu, thus providing more precise navigation. IMO, the Creative machines (including the Dell DJ) have too many submenus, making playback non-intuitive.

Unfortunately, the one thing the iPod lacks that the Creative machines have is a dedicated shuffle button. I don't shuffle that often, but once in a while I think it would be handy to just hit the Shuffle (Randomize) button rather than have to back out to the menu and turn on Shuffle from there. The iPod keeps playing the songs as you do this, but it's still a bit more complicated than necessary.

The thing with the iPod though is that you can't just dump MP3's onto it; you have to use iTunes (or ephpod or gtkpod or the like). It shows up as a USB Mass Storage device, which is good. Plus the docking sation is great. It has a dedicated line-out, so if you so desire you can hook it up to your stereo's aux in and play it from there (while your photos play in a slideshow even ).

I like the RIOs also. I have the 256 meg version and it would carry 50 mp3s. The single AAA batery lasted about 10-15 hours of playback so I will be buying a new one when i get my 2nd or even 3rd job as I am broke right now.

sorry

DCrazy wrote:The thing with the iPod though is that you can't just dump MP3's onto it; you have to use iTunes (or ephpod or gtkpod or the like). It shows up as a USB Mass Storage device, which is good. Plus the docking sation is great. It has a dedicated line-out, so if you so desire you can hook it up to your stereo's aux in and play it from there (while your photos play in a slideshow even ).

i heard there was a workaround for this. Simply turn on "show hidden files" and then you can dump all music directly on it. Cannot validate this at the moment because my PC is broken.

Unfortunately, that won't work. The song files will be physically on the iPod, but the iPod needs the right info in the iTunesDB files (the files in /iPod_Control) in order to be able to find them. iTunesDB also stores the playlists, playcount info, rating, volume leveling information, and other info about songs.

Which actually reminds me of 2 things that the iPod has that other players don't - smart playlists and audiobook/podcast support. Smart playlists are playlists that automatically generate themselves based on criteria -- the iPod comes with a few smart playlists built in, like Top 25 Songs (25 songs with the highest rating) or 90's Music (all songs from 1990-1999). Of course you can create your own ("all Disco songs from 1973 with a 5-star rating that I've played more than 20 times and that are shorter than 4:27 and in MP3 format" is a potential smart playlist) and every time you sync your iPod, the playlist will be updated. It's a really neat feature.

And then of course are audiobooks and podcasts. These two require extra information (chapters etc) that can't just be stored in an MP3 file. Therefore you need to use iTunes to sync these up.

If you don't listen to audiobooks or podcasts you can avoid iTunes by using gtkpod (*nix) or ephPod (Windows). These programs will sync your iPod just fine, with the added benefit of allowing you to copy songs off of it.

foo_pod + foobar2000 supports smart play lists and podcasts

Hmm question re: Audiobooks-

Most of the audiobooks I've downloaded are broken down to 1 MP3 file per chapter. What is it you're talking about? Some kind of Meta-info like chapter:title stuff on a DVD?

I saw this on www.spoofee.com

It may be of interest to you.

Dell 5GB Pocket MP3 Player for $153.99 Shipped

Right. I'm actually not sure if they've implemented it in the latest firmware, but there's a mechanism in the iTunesDB format to add sub-info for an audiobook. It probably only applies to audiobooks from the iTunes Music Store, though.

My 1GB iPod Shuffle does the job.

I've been looking long and hard at the iriver H10. Comes in 5,6 and 20GB flavors. It's nice and small, but not too small and has an ipod-esque touchpad interface. Can anyone offer an opinion on this player?

I have a nomad MuVo NX 256 MB, tiny, runs my headphones well. But 256 MB is way too small, the 1 GB one would be better but I'd go for the 4 GB version that uses a HDD if I were in the market for a new one.