MP3 players -- geek wisdom sought

[undyingking]

I'm thinking about getting an MP3 player, but rather than go into the tiresome business of researching the market myself, I thought I'd see if any of you guys are reasonably up to speed and could make recommendations!

Required features:

• lots of storage (10s of GB);
• decent sound quality;
• easy to hook up to PC;
• most important, easy to hook up to hifi aux in, ie. to act as a de facto hifi component;
• can run off mains;
• decent battery etc performance
• decent headphones (or, ability to replace headphones with decent ones).

Not-required features:

• considerations of portability / durability etc (unlikely to take it anywhere more exotic than the garden);
• support for dozens of obscure / proprietary file formats;
• wonderfully intuitive / one-button interface (it's likely to live on shuffle);
• coolour screen etc;
• stunning looks.

And a price of somewhere around the £150-200 mark I guess. Any thoughts?

(Do these things come with digital radios at all these days? That would be cool.)

Comments

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I have a Creative Zen Touch (20GB) and it has pretty much what you're looking for. You need to install the transfer software (which sorts things nicely to artist, track, album and genre) but then it works like an external drive.
The included headphones are a bit crap but it's a standard 3.5mm connector so you can easily use a different one. I have it connected via a 3.5mm/RCA cable to my mini-stereo and it works fine. An AC brick is included as well. I haven't tested the battery on constant use but about 5-8 hours should be possible.
Looks like it's in your price bracket, too (the 40GB is 190).
It doesn't have a digital radio, though.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

I have a 40GB Creative Zen Touch. The only thing about it that bugs me is the Touch bit of it, which I find overly sensitive even on the lowest setting. A little clicky wheel would have been just as good better.

It might be worth going down the IPod route on the basis that there are now several stereo manufacturers producing stereos that are, in essence, IPod docking stations. Like this, for example.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

But iPods are far too expensive for what they are...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

But wait... I know little of all this, but I though iPods were problematic because of the difficulty of using non-iTunes music with them. Is this not the case ?

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Lack of restriction to iTunes wasn't a specification requirement, though I know it does irk some folks.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Consider it implicit.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you mean "non-iTunes music" in the sense that I think it's tougher to get stuff on to the iPod other than via iTunes, but iPods will happily play plain ol' MP3s which have been generated through (many) other means.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That is a very nice thing, but I already have a decent hifi so I just want a line out really.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I've got a Creative MuVo (which doesn't fit undyingking's requirements, but I presume the software's the same.

The software's pretty awful. The only reason I use it is because my source mp3s have been ripped at very high quality, and I can only fit about 8 at a time onto the MuVo. The Creative software at least lets me re-encode them quite easily. Other than that, the MuVo is just a USB drive, so if it weren't for the down-sizing of the files, I can just copy them on.

I say "just copy them on", but that isn't true, although the problem might be specific to the MuVo, and not to a Zen: it only handles one level of directory. So when I copy "/mnt/mpeg-3/Pink Floyd/1979 - The Wall/Disk 1/01 - In The Flesh.mp3", I either copy it to my "Pink Floyd" directory (and Disk 1 and Disk 2 get mixed up), or I copy it to my "Disk 1" directory, and mix it up with all the other Disk 1's I've got (which, on the MuVo, is approximately zero, but it's still annoying).

The zen, being simply a chunkier product, may not have this problem.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

No, you can drop a file into any section/directory level and it will sort it accordingly (provided all the files have the same naming structure).