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

A sore point

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

No, they don't come with DAB these days: believe me, I would know!
However, there are related considerations for those who have, or who are thinking of getting, a DAB radio which can record to a card (e.g. the Bug records to SD cards). Because: they generally record in MP2 format. Now, in general, this is not supported by most digital audio players, not like, say, MP3 (which everyone plays).

I have an iRiver H140 (it also comes in a 20 gig version, the H120, for those trying to shave a few squid off the price). It is ugly and (like all other players) its interface is not as intuitive as the iPod's. But: there is an alternative opensource firmware for it, Rockbox, and I (*) put Rockbox on my H140 and now it plays back MP2 files. It used to take me hours to re-encode shows to mp3 and now I just copy the buggers over via the PC, hurrah!

The H140/H120 just shows up as a removable hard drive on just about everything. No Creative-style drivers needed, no iTunes, just copy your music files over and off you go.

It has a line-out socket (indeed it has an optical line-out too: same socket but you change the settings). It comes with a mains adaptor (for charging) and has good battery life (no problem playing it all day at work). (It also comes with a jack-to-jack lead, an LCD remote, a small lapel mike, and a sturdy but fugly case, all as standard).

It also has a line-in socket and will record to mp3 or wav, which I have found useful for digitising vinyl (in fact right now I'm listening to an old Billie Holliday LP that I hoovered up this way).

So I would certainly recommend the iRiver H1xx series as one of the models you should consider. But in the end it's very much a personal thing.

(*)Note: I am a fairly timid person in some respects and did not do this until other people had been using Rockbox on their H1xx's for several months with no ill effects and had posted clear and detailed instructions on how to change over (not that it is that complicated actually!).

Re: A sore point

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Mo, if you want to know about DAB stuff recording onto cards etc., talk to our mutual friend who isn't on LJ (which probably nails it down more or less uniquely these days ;))

Re: A sore point

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I shall do, although I think for the purposes of the current purchase I'm happy to remain ignorant about it -- my radio listening tends these days to be 'whatever's on Radio 6' rather than wanting to record specific shows.

Re: A sore point

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. With only one exception in the last year and more, everything I've wanted to listen to was available on Listen Again anyhow, and I already have the tech set up to capture that.

Re: A sore point

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

Or even me...

Re: A sore point

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

Just worked out who your mutual friend is, and yes he'd be an even better choice

Re: A sore point

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

;)

Re: A sore point

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, though since they'll be brain-wiping you of all your knowledge very shortly...

Re: A sore point

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I thought you were on work-to-rule these days ;-)

Re: A sore point

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that sounds pretty appealing -- I have an optical in on my amp which I've never used yet! Being able to dump vinyl onto it could also be v useful. Thanks!

Re: A sore point

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, there's one on eBay atm with a buy it now of US$480! -- maybe I don't want it quite that much. A couple under auction though, so I'll keep an eye on them.

Strange that they don't seem to currently make a product anything like as good, considering how acclaimed that was.

Re: A sore point

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the masses that count, not spods discerning types ;)

Try misticriver.net, the forums have a buy/sell section and there's usually someone trading up/out from an H120 every week or so, plus Jeff does I think sell reconditioned ones from misticaudio.com (I say "I think" because I can never get the latter site to load, even though Google claims to have trawled through it this morning!).

Re: A sore point

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Bah, looking back on eBay I see I've just missed a whole bunch of H140s that went for less than 100 EUR each! -- I'll have to keep monitoring it...

Alternatively

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

If you really don't want something particularly portable, Morgan has an 80Gb freecom media player for under £190.

I am sure you are the sort of law-abiding person who would not dream of buying one of those low-power FM transmitters which effectively allow you to listen to your music in the garden with any old FM radio.