[thoughtcriminal]

My little sister is looking for an mp3 player.
She needs a lot of storage (15gb+, pref 30gb+) in a small package for very cheap(under or as close to $100 as possible), and shockproof(so no hard drive) . After much looking around, the best solution seems to be taking an old microdrive player and switching in a high capacity Compact flash card. I was inspired in doing this by some ipod mini mods I've seen.

16gb cards can be had for less than $30 and 32gb cards for a little more than $60

she likes the ipod look, but from what I've read, the SQ is lacking. She is no audiophile, but I don't want her to have a crappy mp3 player.

some I've seen that feature microdrives are the Ipod mini, Creative Zen micro, Rio carbon, and Cowon I6. Obviously the I6 would be the best, but I can't find them anywhere. The Rio carbon (second choice) is almost as difficult to find as the I6

The Zen Micro and Ipod Mini are both plentiful and cheap, but neither are stellar in terms of sound. Imo, the Zen is much better than the ipod (has the same crap inside as my Zen sleek)

Any other microdrive players out there that sound good?

note: her music is all in mp3 format, so flac isn't necessary. Its all encoded at 192kb+ though (at my insistence). Knowing that, the player must be good enough that the files are the limiting factor, not the player itself

Edit: Iriver H10 (known for exceedingly crappy sound), Olympus m robe m100, and Sony NW-A1000 are also possibilities. anyone know how the sony and olympus sound? Figures the Iriver is the only one to be found.

 

[misterDX]

sansa view in 16gb, or e280 with 8gb sd card

 

[thoughtcriminal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterDX /img/forum/go_quote.gif sansa view in 16gb, or e280 with 8gb sd card

If I was going that way, I would just get her a Sansa fuse. But there are no flash players with high enough capacity in the price range. Even any of the decent Sansas + SD card don't fit the bill

 

[Ricardo Dawkins]

Creative Zen (refurb or discount) or Zen X-Fi. No microdrive but I think you can get these devices around your price range good options.

 

[Styrbjorn]

Personally I'm really pleased with flash-modded Cowon X5

IMO, SQ is better than in any flash-based cowon players (D2, i7 etc)

 

[RubenNYC]

Scratch the Rio Carbon off your list. The Carbon only supports up to 8 GB.

 

[misterDX]

SanDisk Sansa "Rockbox" 16GB MP3/Media Player Bundle (8GB Recertified e280 v1 Rockbox-ready + 8GB MicroSDHC Card)

 

[DJGeorgeT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by misterDX /img/forum/go_quote.gif SanDisk Sansa "Rockbox" 16GB MP3/Media Player Bundle (8GB Recertified e280 v1 Rockbox-ready + 8GB MicroSDHC Card)

the E280 v1 sounds horrible!

 

[Low Fidelity]

Quote:

she likes the ipod look, but from what I've read, the SQ is lacking. She is no audiophile, but I don't want her to have a crappy mp3 player.

Quote:

her music is all in mp3 format, so flac isn't necessary. Its all encoded at 192kb+ though (at my insistence).

I'm not trying to be an ipod fanboy, but she probably wouldn't know if the ipod was lacking in SQ.

You didn't mention what phones she's going to be plugging in with, so i'm guessing stock?

So if you add the lowbit rate + entry level phones = any player that has the capacity she wants.

If you plugged her up to any ipod under those circumstances, I sincerely doubt she would be able to discern any difference between the ipod Headphone out and other players.

For her in the conditions specified above, I think the question would be interface/loading and capacity.

This was the situation my father was in. I wanted him to be able to plug it into his PC easily, remove/add music easily and be easy to operate. Of course, the player had to be big enough in capacity to handle a large enough assortment of what he wants to listen to.

My dad isn't into the Ferrari's of personal Media Players, he's more of an Pickup truck kind of person.

Granted, to the purists of the forums, this is blasphemy. But honestly, how good can you make Johnny Cash's Original Sun tracks sound?

Only as good as they were originally recorded.

So buy her something she'll like, she's comfortable operating and has enough space to hold most everything she wants to listen to.