[trains are bad]

Portable players have only recently begun to interest me, when I realized the possibility that I could hook it into my car system on home system, and basically carry my whole collection around. Not actually walk around listening to music constantly because I can't stand that. Actual portable audio has never appealed to me.

I was fiddling around with a friend's spankin new 5g iPod. I was like, 'how do you turn off gaps between songs?' He was like 'I don't think you can'. I said, no, there has to be a way. Nobody would charge so much money for, or buy a player that doesn't play music properly.

There isn't. I came here and confirmed it.

Then I was like 'it will play flacs right?' Surely, such a popular and expensive player would play the most popular open source format. Nope. He showed me iTunes and how it takes your music collection hostage and messes with it. I don't understand why I can't just drag and drop my neatly categorized music collection from my computer to the DAP.

So it seems to me that iPods (and most others I've found) are basically music playing toys. I assumed if you created a player with a hard drive that would hold gigabytes of music, that it would have a line out so you could hook it into an actual system, it would facilitate transfer and storage of my electronic music collection, and would be able to play it back properly.

How silly of me. What a waste!

 

[carsncars]

Last time I checked, FLAC was NOT a common format. Sure, it might be popular on Head-Fi, but if you polled us your results'll be more than a bit skewed. The iPod DOES have a line-out, through the dock connector. Google 'PocketDock'.

It sounds like you're a Rio Karma kind of person.. gapless, OGG, etc.-- only thing it's missing that you want is the line-out. Only through the dock, and this time there's no PocketDock, a la iPod (pays to have a huge fan following, eh?). Then, you could take a look at the iRiver iHP12x series-- with RockBox on it, you can do FLAC, OGG, gapless, and it has a digital/optical line out. Both of these DAPs are out of production, so you'll have to shop around a bit...

The iAudio X5 might also be a contender, but no gapless. The Sony NW-HD5 does gapless, but only if you re-encode your music with ATRAC.

 

[Luc]

The iAudio X5 may suit you. It doesn't quite have gapless, but it's pretty close.

 

[FenderP]

Get a Sony - gapless with ATRAC. No lossless support in the player yet, but the iAudio and other players annoyed me with their gaps no matter how short. ATRAC3+ if encoded at 256k or above sounds fine for portable use.

 

[gloco]

Track down an iriver H120 or H140.

 

[Thaddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gloco Track down an iriver H120 or H140.

Yeah this is your best bet. With the Rockbox firmware, they have gapless, and they also support USB-OTG and have a line out and optical out on the unit itself (no adapters needed).

Your second best choice is the iAudio X5. It's as gapless as you can get without being truly gapless

Also, it has a line out but you have to use the included thingy majigger that plugs into the bottom. And yes, that's actually the correct techincal name for it

 

[no1likesme]

if you only want it for a car ect (he said portable audio didn't interest him) then the karma and the dock would be perfect
the only downside to the karma for you would be that it doesnt have "drag and drop" capabilities, but if your music has proper id3 tags then it will organize everything perfectly

get the karma

 

[dskywalker]

iPod sounds totally a wrong product for you. Iriver players sound like exactly what you're looking for, althought for those out of production models, they're quite expensive.

 

[gloco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dskywalker iPod sounds totally a wrong product for you. Iriver players sound like exactly what you're looking for, althought for those out of production models, they're quite expensive.

I've seen a few used H120's for $200 or so in the portable sale section. The fact that the battery is replaceable+rockbox makes the iriver a great choice. Plus, its very well built.