[stereth]

Yes, another recommend-me-a-DAP thread. I'm looking to get a hard-drive player in the next few weeks. Here's what I need, in no particular order:

Good sound quality
30-40gb with lossless encoding or 40-60gb for uncompressed wav audio
Simple software
$400 or less

I think I've narrowed it down to the iAudio M3 40gb, the iPod 40gb, and the Creative Zen Xtra 60gb, but I'm welcome to other suggestions. I'm using Portapros right now for portable listening, unamped (though that might change at some point). I have no problems with DIY solutions for line out/battery replacement. I'm not in love with the iPod culture, but I don't mind it. Creative has a (perhaps undeserved) reputation in my mind for bad software. Can anyone compare these players, especially as software and sound quality are concerned? Thanks.

 

[Thrasher]

Hmm, your request really narrow your choice down to what you mentioned + iRiver H140, if you can still find one.... I don't know much about Creative players and I don't like that M3 doesn't work without the remote. At this point, it is really hard to recommend you someting, maybe you should wait for the upcoming iAudio M5, but AFAIK it will be issued at first only like 20 GB. So, in your place, if you want to buy right now, I would go with the iRiver or Creative. I wouldn't buy the ipod because of the hassle of using iTunes to upload every time.... BTW, does the Creative require special software for uploading songs to it too?

 

[stereth]

I don't mind the idea of using the remote on the M3, though I wish I could put it on random and just plug headphones in. I don't know much about the Creative.

 

[Thrasher]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stereth I don't mind the idea of using the remote on the M3, though I wish I could put it on random and just plug headphones in. I don't know much about the Creative.

The M3 doesn't have random song playback?

 

[stereth]

I meant, put it on random, unplug the remote, plug in headphones, and use it like I use Foobar on my computer.

 

[Charlie87]

I actually found the ipods sound quality pretty enjoyable

Good Software is of course Ipods trademark..

There are many other good players out there too, Rio Karma, iRiver H340, even the Zen line up....if you want a featre stripped, easy to use, good SQ (IMO) player, then go iPod...but if you itch for features stay away from it

 

[Bluez]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stereth I meant, put it on random, unplug the remote, plug in headphones, and use it like I use Foobar on my computer.

You can put it on random (which is a true shuffle),switch it off, unplug the remote, plug in headphones, switch it back on using the main unit and listen. You can still control the volume (with a dedictated volume control), skip past songs you don't want to listen to, skip back to the start of songs etc from the main unit.

You just can't look for specific songs as there is no screen but to just listen on random it works fine.

On a software issue, I have no idea what the software with M3 is like as I only use drag and drop, so if you understand file tree structure it doesn't get any easier.

 

[MartinJ]

I had the m3 iaudio 40 GB, very slim but not there is one con.
One major con is that you will have to navigate songs after their folder name or file name. You can NOT go in some nice list and say you want to listen to Nirvana. You have to find the folder name or file name. The remote is small so you can only see few lines at a time.

If you dont mind the above then its a good player. But if you want an easy way to find your artists, albums, songs,- then dont buy the m3.

I sold my iAudio m3 40 GB only 2 weeks after I had it.

 

[Bluez]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MartinJ One major con is that you will have to navigate songs after their folder name or file name. You can NOT go in some nice list and say you want to listen to Nirvana. You have to find the folder name or file name. The remote is small so you can only see few lines at a time.

I am not sure I understand that one. The M3 displays 5 lines of text/folders/ options etc. The iPod displays 6 lines, thats only one more. And if you want to go listen to Nirvana you go to your nice list of artist folders scroll to Nirvana and select play now. As long as your artists are well ordered its pretty much the same as the iPod but with the advantage that you don't have the hassle of sorting out strange ID3 tags.

 

[MartinJ]

That is true, but you have to keep your folders cleaned. The display is small. Do try it before deciding.

And it is far from the same as the iPod. You can not go play after; "Album" title, "Genre", ect. You only have your Foldername and File name as your listing. There is not much flexability and I found it a pain to search throuh hundreds of albums this way. I have my ID3 tags properly done- which my explain why I disslike any UI which does not have an ID3 tag database.

 

[Kikkoman]

I have an M3, and I'm quite happy with it. The only downside is the fact that your forced to use a remote to graphicly navigate (blind navigation is still possible with the main unit if you arn't using the remote), but that doesn't bug me since 90% of the time I use it I would use a remote anyway. I don't know if the other players have these features, but with the M3 you also get an FM radio and a voice recorder. While neither are the highest quality you've ever heard they serve their purpose rather well. I use the radio to listen to sports broadcasts and the voice recorder for school. Another possible downside is the M3's reliance on orderly folder structure instead of id3 tags. Now this isn't a problem for me, it's actually one of my favorite features, but if you have weird naming conventions or just don't use a easy to understand structure you can run into problems

Here are some things to make the M3 navigation easy as pie
1 - Use somthing similar to my folder structure: Music/Genre/Artist/Album/01 - trackname.mp3
2 - avoid puting artist and album names in file names eg "Shpongle - 06 - Divine Moments of Truth.mp3" This causes a problem for browsing becausethe name is to long to show up on the screen all at once and instead you see something like "Shpongle - 06 " Now when you pause on a track the filename does scroll to show the full name, but that seriously hinders how fast you can search because you have to wait for the names to scroll to find the track you want.
3 - This is realy more of a convience and realy not needed, but it is nice to do. To display Albums in order of their release simply number them by using for instance "01 - Are you Shpongled?" as the folder name instead of just "Are you Shpongled?" Doing this just makes it easier if you like searching through and artists albums by date instead of alphabeticaly.

 

[stereth]

Thanks. I'm liking the idea of the M3 more and more. I've always liked directories better than music libraries.

 

[xantus]

and if you've got foobar it makes masstagging/renaming your directory structure easy as pie. i agree with having Album/tracknumber-title because the scrolling even at its highest setting doesnt go all that fast(and if you're in the dark the backlight goes out often before you see the track name if you have artist - album - ## - title(yes i know you can make the light stay on longer, but for the sake of battery life ))

im pleased with my m3 and prefer directory editing over "music library management" too .... i wonder if having the remote unplugged would make a large difference in the battery life? would be interesting to see how much.

 

[000111]

Just thought I'd add in that the iaudio is highly portable. For a month I have the 40 gb version, which is considerably thicker than the 20gb version, yet it still fits with ease in my pockets. However, I am usually using the M3 with its belt strap case, which -if you arrange properly- can remove almost all the cabling, the player and the remote (when you're not using it) from sight. Great if you don't live in the safest environment.

I've also noticed the continual improvements provided by firmware, notably the increase in m3u playlist size, and the "true randomization" when selecting shuffle, that wasn't present in earlier versions.

The only issues raised by most are the smallish screen, dependence on a remote and naming of folders/tracks, and of these, the only criticism I'd fully back is that of the small screen, the problems of which are significantly alleviated if as Kikkoman says, you name files succinctly and efficiently.

I have also found it of benefit that m3 supports ogg vorbis, and FLAC (compression levels 0-2), and most of my files on the player are of either format.

As this is the only mp3 player I've owned I can't compare the m3 to other players from experience, and were I to own another player maybe I would prefer it, but I can say that over the last month or so, the m3 has become a reliable, useful and essential piece of equipment in my everyday life.

First post ^_^

 

[drdnl]

I'm also an IAudio M3(L) owner, never, ever need to worry about my battery. The remote works great, the sound is excellent (on ety er-4p), my folder structure is clear and coherent and , firmware upgrades come every two weeks (fw history link here) And even more often more with blatant mistakes, there was a tiny graphical error with 1.34, fixed 3 days (!) later with 1.35. Compare that to most manufacturers...

the only thing I had to do to accomodate the m3 was rename my music from %tracknumber% - %Artist% - %Album% - %Track%.mp3

to

%tracknumber% - %Track% - %Artist% - %Album%.mp3, for reasons mentioned in prior posts. And we all that that takes about 5 min. (with 20gigs of music) with foobar2k

Oh, and tech support is excellent