[alexo]

Hello, I read much about mp3 player recommendations and the sansa clip+ from sandisk appeared often.
Im not looking for an apple model. And it doesnt have to be a sandisk.
1. How big is the difference in sound quality between a sansa and the ipod touch(3g) for example.
2. how expensive must the headphones be to hear this difference ?
3. How would you rate the creative aurvana live with a mp3 player? I had one and it seemed pretty good. ( my ipod touch and my headphones were stolen )
4.Maybe there is another model that would fit well to me. recommendations?
5. Is there a difference in the sound quality between the sansas? (sansa clip zip, clip+, fuze+)
6. other general recommendations?
 
I can add: im not a fan of 100 speacial features. I think its better, if a audioplayer specialises on playing audio

Thank you for taking the time to answer to my questions.
 

 

[Cakensaur]

main difference is that the ipod doesn't support FLAC files, which are pretty much the audiophile mp3 and that the sansa clip does. so if you were to use that.. the difference would be fairly large, only downfall is FLAC files are not compressed so take up 3-5 times the space of bog standard mp3's.
id say go for the sansa clip or a nice cowon. or just an ipod if it doesn't matter either way to you
1) Difference in SQ would be noticed over time as opposed to a big song-and-dance fireworks display difference, in favour of the sansa, but this is also down to equipment (headphones, amps, DAC's)
4) the difference will be heard on pretty much all headphones, but as you use better headphones the differences are more pronounced and substantial. (eg you would hear a bigger difference using Denon AH-D2000's as opposed to the stock headphones, but you would still notice it... kinda. most stock earphones are horrible anyway)
3) i cant really help you here. im sorry about your stuff getting stolen too sucky
4) see above
5) It is small, but yes there is.
 
welcome to head-fi by the way.

 

[RainbowJack]

I have a Sansa Clip+, and I think I will be getting the Grado 225i and use those with it at work and no more 10 dollar Sony earbuds.  Likely, then, I should re-rip my media from mp3 into FLAC format.
 
What is the preferable program for doing this?  I have read that EAC seems to be the way to go.  Is this true?  Also, for FLAC, what's the average size of an album ripped into FLAC?  My clip has 8GB plus a 4GB card.  I wish I had more space!
 
Oh, as for the Clip+, it is an awesome little player.  I think mine has an issue wherein I have to move the headphone plug around a bunch or else I get static and cut-outs.  I guess something must be loose in mine, but my girlfriend has one too and hers is flawless.

 

[jhelsas]

 
Quote:

I have a Sansa Clip+, and I think I will be getting the Grado 225i and use those with it at work and no more 10 dollar Sony earbuds.  Likely, then, I should re-rip my media from mp3 into FLAC format.
 
What is the preferable program for doing this?  I have read that EAC seems to be the way to go.  Is this true?  Also, for FLAC, what's the average size of an album ripped into FLAC?  My clip has 8GB plus a 4GB card.  I wish I had more space!
 
Oh, as for the Clip+, it is an awesome little player.  I think mine has an issue wherein I have to move the headphone plug around a bunch or else I get static and cut-outs.  I guess something must be loose in mine, but my girlfriend has one too and hers is flawless.

There is no point to convert from mp3 to flac. The sound won't become lossless since the original source(the mp3) is lossy. The point of using flac is that you can have all the information on the CD on a bit less space(lets say 1/3 of the original) in a portable, digital file, easly portable, non-proprietary codec. So, the "only" use of flac is to rip the CD directly to it. After, if you wish you can re-convert to any lossy format(mp3, AAC, ogg, etc...)
 
Don't know on windows enviroment, but if you wish I can list some of the software I use under linux.
 
If you are worried about the clip+ not playing your mp3, there is no chance of that. It plays mp3, flac, ogg, and many others.
 
An average album riped from CD(uncompressed lossless, 16/44.1) is between 200 MB and 400 MB, which is a bit bigger than the average mp3 rip, but it's worth every byte. I have the fuze 8GB +16 GB(wished the 32 GB but @ the time it wasn't for sale) microsd. I have been having this problem with the headphone jack for about 2 months(I have the fuze for about 6 by now). The SQ, wide format playback, price and linux compatibility are awsome, but this problem with the jack is taking me out of the serius.
 

 

[RainbowJack]

Hmm, interesting that it isn't just some strange fluke with my player.  It usually clears itself up after I spin the plug around for about 20 seconds.  Thanks for the clarification with the mp3 flac issue.  I did mean re-rip my physical CDs into flac, so I guess I will have to look into getting a bigger microsd card!
 
What do you use under linux for ripping?

 

[skafle]

If you use windows, EAC is the way to go, you can probably find an easy set-up guide somewhere.

 

[Dreamnine]

I have a Sansa Clip Zip (Rockbox'd) and various iPods.
 
I like them all - they all sound good.

 

[jhelsas]

Quote:

Hmm, interesting that it isn't just some strange fluke with my player.  It usually clears itself up after I spin the plug around for about 20 seconds.  Thanks for the clarification with the mp3 flac issue.  I did mean re-rip my physical CDs into flac, so I guess I will have to look into getting a bigger microsd card!
 
What do you use under linux for ripping?

 
     I'm using Asunder as GUI to rip my cds, the exact codec I'm not sure. It allows you to choose how to structure the naming of the files and the folder structure also, and as a plus it can create a m3u playlist of the CD.
 
     Sometimes I have to check if the conversion presented any problem, but I suspect that it's due my DVD drive rather than the asunder.

 

[Jaywalk3r]

main difference is that the ipod doesn't support FLAC files, which are pretty much the audiophile mp3

To be fair, the iPod does support ALAC, which is, for all practical purposes, equivalent to FLAC. It is lossless, compresses files to about half the size (1/3 - 2/3), supports up to 32 bit audio at higher sampling rates than typically used by audiophiles, and is free and open source. Further, it is easy and quite fast to convert files from FLAC to ALAC.

 

[jhelsas]

Quote:

To be fair, the iPod does support ALAC, which is, for all practical purposes, equivalent to FLAC. It is lossless, compresses files to about half the size (1/3 - 2/3), supports up to 32 bit audio at higher sampling rates than typically used by audiophiles, and is free and open source. Further, it is easy and quite fast to convert files from FLAC to ALAC.

    ALAC became opensource less than 3 months ago as far as I know, and so, officialy, there should be no players other than apple's that were capable to play it. Of course that the world is not quite like that, and many people on the opensource comunity already had made possible to use ALAC under linux for example, but that couldn't be done officialy due to copyright laws.
 
    For everything else, ALAC should be equivalent to FLAC, ignoring that it in principle only plays on ipods, and so, carry the ipod pricetag.

 

[Jaywalk3r]

For everything else, ALAC should be equivalent to FLAC, ignoring that it in principle only plays on ipods, and so, carry the ipod pricetag.

Rockbox has long supported ALAC. Some Cowon models have supported ALAC for a while. Foobar2000 also has had an ALAC decoder component available since before Apple opensourced ALAC. It's safe to assume that ALAC support will increase as time goes on.

At any rate, my point was that lack of FLAC support is not a very good reason to avoid an iPod. (That doesn't imply that the iPod is the best choice, just that supporting FLAC doesn't offer benefits not otherwise available.)

 

[alexo]

Thank you for the answers, though you went a bit off-topic.
I think I'll wait with buying a mp3 player. The battery lasts only 10 hours.

 

[OlliL]

If battery life is very important for you, I'd recommend you get a Cowon. 
There are several models with impressive runtime and as mentioned above, the sound quality is very good, too.