[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie87 Would that not defeat the portability aspect?

Wouldn't an amp and lineout and countless other things that people carry with their players to defeat the portablitity aspect as well?

iPod Mini -> Shure E3cs = minimalist-fi at work. =P

 

[mAsh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thisp And over 40 million people use AOL. It doesn't mean that just because a bunch of people disagree with you that they're weird, and doesn't mean they're not entitled to their opinion. Personally, I find the iPod overpriced and lacking in features to justify its price and popularity(outside the rigorous advertizing/ability to be used by the family cat). It doesn't make me weird, 'cause again, it's just my opinion. I'd go for the Karma. It's got gapless playback which nothing else has, Rio DJ which helps when you have hard drive player(it'll find stuff you haven't played in a day/3 days/week/month, your fav songs in order to most played to least played, and more), the beefiest op amp of the bunch(55 mW @ 16 ohms), a five band parametric EQ, abilities to bookmark specific parts within a song so you can immediately go to 7:14 or so in a track, and more. For me, it's very easy to use. iRiver's players take about three minutes of actual brain power(oh noes!) to get to learn, the Rio was easy from the start for me. Hit menu, hit play music, hit artist/album/song/something, go to album/song. I didn't have much time with the iPod, but outside my dislike for running my finger around the clickwheel, it was pretty easy to use also. If you have access to a brain, they're all pretty easy to use. And with an extended warrenty from newegg, it's still $40 cheaper than the iPod.

the sony NW-HD* have gapless playback. My HD1 has anyway, so they HD3 must have as well

 

[Thisp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aeriyn Okay, let me rephrase that. The best ACTUALLY PORTABLE MP3 player. How's that? The NJB3 barely fits in my purse! (Used to have one.) And it's heavy! And ugly! Totally un-girl friendly.

My CD player must be a monolith to you, then.

an amp is understandably not portable, but the player itself, unless one of those old huge portable CD players, isn't that bad. I could fit a player in the left pocket and an amp in my right pocket if I felt like it, but.. I don't have an amp. Or portable 'phones worth using one with.

 

[ChickenScrtchBoy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aeriyn Okay, let me rephrase that. The best ACTUALLY PORTABLE MP3 player. How's that? The NJB3 barely fits in my purse! (Used to have one.) And it's heavy! And ugly! Totally un-girl friendly.

I bought a pur...airbag specifically for it.

Portable enough for me.

(see sig)

 

[Edvard_Grieg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie87 First of all 10 Million of those people aren't informed as much as the people that browse this forum are, the only mp3 player they know is "iPod."

ummm....I equate 10 million people not being as informed as those that browse this forum as being the same as buying into marketing hype. If they aren't informed of other things, they are obviously informed of the apple marketing machine. I did not mean to personally attack your player choice as that is how it sounds like you responded. However, the person I was initially replying to seemed to feel that iPod was the only option.
Quote:

IMHO, I love the thing, I think it is very user friendly, and does everything I would want a player to do..

IMHO I love my Karma, and I think it is very user friendly (IMHO as much or more so than the iPod), and it does everything I want it to.

I'm sorry if I came off as defensive, but when you get used to browsing sites like cnet where comments on the Rio Carbon are Quote:

Originally Posted by cnet "WEAK AT BEST, RIO, AS WELL AS MANY OTHER COMPANY'S HAVE A LACK OF CREATIVITY, WITH THEIR SHARP WITS" INEEDANPM3PLAYERBAD on 01-Sep-2004 11:24:48 AM Pros: iTS "CREATIVE LOOKS", RIO, AS WELL AS MANY OTHER COMPANY'S HAVE A LACK OF CREATIVITY, WITH THEIR SHARP WITS AND FAST THINKING THEY THOUGHT UP OF THIS DUD, IT LOOKS LIKE A BALL OF SOCKS PAINTED SILVER. tHESE PRODUCTS LACK ALL OF THE FEATURES AND ACCESSORIES THAT MANY PEOPLE REQUEUST, AND THE COMPANY PEOPLE DONT KNOW HOW TO LISTEN AND THEY KEEP ON PRODUCING THESE NICE SHINY EXPENSIVE PAPERWIEGHTS. Cons: EVERYTHING, BESIDES THE NAME (RIO,I AN UNRELIABLE PRODUCT BECAUSE OF ITS LACK OF STYLE AS WELL AS FUNCTION)THIS PLAYER LACKS THE FOLLOWING LOOKS,MEMORY,ERGONOMICS,ACESSORIES,FUNCTIONS... AND THE LIST IS TOO HEAVY FOR ME TO HOLD. THEY NEED TO LEARN TO HIRE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE WITS, AND IDEA'S INSTEAD OF CORPERATE "GOLDMINES"

Unfortunately I tend to see this as the stereotypical Apple mentality and it gets very frustrating. The iPod is not bad, it is just that I believe (and so do many others) that there are better options as well, and it is a disservice not to mention them.
Quote:

Edvard, people prefer those players becuase this is an audiophile forum where people TEND to seek the best in audio quality, a few of those players you named are SUBJECTIVELY REVIEWED to have better audio....but the ipod is simplicity anf often is bought because

Umm in case you hadn't noticed, no two people's ears are the same, and irregardless of egregious discrepancies, all reviews are going to be subjective. I don't really know how you would propose to 'objectively' review products unless you do an abx type test on the players, but there are so many different factors that come into play that this isn't easy. I assume you realize going by the facts on a sheet you don't get a full picture, but if you look at Bose on paper and it doesn't look half bad, but I would challenge you to find any 'real' audiophile that would recommend a Bose system to anyone that isn't a trend whore.

If you want to look 'objectively', it is fair to say that the Carbon and the Mini both 'sound' on par with each other as that is what most people have come to say, and then objectively the Carbon has more space, better battery life, and is physically smaller in mass. I won't mention ergonomics because that would be subjective. In the end all we can hope for is testimonials and judge the credibility of the person giving that testimony to give a fair appraisal. This being the case I feel perfectly entitled to voice my opinion on the qualities of other players, just like you have every right to voice on your players.

[size=medium]In sum: Everyone should play with each of the players themselves and make their own decisions, because here on the internet someone is always sitting downstream of someone else's bathroom.[/size]


edit: It's almost 2:30am and I'm tired, so I don't know how coherent this all was, and I didn't mean to piss anyone off (too much anyway

) So I'll pre-apologize if I did/do

 

[Krishna]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thisp And over 40 million people use AOL. It doesn't mean that just because a bunch of people disagree with you that they're weird, and doesn't mean they're not entitled to their opinion. Personally, I find the iPod overpriced and lacking in features to justify its price and popularity(outside the rigorous advertizing/ability to be used by the family cat). It doesn't make me weird, 'cause again, it's just my opinion.

Wonderfully said.

 

[null]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IpodSF Yup! Same here. As far as the battery, just buy the battery extender for $60 from Belkin and your set as it uses four AA batteries for 20 hours of play time and if your going on a plane trip around the world just bring 8 AA batteries with you.

Oh lovely. They couldn't have just included some sort of proprietary lithium/nimh battery; they make you carry and deal with 4-8 AAs.

 

[Sphinx89]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mAsh the sony NW-HD* have gapless playback. My HD1 has anyway, so they HD3 must have as well

yep, the NWHD3 has no gaps whatsoever in between trakcs

 

[Xell]

The sony Vaio does look wicked... Size is abit of a problem....

I made a charger(similar to the Belkin) for my iPod, anyone heard of a mobile battery charger for the VAIO or even a tutorial for doing so?

Does the NW-HD3 have any ability at all to download photos?

 

[Sphinx89]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xell Does the NW-HD3 have any ability at all to download photos?

No, i dont think so. You can use it as an external HD in windows explorer to stoer photos on, but that is about it, you cant vie them

 

[AdamWill]

null: using standard batteries for aftermarket things such as this is A Good Idea because they're a hell of a lot easier to buy (your player goes dead in Zanzibar Airport - are you gonna be able to buy AAs or Joe McQueens' Proprietary Battery? Well, in Zanzibar Airport you can probably buy the AAs and a Kalashnikov...:>)

 

[UserNotFound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mightymouse Where did you see the vaio pocket??? And, i would recommend the Zen Touch. Its got around 27 hours of battery life.

i've had the Zen Touch 20gb since christmas, and i put on a playlist just to see how long the battery would last. It played for 18 hours, 13 minute, and around 30 seconds, and an average bitrate of 203kbps in mp3 format. That's at volume level 20 (of 25) powering my 64ohm Sennheiser hd280's (yay for burn-ins).

only minor complaints. hard to save a playlist on the fly. it's easy to add things to now playing, but to save that list, i havn't bothered to figure out. no choice of accessories (there's one after market case, handmade, leather, in venezuela or something, for $70 and a month wait).

the EQ....if you turn up the bass band even by 1 notch, it seems like all the others are lowered. i think it sounds great on my headphones wihtout tweaking it. The sound i like a lot better than the iPod mini's i've heard. Much more even sounding (mini sounded very "punchy" to me).

Interface is nice, open by playlist/artist/albulm/genre/all. touch pad is a little more ... friendly, that the ipod. you can push your finger to the top or bottom of the pad, and hold it, and it will continually scroll. so your thumb doesn't get tired trying to get to the bottom of your 400 albulm list.

you can't store your files in folders on the player. if you have pink floyd - the wall, in the albulm version, and a live version, the files cannot be named the same, regardless of the tagging. i did, however, add 18 gigs of files (270 complete albulms from mp3's) in one day, while ensuring every single file had the corrent genre, artist, and albulm....all using the creative software, so no problems keeping it organized.

i did one day have the touchpad go crazy on me, it would move 4 selections down whenever i lifted my finger. i just gave the reset button a poke with a mechanical pencil, and it was fine.

you can store data files on it, but you have to use the creative software to do so, it's not windows integrated, nor could you plug a camera directly to it.

that's my opinion, any questions? i'm willing to investigate for you.

 

[yyoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edvard_Grieg Per your prior post, I'm sorry that 10 million people have bought into marketing hype of a fashion/status item. If you read through the threads here you'll find that there are many people who prefer other players to the iPod (Karma, iRiver, iAudio, Creative, Archos, etc). The iPod is not the end all or be all of MP3 players, they just have good marketing.

Seems facile. Marketing may be reason why many buy iPods, but it doesn't explain the extremely high customer satisfaction ratings from its owners. You may argue that people are happy because marketing has convinced them to be happy with the product or that they're all caught up in mass hysteria, but it's been my experience that something hyped to this extent generally proves to be a letdown for its owners. But the opposite seems to be true with respect to the iPod. The great majority of owners fall even more deeply in love with the gadget after the purchase. Positive word of mouth as much as Apple's advertising is fueling the iPod boom.

Also, I would bet that the iPod is the most commonly owned DAP among audiophiles and professional musicians here or in the "real" world and that the great majority of them are very happy with their purchase. Maybe it's time for another online survey?

 

[Krishna]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yyoo Seems facile. Marketing may be reason why many buy iPods, but it doesn't explain the extremely high customer satisfaction ratings from its owners. You may argue that people are happy because marketing has convinced them to be happy with the product or that they're all caught up in mass hysteria, but it's been my experience that something hyped to this extent generally proves to be a letdown for its owners. But the opposite seems to be true with respect to the iPod. The great majority of owners fall even more deeply in love with the gadget after the purchase. Positive word of mouth as much as Apple's advertising is fueling the iPod boom. Also, I would bet that the iPod is the most commonly owned DAP among audiophiles and professional musicians here or in the "real" world and that the great majority of them are very happy with their purchase. Maybe it's time for another online survey?

Well how many of those 10million people have tried any other DAP other than the Ipod? It is what they know, and because they usually don't know about anything else, it is what they think is best. The Ipod is a great product, none the less it is not for everyone, but because of Apple's marketing it has become the player for everyone and their mother.

 

[elvergun]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krishna Well how many of those 10million people have tried any other DAP other than the Ipod? It is what they know, and because they usually don't know about anything else, it is what they think is best. The Ipod is a great product, none the less it is not for everyone, but because of Apple's marketing it has become the player for everyone and their mother.

You seem to be on an iPod crushing campaign. Wherever there is a thread that mentions the iPod, there you are pointing out its “shortcomings”. It’s a dirty job, but I guess somebody has to it…huh?

Well, if the iPod is not the player for everyone and their mother…what would you suggest we buy? Do let us know ASAP so we can rush out an buy it. Please do enlighten the poor misguided souls on this site who bought into that “Apple marketing”.