Is There a Perfect Portable Media Player?

[nabulous]

I desperately need to start hauling at least a good chunk of my substantial edm-house music collection and thus want to establish my best option in the portable media player (PMP

) market. This puchasing decision may not be the most obvious one: one of those ubiquitous, shiny metal-backed little buggers that come in black or white, branded with a fruit that's not a banana nor an orange.

Considering I need at least 30 Gigs, there are a few possible pmp's that I can shell out for. There's the Zen Vision M, Gigabeat (S), iAudioX5, and well, the iPod. Firstly, sound quality is of the utmost importance. more so than battery life, screensize, and ease of use. I also dont care for itunes or commercially available music, and it'd be great if my already organized collection doesn't go haywire on the pmp's interface, like it did when I was recently transferring music onto a friend's 1st gen Gigabeat. Apparently, this was because the idt tags weren't sync'd.

So then we come to the issue of avoiding bulk. Although i understand the portability of hard-drive based players, minimizing size would be greatly helpful when trying to carry it in the pockets of my snug jeans.
check out the picture comparing the zvm to the 30g ipod. Is that ZVM That Much Better than the ipod, to warrant its nearly double the thickness? Is the ipod so poor sonically that its slimmest design is just tasty icing on a rotten cake? Are there other players i would want to consider? Pls help me out guys.

Thanx.

 

[nabulous]

come on guys, help an audiophile out, i am looking to make a purchase this coming weekend, and if anything my choices have expanded now to include the Rip Karma, the Kenwood30g player, i river 140....btw, what does hotboxed mean in this context? i keep reading it in so many posts about various hotboxed players...

 

[nabulous]

rockboxed, sorry, not hotboxed....

 

[BlindTiger]

I'm trying to find one that does not need Windows XP. Probably the Iaudio line or even a Samsung.

 

[m_memmory]

Rockbox is a 3rd party created firmware that runs on different media players. It was originally created for the iRiver H1xx series (I believe) and then was ported over to a few others so now supports the iPod, X5 amongst others.

I had a iAudio X5L and loved that thing. I really liked folder browsing so that I didn't have to make sure that all my tags were perfectly correct and I liked not having to use any software to put music onto my player. If that's what you like then that's pretty good.

I now have the iPod 5.5G and I have to admit I'm very happy with that as well. There are things that it doesn't do that I'm a little sorry to lose (although I didn't use them that much so it's not that hard of a change) At the moment I don't believe that Rockbox is supported on the 5.5G so it's iTunes only (at the moment) but I would assume that Rockbox will be ported (Rockbox doesn't use any software to transfer over - at least it didn't when I used it on the X5)

If I had to make a choice between the two I've got now I'd probably pick the iPod again. The sound from the headphone out is about equal (to my ears) although the X5 had better EQing abilities and other sound enhancements (which I personally don't use) - the main kicker for me is space and for what my X5 cost I got an extra 50Gb on top for the same price with the iPod.

If you've any more questions/queries just ask

 

[sberger]

a plain ipod is fine, but if you really want the best in sound and it's in the budget, get a 4th gen ipod, any size, and get it modded(yes, the "imod") by red wine audio. then get yourself a good amp, a good mini cable, some good phones, and your off to the races. nothing will beat this set up. and i can wrap up my 40gb with a hornet amp and put em both in my jacket pocket easily.

 

[pds6]

nabulous says:
Quote:

Is There a Perfect Portable Media Player?

No. Kinda like religion - My dap is better than your dap and I'm willing to kill for peace.

Quote:

[L]ittle buggers that come in black or white, branded with a fruit that's not a banana nor an orange.

Never heard of a Pineapple Dap.

Quote:

est option in the portable media player (PMP ) market.

I assume you mean DAP (digital audio player), rather than PMP (portable media player). Your focus is audio and not audio/movies (????).

Quote:

I need at least 30 Gigs ... sound quality is of the utmost importance ... carry it in the pockets of my snug jeans.

30gigs does not equal snug jeans. I have two words, "Belt Clip".

I don't know, but I think you should at least consider an 8gb. flash drive player.

 

[m_memmory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sberger /img/forum/go_quote.gif a plain ipod is fine, but if you really want the best in sound and it's in the budget, get a 4th gen ipod, any size, and get it modded(yes, the "imod") by red wine audio. then get yourself a good amp, a good mini cable, some good phones, and your off to the races. nothing will beat this set up. and i can wrap up my 40gb with a hornet amp and put em both in my jacket pocket easily.

How about a iRiver H1xx with digital out to a Headroom Microdac and then to an amp? Admittedly not what many would deem actually "portable" but I'm led to believe that it sounds very good (I've never heard it myself)

 

[carlosgp]

I have to say that rockbox was originally created for Archos Jukebox series, not iRiver. I think this was around 2001 or 2002, I don't remember.

 

[Mher6]

So what exactly is rockbox? Just a different media player to install on your DAP?

 

[Packgrog]

Oh boy. A couple things to contribute here:

1) Rockbox is an Open Source alternative firmware/OS for Digital Audio Players. It's highly configurable/customizable, and has a ton of features that most proprietary firmwares don't bother with (ie: ReplayGain support, wider codec support, gapless playback, enchanced recording functionality for the H120, etc.). It's really quite marvelous on my iriver H120, and I suspect adds quite a lot of value to the iPods it has been ported to. I've been using Rockbox for a while, and I love it. The only thing that depresses me is that it hasn't been ported to my Cowon A2. Which brings me to...

2) If you're actually looking for a PMP (Portable Media Player, which plays video as well, unlike DAPs which only or primarily play audio. I consider the iPod and Zen Vision M to fall into the DAP category due to the tiny screens), then the Cowon A2 is a very good buy. It doesn't have the biggest hard drive (that would be the Archos players), but the screen is fantastic, the video playback and codec support is very difficult to beat, and the audio quality puts my iriver H120 to absolute SHAME (though the H120 is more versatile for audio upgrades, since it has SPDIF output and can be used with an external DAC).

Every day I listen to my Cowon A2 with music I become more disappointed with my H120. The soundstage is much wider and clearer. The bass is more controlled, the highs are more detailed. It matches BEAUTIFULLY with Future Sonics IEMs (in my case, the EM3, though I believe the XtremeMac FS1 has identical hardware in a prettier casing), which tend to be naturally bass-heavy on their own. The listening experience with this combination is a revelation, and I don't even have a portable amp yet (I'm on the Tomahawk waiting list, though). It's wonderful in every way... except that Rockbox hasn't been ported to it yet, so no gapless playback or ReplayGain. This may change in a few months since it's built on Linux and someone hacked together a new bootloader. But still, when a friend of mine tried out my A2 with music and my EM3s, he nearly cr*pped himself, and immediately ordered one for himself just because of the sound quality.

All this said, the Cowon A2 is a little bulky and weighty. If I take it out of the included pleather case, it slips nicely into my suit jacket pocket, and while you won't be worried about the pocket seam being too weak, you do know it's there. By comparison, though, the closest competitor, the Archos players, are boxy, inelegant, and more brick-like. Can't say anything for the Archos sound or video, but Archos also doesn't improve their firmware as often as Cowon has.

Battery life with the Cowon A2 is VERY impressive. That's because most of the weight of the unit is from the battery. I think they've quoted about 8-10 hours of video alone. That's pretty accurate from my experience.

The recording and radio features are pretty decent for such a portable device as well. Also, the fact that it supports FLAC and Ogg files out of the box is also a nice treat. It has decent subtitle support for videos as well, and the scaling works beautifully.

I currently have the 30GB model. It would be nice if they came with larger drives, but no such luck. Don't knock it, though: it's sleek and powerful, and the audio quality is absolutely superb.

All this said, I should point out that supposedly the Creative Zen Vision M uses the same dual-core TI processor. One core is an ARM CPU, the other is a special DSP, which handles all the media encoding/decoding. Whether the rest of the audio hardware for the ZVM is the same as what's in the Cowon A2 or not is unknown to me. I suspect that it sounds just as good, though, so the ZVM would be a good bet if your focus is exclusively on an audio player, and not on the full media versatility. The Cowon A2 is a video player first, the ZVM is an audio player first (much like the iPod 5G and 5.5G). I can't attest to the iPod audio quality, though.

With all this said, though, I'm personally praying that the Ray Samuels Tomahawk coupled with my iriver H120 puts my Cowon A2 to shame for sound quality. 'Cause I want my gapless playback, dammit!

Good luck with your DAP/PMP search!

-Packgrog

 

[The Smokester]

Yes. The iRiver H340 is the perfect player. Unless, of course, you consider the H140 which is even more perfect.

 

[nabulous]

thanx everyone for their input, i certainly am in a better position to make this decision. It seems that most people have a different opinion and as pds6 said, like religion, there is no perfect ONE dap.
Although you all have been helpful, my original questions remain unanswered. Is the ipod less than half as good aurally as the ZVM or the x5 or th h120, all of which are more than twice the bulk?
The PERFECT ipod setup costs more than $800 (ipod+imod+hornet+cable+AKG K81) which frankly is freaking nuts. I'm a rather impecunious college student who was looking to spend 2 weeks pay (unfortunately <$450).
is a rockboxed ipod any better in terms of sound quality and audio performance than the regular one? does it measure up to its competitors (or at least close the perfromance gap?)
I was leaning towards getting a bulkier player, but now wth the price cuts on ipods, the latter appear even more tempting.
also, if i were to get, say a ZVM, should i spend a further 80 bukcs on good headphones?
thanx everyone once again

 

[nabulous]

amazon is offering the zvm for $200 (incl surcharges and shipping!)

 

[Packgrog]

Spend the money of good headphones regardless of what DAP you get. As per usual, I'm going to recommend the XtremeMac FS1, as my technically identical Future Sonics EM3 (same hardware, different casing) are superb, have wonderfully full and natural bass, and are very easily driven straight from a DAP. They can also be found for about $60 or so.

I suspect your choice between an iPod 5.5G and a Zen Vision M comes down to ergonomics (which the iPod wins hands down), screen quality (ZVM, no question), and drive space/$. Neither of these can be Rockboxed at the moment, so that's not a deciding factor. Both of them require special software to upload songs (which blows, but such is life). Both I'm sure sound superb, though I've heard neither. So figure out where your priorities lie, and run with what fits best for you.

Good luck!