New MP3 player better then minidisc?

[Peddler]

I briefly tried the Archos Jukebox - neat technology but the sound quality through the headphone socket left a lot to be desired. I tried the unit with my Etymotics ER4P's and found that the only way I could get the sound right was to use the Airhead amp with it.

For the price, I would have expected them to produce a machine which had a decent headphone amp in it. Battery life was nothing special either.

I now use the Sony R900 MD Walkman when out and about - much better sound quality and the price of blank MD's is cheap enough not to really worry about storage.

If the Archos had been £100 cheaper I would have accepted these limitations but not on a player costing £250.

That's it.

 

[ian]

Ahhh, thank goodness Neruda mentioned the PJB. It really blows away the Nomad Jukebox and even the Archos - I've had all three. You don't need to buy the highest end PJB. $429 for the 6.4 GB is a very good deal. I paid $800 for the 6.4 GB player last July!! It was very much worth it. This player can take a beating. Don't worry so much about jostling it around. It is tough.

 

[beni]

I personally own the Archos player and would highly recommend it. The basic reasons are that it's *much* more compact than either the personal jukebox or the nomad jukebox, I regularly get the advertised 8 hrs per charge from the batteries, it's slightly lighter than the other HD-based players out there, it's relatively easy to upgrade the drive in it, and it's very durable. A lot of people think the blue bumpers on the unit look strange - I thought it was ugly at first too but it's really not that bad...it's grown on me I guess. Plus, the bumpers are very functional - there is literally no way that you could drop this on a flat surface and have anything but the bumpers contact that surface. I accidentally dropped mine about four feet onto a linoleum floor...the unit bounced up about six inches and then fell back down. I picked it up and turned it on - everything was fine. You would never be able to tell it had been dropped. Plus, the player has gotten much better recently with the latest firmware updates from archos. It really is everything you need to carry if you can handle listening to your music as mp3s. The only thing I don't like about the player is that it can't play any type of file other than mp3s, but .wav functionality shouldn't be more difficult to add than a firmware update.

As for upgrading the player - look around at this place for a guide to upgrading the hard drive. I put a 12 gig drive in mine in about ten minutes. You can get 20 gig drives from ebay for less than $150, and 30+ gig laptop drives already exist that would fit and work in this thing. The sound quality through the line-out jack into my cosmic->ER-4S is just fine. I don't use the headphone jack so I can't comment on the quality of the headphone amp inside of the unit.

Size was one of the biggest factors for me (plus the fact that you don't need proprietary software to use the thing with your computer, and it will act as a USB hard drive if you want, which the nomad can't do). This thing is about the size of two cassette tapes stacked on top of each other. Compare that to the nomad jukebox, which is like a large portable CD player and you can really see how much smaller this is. I haven't ever personally seen a personal jukebox, but I know that it's significantly larger than the archos also.

 

[Neruda]

I just can't wait till the titchy little Treo comes out...

 

[beni]

What's up with this Treo you've been talking about for months? Every time I see an mp3 player thread somewhere, there's this one little post saying "just wait till the Treo comes out..."

 

[Vertigo-1]

Yeah really...the Treo might as well be vaporware by now. Neruda's been pushing it for the last like...6 months now? And each time I just hear more delays in it's release.

 

[chych]

Quote:

PJB is part of Tyll's main portable rig. (along with a TA and ety 4S's with custom earmoulds.

What?!??! Not even a... Supreme?

 

[mbriant]

I've owned a Hango PJB 6gig for several months and have recently purchased Ian's as a second unit.

Sound quality is pretty good as far as mp3's go, and I've read several times it sounds better than the Archos. ( although those opinions could be biased.) It claims to have a 50 mv headphone output and from my experience can power most phones OK without an amp ( although an amp makes an improvement)

The PJB was originally designed by Compac's engineers as a design project, and it has a loyal group of fans/programmers who have made several improvements to it's internal software recently.

The PJB can only store mp3's and at this time ( although they're working on it ) cannot upload back onto a computer. The archos on the other hand functions as an external hard drive so any type of file can be downloaded and uploaded with it.

The general opinion is that because the PJB was designed specifically for mp3's, it sounds better than the archos. I've never heard the Archos so cannot verify that claim.

I've been happy with mine so far. I've got nearly 1500 songs on my first one and am now loading new tracks onto the one I purchased from Ian. Not having to carry around and load MD's or CD's is a bonus.

I'd say that MD has a better sound, but you can't beat the PJB for convienience.

It is more fragile because it's a HD player but it doesn't skip as it loads 10 minutes of music into it's ROM memory at a time. Battery life is about 8 hours plus it comes with a wall wart and car adaptor.

If you want to check it out, start here:

http://www.mpython.com/pjb/

 

[Beagle]

Quote:

I'd say that MD has a better sound, but you can't beat the PJB for convienience

I'd also say grilled fresh salmon tastes better but you can't beat High Liner for convenience

 

[mbriant]

quote

"I'd also say grilled fresh salmon tastes better but you can't beat High Liner for convenience "

Arrrr.....Have you ever been to sea, Beagle?

 

[Beagle]

No, but I've been bbblown ashore

 

[mbriant]

LOL

 

[crk]

ahh... wacky intra-canada humor (I think)
crk who has no idea what a highliner is but does know that you can copy mp3 files from your Nomad jukebox to your PC

 

[mbriant]

crk: Sorry about that. I guess Captain Highliner is a Canadian entity. He's an old sea captain who flogs High-Liner frozen fish on TV commercials and used to say "Have you ever been to sea Billy? to a young kid in a commercial.

Beagle's "BBBlown ashore" has a more generic connotation.

There's a bunch of people on a PJB forum who have made some great improvements to the PJB's operating software and are working on being able to transfer files back and forth from computer....but aren't quite there yet.

 

[crk]

Thanks for the enlightenment (I think). The pjb first alerted me to the possibility of avoiding the dilemma of which 10 CDs I was going to take on a trip. I went with the NJB on the grounds of a) price and b) errr... price.
It's interesting that both seem dependent on 'Head?ize' like fanatics to solve the obvious software problems each player has!
crk
ps any idea what the audio o/p opamp is in the pjb?
pps the NJB has a TPA6111A2, 150 mW operating from a 0- 5V(!) power supply