Ruahrc
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2002
- Posts
- 289
- Likes
- 10
I currently own a Rio800 Flash based player and it's the most worthless POS I've ever spent money on. So is the company that makes it, but that is all a different story. What matters is that I'm looking to upgrade my portable music to something truly worthy of my hard earned dollars.
I'm down to two choices- either an iPod (Rumor has it that a 20G version is coming out, which should drive the prices of the 5 and 10G versions down whee!) or a Sony MD Player. I've read around on the iPod a bit, and it appears that aside from the cost and the fact that I need to buy extra software for my PC- it's a great player. MD, however, I have little knowledge on. I was wondering if you guys could help me out in this area.
First of all are MD Players are basically mp3-cd players? From what I gather of them, they're basically little mp3-cd players that also burn their own cd's. The only difference is that the CD's they use are little minisics. Same capacity as regular cd's (80mins/700MB) but smaller size, right? So I can record 80mins worth of audio cds onto MD's, as well as compile 700 megs of mp3s or wmas onto a MD?
Second I was wondering on how this all works. I looked at the box at the store and I guess it's all done via USB? Is this pretty speedy- they claim 32x transfer rates. Can I record onto MD via a line-in from say a stereo or PCDP? I also read about Optical-TOSLink stuff???
Thirdly- the box (and the website) claims 56hrs of playback with 1 AA (or on some models an AA NiMH). Is this true? 56hrs seems like an enormously large playtime off a single battery. If this is true, it could be a big weighing factor for an MD.
I have pros and cons of each player, i'll just list them real quick:
iPod
Pros:
*Small
*FireWire Connectivity
*99% of my music is in digital form (I ripped all my cd's so I don't need to lug them to college) so having a digial player makes sense
*Not very susceptible to vibrations (I can go jogging with it just fine?)
Cons:
*Expensive (As of now, i'd get the 5G for $400)
*Needs additional software
*11Hrs battery is still great but pales in comparison to 56hrs.
MD Player:
Pros:
*Cheaper (I saw a good one, the blue one, at the store for $230: almost half of an iPod)
*56hr playback? wow
*Can record, not just play digital files
*Virtually infinite storage
Cons:
*99% of my music is digital
*Bigger than an iPod
*If I want the capacity of the iPod I need lots of MDs which is a lot of lugging
*It's still a cd-based player which means vibration sensitive?
If anyone with experience with either of the two devices would please post them, that would be great. Also, how is the output quality of each? I guess they're both (with good headphones and maybe amps) very satisfactory, solong as the source is good? (good bitrate files or cd-audio)
Thanks a lot!
Ruahrc
I'm down to two choices- either an iPod (Rumor has it that a 20G version is coming out, which should drive the prices of the 5 and 10G versions down whee!) or a Sony MD Player. I've read around on the iPod a bit, and it appears that aside from the cost and the fact that I need to buy extra software for my PC- it's a great player. MD, however, I have little knowledge on. I was wondering if you guys could help me out in this area.
First of all are MD Players are basically mp3-cd players? From what I gather of them, they're basically little mp3-cd players that also burn their own cd's. The only difference is that the CD's they use are little minisics. Same capacity as regular cd's (80mins/700MB) but smaller size, right? So I can record 80mins worth of audio cds onto MD's, as well as compile 700 megs of mp3s or wmas onto a MD?
Second I was wondering on how this all works. I looked at the box at the store and I guess it's all done via USB? Is this pretty speedy- they claim 32x transfer rates. Can I record onto MD via a line-in from say a stereo or PCDP? I also read about Optical-TOSLink stuff???
Thirdly- the box (and the website) claims 56hrs of playback with 1 AA (or on some models an AA NiMH). Is this true? 56hrs seems like an enormously large playtime off a single battery. If this is true, it could be a big weighing factor for an MD.
I have pros and cons of each player, i'll just list them real quick:
iPod
Pros:
*Small
*FireWire Connectivity
*99% of my music is in digital form (I ripped all my cd's so I don't need to lug them to college) so having a digial player makes sense
*Not very susceptible to vibrations (I can go jogging with it just fine?)
Cons:
*Expensive (As of now, i'd get the 5G for $400)
*Needs additional software
*11Hrs battery is still great but pales in comparison to 56hrs.
MD Player:
Pros:
*Cheaper (I saw a good one, the blue one, at the store for $230: almost half of an iPod)
*56hr playback? wow
*Can record, not just play digital files
*Virtually infinite storage
Cons:
*99% of my music is digital
*Bigger than an iPod
*If I want the capacity of the iPod I need lots of MDs which is a lot of lugging
*It's still a cd-based player which means vibration sensitive?
If anyone with experience with either of the two devices would please post them, that would be great. Also, how is the output quality of each? I guess they're both (with good headphones and maybe amps) very satisfactory, solong as the source is good? (good bitrate files or cd-audio)
Thanks a lot!
Ruahrc