Upgrade from archos 20gb?

[Theresamarie1]

I've been wanting to upgrade my portable music equipment which currently stands as an archos 20gb multimedia player and numerous portable headphones (portapros, sony earbuds, grado gr80s, ety er-6's). I'm looking for both a more compact and lighter package as well as higher music quality.

To do my research I've been spending some time going through the head-fi forum posts over the last couple of weeks trying to understand the opinions and/or facts about various options for high quality portable music.
I am a music lover, and electrical engineer/designer/geek, but by no means an audiophile from the equipment engineeirng standpoint.

I've noticed that a lot of folks use MD players and/or CD players instead of hard drive players.
For CD players I can understand that you're getting the potential for the highest recorded quality, as to whether the outputs on portable equipment maintain that quality is another question which so many of you debate and/or measure qualitatively.

For MD players, it seems to me that you're dealing with the same kinds of compression questions that hard driver players deal with, which is how much sonic degradation is added with the various compression formats. Is this the right way to look at it?
So is there any real benefit to using MD players over hard disk players? Battery life maybe? They're not terribly smaller in footprint but the disks are smaller, is this the benefit? And why use a minidisk player when a hard drive or memory player would do the same? My concern is that I'm missing the primary point here and that I should be going in the MD direction?

One of the reasons I'm asking is that I've ordered a couple of next generation hard drive players, to test out, which are the iriver ihp 120 and archos gmini 220, which should be shipped next week as well as a pimeta headphone amplifier from Headsave. What I'm seeing in the forum though is that many don't feel that using an amplifier on a device with headphone out makes any sense. Also, many folks seem to disagree that any kind of mp3 compression yields high quality audio. So what's a person to do for high quality portable music or shouldn't high quality and portable be used in the same breath?

For comparison, I've also purchased a new IPOD and returned it because I didn't find the sound quality to be much/any improved over the archos but the interface sure is slick. And, for $400 the battery life, as well as feature list, seems very short compared to the other next generation players.

Any comments on my direction and/or observations?

Suggestions? Or totally without hope?

 

[blessingx]

Fights between MP3 and ATRAC or MD and HD break out fairly often can sometimes get nasty. You may want to do a search for "md versus mp3" etc. There's a lot of info there and people often fall pretty far on one side or another.

Also I think people recommend line-outs over headphone outs for amp use so the signal is only amped once. So while using an amp with a headphone out isn't ideal, it still can often make sense. The iPod for instance at max volume approximates a line-out signal, and no matter what it will still have an affect. If you want to carry around an amp in a portable setting is the larger question.

And high end sound can be had with portables. Especially if you use uncompressed or lossless compressed files, it's the signal path/hardware issues of any CD deck, etc. Again the larger question may be if you want to take up the space and possible battery issues of using largish files.

Then there's the big question of if "high quality" audio even necessary in a portable setting with normal environmental noises, etc.

Those questions are why most don't while going portable use an amp, encoded higher than a decent -apx or similar setting, nor carry their best phones around.

 

[Theresamarie1]

Quote:

Originally posted by blessingx Fights between MP3 and ATRAC or MD and HD break out fairly often can sometimes get nasty. You may want to do a search for "md versus mp3" etc. There's a lot of info there and people often fall pretty far on one side or another.

I did do a prior search but there are so many posts it was hard to figure out what the real issues, or benefits, are. Many posts are just very passionate opinions without a lot of fact. Who do you think best understands this and I can ask them directly?

Quote:

Then there's the big question of if "high quality" audio even necessary in a portable setting with normal environmental noises, etc

With the advent of such earphones as the Shure and Etymotics canalphones you can certainly get a good amount of isolation. I find myself wanting more quality. And I tend to use my portable at home quite a bit while the kids are practicing guitar and/or watching TV, I have the portable playing in my ears... bliss.... And in this case or while traveling (which I do quite a bit), it's nice to hear good music.

BTW.. thanks for taking the time to respond, it seems that people don't especially like to respond to "olders" or maybe non-hip newbies.. Reading a lot of the posts here, I feel being a child of the 60's and 70's rock and roll era, I'm ancient compared to most in this forum.

 

[blessingx]

Yeah heated opinions fly on this one.

Some prefer ATRAC over MP3, especially if coupled with a MD deck recorder. There are many that say this combo is the best portable setup. Others say encoded LAME MP3's match ATRAC and besides many MP3 players support additional uncompressed WAV/AIFF or newer lossy formats (AAC, Ogg, etc.).

Formats out of the way, the hardware may play a bigger part. MD's have traditionally been smaller (HD players have recently caught up). Course you have the discs. MD players often have much better battery life and tend to be more abuse-friendly. Running/gym uses are often mentioned. MD also has on the fly editing of tracks (split, delete, etc.). And again traditionally they've had better remotes.

But the trouble with comparing one type with another, is there's so much variance internally. The Rio Nitrus is smaller than any MD player, the iRiver iHP-100/120 has a great remote, etc.

And this is likely the same thing with your question about sound quality. Specific older Sharp MD models for instance have been cited by members to sound significantly better than the iPod. Others claim the same for the harddisk based Creative Zen. I thought my Sony MD R70 sounded better than my original Creative NJB, but I think my iPod sounds better than either ( headphone outs but to be honest with not so great headphones at the time). It's sorta difficult to compare the two because I haven't seen the best MD ever tested against the best HD MP3 player. I'm not even sure what those models are. And MD enthusiasts will again bring in the need for a recording deck for optimal quality. Obviously in most cases MP3 players need a computer.

Also you may want to read through the recent thread on Sony's response to the iPod. Their UMD disk system could have ramifications to the MD community.

And the Etys (got my ER4P's a couple weeks ago) sound pretty incredible out of portables. That may be your big jump in quality (if you don't already own them).

As for a personal opinion of the above I don't believe MD holds any significant advantage over MP3 to head in that direction (have yet to see anything but vague references to ATRAC over MP3, encoders are never discussed, hardware is immediately jumped to, and MP3, let alone Ogg or AAC, give the option of higher bitrates, although comparing across format can be difficult). And as you know it has certain disadvantages (protection, transfer, ATRAC only, etc.) Although MD use is increasing, I don't think it's anywhere near the increase in the other side. I say stay with a HD player where you have more control over the options... if that's uncompressed files or your lossy of choice. It's seems difficult for MD/ATRAC to compete against all those.

And I know what it's like to feel older than most of the members here.

 

[mdmania]

There is no win or lose situation when comparing the two forma (MD and MP3). Both of them has their own pros and cons.

Get both format if ONLY you can afford to find out more for yourself.
It gets more difficult getting a real opinion from someone even when format has been experienced by another user.

 

[evh7]

I'm assuming that something else that you should keep in mind is that if you've got tons of mp3s, you will probably to have to re-encode anything you want to listen to on your MD player to get really great sound quality. At least this is what I hear:

http://www.minidisct.com/forum/showt...&highlight=mp3

I also have a 20 gig Archos and am fighting the desire to spend more money on some wee little player. In most ways, though, I'm pretty happy with my Jukebox. I am considering purchasing an MD recorder and a stereo mike for doing some interviewing.

You know, you might like the Archos interface better if you were using the Rockbox firmware. Or maybe you are already.

 

[erikzen]

I'm one of those people who have both MD and MP3 portable devices (not to mention PCDP). There are so many variables in the comparisons that I keep changing my mind as to what I prefer. I tend to go through spurts where I use one format for a few weeks and then something gets me back to the other.

I use my PCPD because I have a lot of CDs and if I want to listen to one of them, I don't have to worry about changing formats. Just pop it in and it plays. My CD player also has a line out so I can use a portable amp and get fairly decent sound. It has defeatable skip protection which helps out with sound and Of course there is also the issue of not using a lossy format. The downside is that I can only carry so many CDs, they are expensive and damaged easily and take up a lot of room.

I use my MD player almost primarily because of its line out. I have the MZ-R50, which I bought specifically because I was told the line out was very good and also because it had good synergy with D66 headphones. I had thought that by buying the D66 and the MZ-R50 I was going to have the perfect portable setup. As it turns out, I was not completely thrilled. Still, I find the MZ-R50, utilizing the line out to an amp sounds very musical. I think this setup actaully sounds better than my CD player. The downside here is that MD is not really all that more convenient to carry around than CD in terms of space, but they are sturdier and less expensive if they do get damaged (I've never have an MD fail on me). Also, because the MZ-R50 is an older player, I am using an older ATRAC compression scheme, which I'm told is not as good as newer ATRACs and that I should get a newer deck to make my recordings.

I use my MP3 player a lot because I don't have to carry around any extra media and I have hundreds of songs on it. It also has a line out so using it with an amp really helps a lot. However, I think it has the worst sound out of the three, but I probably end up using it a lot for sheer convenience.

Incidently, I think the MD sounds the best under most circumstances and has the longest battery life. I would say I probably get around 20 hours with the external battery pack out of it. The CD player gets about 12 and the MP3 player gets about 8. Pretty low, but I primarily use it on my commute which is only an hour, so this is not an issue for me. If I have it fully charged it lasts the entire duration for most plane rides.

With portable audio I don't believe there is a "best" sound. It's all about tradeoffs.

 

[Theresamarie1]

Quote:

Originally posted by evh7 You know, you might like the Archos interface better if you were using the Rockbox firmware. Or maybe you are already.

I have the jukebox multimedia 20gb and the rockbox doesn't support the mutimedia..bummer.
Thanks anyways!!