[Some geek]

Check out this little thing from Kenwood. Sounds neat.

http://tech.wizbangblog.com/2006/11/...kbased-dap.php

 

[jdimitri]

Wow.. at that that price i'd just get a nano
No skipping, thinner too!

 

[Mher6]

"World's Smallest Disk-based DAP" for a few months...

 

[lolos]

I think the point being small and great sounding. Kenwood is not competing in size factor rather in sound quality.

I had the same talk before in a Japanese forum before I purchase my HD30GB9. I was between it and their flash player. Both has very good sound quality and the new digital amp. But the HD30GB9 came on top, probably due to its pre-amp, better design, and quality. I was willing to spend over $500 to get the best sound out of portable and sacrifice other features like video playback.

If you want a very small factor and good sound, I guess this is a good option. If you want the smallest HDD DAP, then check the iaudio 6. I believe it is even smaller.

If you want the smallest flash player, there is always the mibu and I would personally go with the iriver new clix sibling.

If you want the best sound out of portable then it is either the imod or the HD30GB9. I chose the HD30GB9 because I won't have to carry an amp. Keep in mind, I haven't heard the imod but willing for comparison.

 

[skudmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdimitri /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wow.. at that that price i'd just get a nano No skipping, thinner too!

For the record, non of the people I know, myself included, have ever had a HDD player skip.

 

[MrFaust]

I've never owned a flash player, only hdd based (Archos and iRiver) and not once have I had one skip or stall.

 

[Fatality_]

I dropped my Touch on the floor without having it skip

 

[jonnywolfet]

i have had hdd players skip. this was about 3-4 years ago though (running for bus). im not gonna go into the benefits of flash vs hdd, but i am tempted....

 

[m_memmory]

I've never had a HDD player skip on me no matter what I've done - though I've never really tried to stress test it. It's mainly walking down the street or around the house (though I have gone for a jog with mine before and it was still fine)

Having said that if I was going be doing a lot of activity I'd still get myself a flash based player for those times.

 

[Fallingwater]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skudmunky /img/forum/go_quote.gif For the record, non of the people I know, myself included, have ever had a HDD player skip.

That might be because they can't skip. Not in the sense usually given to the word, anyway.
Hard drives either work or don't work. They aren't like optical drives; if the head of a hard drive gets misaligned due to shock the drive will notice it isn't reading the right data, realign it and reread the data.
This until you apply too much shock to the drive and cause a head crash, whereupon the drive is extremely likely to fail, either immediately or in very short order.

If bumping a player causes it to "skip", it's for some other reason, like defective headphone jacks, poor connections and the like, and in that case the player would "skip" even if it was flash-based.

 

[skudmunky]

Also, if I recall HDD players put the song temporarily onto a flash chip, and in some cases the next few songs to be played.

 

[jdimitri]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skudmunky /img/forum/go_quote.gif For the record, non of the people I know, myself included, have ever had a HDD player skip.

Well, i meant while running.. It's skips if i continuously run for any more than 5 minutes
This is the ipod mini AND 5G btw

 

[jmmtn4aj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonnywolfet /img/forum/go_quote.gif i have had hdd players skip. this was about 3-4 years ago though (running for bus). im not gonna go into the benefits of flash vs hdd, but i am tempted....

Most HDD players have large RAM to cache the music. The iPod, for example, caches something like 3 songs ahead, so that the hard disc doesn't get used while playing those three songs (saving battery). This means that essentially, at least until you reach that last song, the iPod is acting as a flash-based player.

 

[pds6]

Very nice and a digital amp!

Did you read, 24 hour battery life playing MP3 files. Only 20 hours when listening to PlayForSure files.

Lose 4 hours reading drm'd files - Wow. Another reason to hate drm.

 

[m_memmory]

Where did you get the thing about the DRM time?

It says

Quote:

24 hours for MP3s and 20 hours for Windows media files

It doesn't mention (at least on the original link) that the 20 hours is for DRM files, just for WMA files.

Could actually be that the DRM files are even worse!!