MP3 Players - Advice?

[balthazar]

I'm looking for some advice on MP3 players. I want something with decent capacity, but very portable and lightweight. I don't really want to shell out the bucks for an iPod or a Creative Zen Touch or something along those lines.

I'm currently looking at the iRiver iFP-795T and the Rio Forge. Both have a capacity of 512 MB, and both support both MP3 and WMA formats.

The iRiver has gotten very favorable reviews on Amazon. It also features a built-in FM tuner and a voice recorder. The Rio player has gotten some good and some bad reviews, but the fact that is is expandable up to 1.5 GB using SD memory cards is kind of intriguing. If anyone is familiar with one or both of these, I would appreciate some input.

I'm also curious about MP3 versus WMA files. About the only thing I know about them is that a WMA file is about half as big as an MP3 file, because players can hold twice as many WMAs as MP3s. Besides this, is there any advantage for one over the other? Is there a sound quality problem with either format? Again, any input is appreciated.

[Xenu]

...512 megs seems like, well, not a lot of space. At all.

Re. MP3 vs. WMA, you can find codec comparisons between these two all over the 'net. WMA is newer, but has the stigma of being associated with Microsoft. I think, however, that it is optimized for better quality at low bitrates (something MP3 doesn't generally do well), so you might want to affiliate yourself with that camp.

[dcooper]

I'm also looking at mp3 players, and nearly $200 for a 512MB player seems like a lot of money to me.

[Rspaight]

...512 megs seems like, well, not a lot of space. At all.

I guess it depends on how you want to use it. Some people just want to load up a handful of songs at a time (or don't want to spend multiple hundreds on a drive-based player, or like the durablility of solid-state storage), others want a whole freakin' library available at all times.

I'm firmly in the latter camp, so I shelled out for a 40GB iPod. It seems like way too much work to me to keep putting fresh songs on a 512MB device. (What is that, about 100 songs at a decent bitrate?)

Shorter version: I have no experience with the smaller-capacity players, so I'm no help.

As far WMA vs. MP3 goes, I stick with MP3 just because it's so universally supported. Like Xenu said, though, WMA seems to do better at 128k or lower bitrates, where MP3 sounds awful.

Ryan

[balthazar]

...512 megs seems like, well, not a lot of space. At all.

True, but I'm not really looking for something that I can store my entire CD collection on. I'd love to be able to afford one of the Creative Zen Touch players, but they're pretty pricey, and I'm somewhat concerned about how stury the hard drive/microdrive players are. If anyone can attest to how much abuse these can take, please post.

The two 512 MB players I listed both seem to be pretty sturdy. The Rio player is a "sport" model, and the expandability to at least 1 GB, if not 1.5 GB, means roughly in the neighborhood of 450 songs (WMA format), plenty for me to use it at the gym or in my wife's car since it doesn't have a CD player.

[balthazar]

nearly $200 for a 512MB player seems like a lot of money to me

It does to me, too. I'm kind of attracted to the "more bang for the buck" idea of the drive-based players, but again, I'm concerned about their durability.

I know the iPods are well-made, but they don't support WMA, so I'm most interested in the Creative Zen players.

It seems like way too much work to me to keep putting fresh songs on a 512MB device.

That's one of the reasons I was intrigued about the expandability of the Rio Forge player. Theoretically, a person could store additional songs on additional SD cards and just swap them out when you want to change your playlists.

Thanks for all the input so far. It's been very helpful.

[Rspaight]

That's one of the reasons I was intrigued about the expandability of the Rio Forge player. Theoretically, a person could store additional songs on additional SD cards and just swap them out when you want to change your playlists.

That's true, and would be much easier to deal with.

However, after buying a handful of SD cards, you've spent enough to buy a drive-based player...

If anyone can attest to how much abuse these can take, please post.

I haven't exactly beat up my iPod, but it survived a trip to Japan and back crammed in my pocket and run through security, and it handles car use without a whimper. I've also dropped it a few times with no apparent ill effects, but not onto concrete or pavement. (I was lucky enough to be clumsy on carpet or grass.) They do scratch easily, though.

Ryan

[balthazar]

However, after buying a handful of SD cards, you've spent enough to buy a drive-based player...

Excellent point!

[seth]

Ryan said:

As far WMA vs. MP3 goes, I stick with MP3 just because it's so universally supported. Like Xenu said, though, WMA seems to do better at 128k or lower bitrates, where MP3 sounds awful.

I recently got a 40GB iPod also. I take it you rip your CDs in mp3. What bit rate do you use?

Seth

[Rspaight]

I started ripping my CDs a long time ago (early '01) and settled on 192k CBR, since a lot of stuff didn't really support VBR very well at that time. 128k sounds bad to me, and the extra notch of quality 256k brought to the table didn't justify the extra space.

If I were to do it over again, I'd go VBR. I don't if I'd go with the standard (190k average) or extreme (250k average) without some more serious listening. Standard would probably be good enough for what I do with it.

EAC and LAME are the way to go as far as I know -- they work better than anything else I've tried.

Ryan

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

EAC and LAME are the way to go as far as I know -- they work better than anything else I've tried.

I've just entered the big bad world of mp3's and I'm using EAC with LAME encoding at 192kbps. So far, I'm very impressed.

I'm in the process of converting all 20 volumes of Rhino's Soul Hits of the 70's onto 2 CD's just for convenience. I can just stick 'em in the ol' cheapo DVD player and listen to hours of music. Why am I doing this? Because I can.

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

I've just entered the big bad world of mp3's and I'm using EAC with LAME encoding at 192kbps. So far, I'm very impressed.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest you read this thread at Hydrogen Audio:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ind ... opic=28124

First, make sure you're using their optimized LAME 3.90.3 build. VBR is definitely better than using 192 CBR. Use this preset on 3.90.3:

--alt-preset standard

which will give you the best quality VBR mp3 files you can get, hands down. --alt-preset standard is actually more tweaked and optimized on this version than --alt-preset-extreme. Compare them for yourself, though I've yet to encounter a properly encoded --alt-preset-standard file (using LAME 3.90.3) that didn't sound transparent to me.

Using this setting, stereo files will typically range around 190 kbit/s, typical 180-220. This is a far, far better way of doing things than CBR.

[Rspaight]

That build/setting sounds *very* good to me, COLA. Damn you! Now I'm gonna have to rip all this shit again.

Ryan

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

Thanks, COLA. Before I get any deeper into this stuff (which probably won't happen until next weekend), I'll get everything downloaded and optimized. Very cool.

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

That's why I wanted to tell you now, to spare you the torture. You don't want to know (and I don't want to have to think about) how many times I re-ripped/re-encoded things becasue I didn't know what to use in the first place. I wish I would've known about Hydrogen Audio to begin with. It would've saved me countless hours of frustration and wasted effort.

The people at Hydrogen Audio won't steer you wrong. They really know what they're doing over there and are very helpful.