MP3 Players

Off-topic
22

i have a 5gb olympus m:robe. a lot of things about its operation are better than an ipod - a lyrics page and the ability to quickly get to the now playing screen - but the computer software is a bit dodgy. once it shuffled all the songs between albums. also, it has a half-second gap between songs.

the best thing about it is the design. i feel very futuristic when i use the all-touch interface, and the uniform red glow is very appealing when listening at night. white/colour screens just kill the mood.

23

I have a 4GB iPod Mini, which I quite like. the only thing I don’t really like is that it doesn’t hold much, well, it does, but I wish it held more sometimes.

24

i got a cretive 5gig zen neeon its alright and the screen changes coller

25

i like to get mugged for rocking out on my $400 ipod

26

I’m too much of a ninja/thug to get mugged. Nobody will mess wif me fo sho!

27

sweet, go Archos, I love their products they are amazing.

I have never heard of anything like this ever happening. I have owned both good quality and low quality mp3 players, some hard drive and some flash memory, non have ever skipped. The closest I have ever came to that was on my old old rca one, if I hit one side of it the spring on the battery would compress and it would lose its circuit and turn off.

From the sounds of your problem it would seem that the headphone jack has loosened and one of the solders inside of it has come apart. Its easy to fix though just open it up and resolder the connectors, I have done this on about 7 mp3 players using my very very old (I think at least 20 years) solderer, and it has been very easy, just be careful of dripping and keeping the soldering tool away from things it shouldnt touch.

28

flash based MP3 players will never skip. this means: ipod nano, shuffle, and various others. Larger ones have a hard drive, which MAY skip, but I don’t know the specifics. I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna get an ipod to skip.

what your brother has probably has flash memory, so I don’t know why it would be skipping. sounds like some other problem.

29

i have a 3rd generation ipod its 20 gb’s, i have about 3 gbs of songs on it my moms songs, my songs and my stepdads songs, then i have the bible on audiobook which is about 5 gbs, and the rest is movies and tv shows.
but i love my ipod

30

Blue IPOD mini.

M9802X-A.jpg

31

I have an iRiver iMP 350 SlimX CD/MP3 player. I’ve had it for about two years or maybe three.
The CD based MP3 players are the only MP3 players that can play Pink Floyd the way God intended, without gaps between the tracks. My secret is that when I listen to Pink Floyd (or classical music or any other music that requires gapless playback) I listen to a regular audio CD and not MP3 files. I refuse to buy an MP3 jukebox till one supports proper gapless playback of MP3 files. Till then I’ll stick with my portable CD/MP3 player.

Most of the time I use Grado SR60 headphones with the iRiver. The Grado’s are musical bliss.
Sometimes I’ll use an old pair of Sony MDR-V6 headphones, but I don’t like them as much as the Grado’s.
If I ever get a good portable headphone amp I’ll be able to use my Sennheiser HD580’s or HD600’s with the iRiver.
I’d like to try the Ultimate Ears headphones (technically they’re in ear monitors). They should be good for portable use but I want to listen to them first before buying them so I can decide if I like them and make an informed decision about which model to get. Anyone looking for some stylish white headphones for their iPod should check out the Ultimate Ears (they come in white, black or clear).

prpa_imp350_s3.jpg

32

1gb sony network walkman. it holds about 700 songs in any format and is very small…its like 1 1/2 inches diameter

images.jpg

33

That looks like a really cool MP3/CD player. Much better than the one I had.

I think I’ve written this before. The iPod can be set for zero seconds between tracks, which is how I play mine. It’s a little abrupt for some song transitions, but works fine for the ones that are supposed to blend together.

I think you have to set the gap in the iTunes software; not sure if you can change it from the iPod itself.

Another less-elegant option for gapless playback is to rip the album all in one piece. I have a copy of Animals like that. But as I mostly listen in the car, I usually don’t hear it all in one stretch anyway…

I have the 40GB iPod photo (4th gen). There are over 7000 songs on there, but now it’s basically full and I’ll have to pick and choose which music not to carry.

iPod accessories:

iTrip: Works, but is a bit of a hassle to use (fiddly, I guess you’d say in the UK). Tuning in stations takes trial and error before you figure out how to do it, but then it works pretty good.

Bose Sound Dock: Expensive, but works really well. Plays very loud for its size, and comes with a remote. That’s how I play my pod in the house.

Newer Technology Road Trip+: Excellent product for the price (around $30)! Charges the pod and broadcasts the signal on FM 87.9. Not tunable, but this hasn’t been a problem for me. Some interference in my car, but sounds great in every other car I’ve tried it.
http://www.newertech.com/roadtrip

My boss has the one that looks like an iPod cradle with an LCD station display at the bottom, and a flexible cigarette lighter plug sticking out the back. Can’t remember which brand it is, but he loves it. The difference: His cost $100.

iPod Photo Loader (or some similar name, from Apple):
This little $30 accessory lets you use your iPod as a storage device for digital photos. Plug camera into iPod with this device in between, and it copies the images, while also creating the iPod-sized versions it uses for display on the pod. But I had a couple of pictures that came in damaged (out of several hundred) the last time I used it. Otherwise, the iPod photo is useless to hold the pictures you take on a trip.

Remember to hide your music player and/or playing accessories when parked in questionable places…

34

with my mp3 players I have always had gapless playback, but what I have found is that the real issue for that is the program used to convert the original files to mp3, in both nero and CDEX which are the only programs I have ever used has the option of keeping the files the way they were intended to be heard or with a delay. if you would like to try it for yourself I would suggest using the freeware program, cdex, its the best program I have ever found or used.

35

You’re not getting true gapless playback. This site explains the gapless playback issue in more detail than I can go into here. You can fake or approximate gapless playback on some MP3 players by enabling crossfading but it’s not true or perfect gapless playback. There are other hacks you can do to for some specific MP3 players, but there are caveats for all those solutions that I refuse to compromise on.

My favorite music is Pink Floyd. I listen to it regularly. Pink Floyd without proper and flawless gapless playback is not Pink Floyd. I also have a lot of classical albums with symphonies that require gapless playback. About half of my CDs are classical albums.

I refuse to compromise on the gapless playback issue. I refuse to buy an MP3 player that does not support it properly. My thinking is that if I compromise and buy and MP3 player that does not meet my most critical requirement that I’ll just be encouraging the manufacturers to make even more models of MP3 players that suck (don’t have gapless playback). I refuse to reward the companies for making a product that doesn’t meet my needs. If I cave then all is lost and I’ll never get an MP3 player that does proper gapless playback because the companies will know they can get my money even if they don’t meet my needs.

It’s the same reason that I don’t buy CDs from the major labels anymore because they started putting DRM on their CDs. If you cave on principles like that you end up with the situation we have with Sony and their rootkit. They’ll get cocky and think they can get away with screwing the consumers even more. Well, not me.

I encode my MP3s with LAME using the alt-preset standard setting. I’ve used CDEX but I like Exact Audio Copy (EAC) better. It does a better job of ripping but is a little bit slower than CDEX. LAME adds extra info to the MP3 file to help players do gapless playback. Now it’s just up to the music players to make use of that LAME feature. PC players like Foobar2000 can already do perfect gapless playback. Now it’s time for the portable players to do it.

36

I’m supprised you can even listen to music with all that whining and nagging all the time!:slight_smile:

37

I was listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on CD while typing in all that whining. :slight_smile:

38

How come im not surprised this thread turned into “John Childs complaining about gapless playback” ?

:wink:

39

I listen to a lot of trance. The CD’s are divided into multiple tracks. when played, each track is supposed to tranisition smoothly to the next… it is mixed into the original CD tracks, not done with software, just like pink floyd (I’m assuming, I’m not into that hippie music (I’m kidding)).

I deffiniatly have true gapless playback on my Ipod.

40

I bought my self a blue ipod mini 4gb, for xmas (on ebay) nice and cheap.:slight_smile:

41

Thanks JC for the link to the detailed page on gapless playback. I like my Pink Floyd too, but am less disturbed by imperfect playback. I guess I find it acceptable in exchange for the number of songs I have that I didn’t necessarily acquire legally… :stuck_out_tongue:

Please note that that page, with all its detail, is a year out of date so some things may have changed in the world of digital media players. Apparently iTunes can play gapless music, but the firmware in the iPod is not iTunes, and it doesn’t do as good a job. I’d have to listen closely to see what kind of “gap noise” I’m actually getting.

A search of Apple’s knowledge base for “gapless” turned up absolutely nothing.