[luvcraft]

I'm looking for two mp3 players, actually:

one for my car, that I can drop about a gig of mp3s on, power with my cigarette lighter, and output music from via one of those super-short-range radio transmitters that I can pick up on my car's stereo.

one for my bedroom that can stream mp3s off of my server, either via ethernet or wifi.

I'm a super-cheap kind of guy, so keeping the price low on both of these would be nice. I also abhor DRM and proprietary formats, so if it can't play vanilla mp3s I don't want it. I also don't care about brand names, so unless an iPod happens to be the perfect solution I don't want an iPod just for the sake of having an iPod.

any suggestions?
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[inmatarian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_Player
These are as cheap as it gets. I have one. They destroy batteries like you wouldn't believe, and the quality is par. However, they do have their charm. Mine has a couple of friendly little animations to chose from when it first starts up.

With a battery recharger, they make a nice thing to carry around.
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2993 badness blog email

[Corinth]

[Kappuru]

refurb ipod nanos are cheap now. I gotta say, nothing beats the scrollwheel interface.
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[Takashi]

Ha, S1 players are not very useful if you're in a car. Well, you could buy a Car Lighter to USB charger, but that means it would need to be a model that charges by USB, what most don't.

A good compromise between the overpriced Creative Zen Micros and the Apple Shuffles are the Sansa c200 series.

Streaming audio everywhere into your house, sadly, are still a horribly expensive things. I'd say... nothing under 100$ will fit the bill, more moving to 200$. For that price, an old Pentium laptop running Linux and a pair of speakers sounds amazingly attractive.
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low-end.net | Whimsy (soon) | Serfdom 2.0

[gooktime]

[SplashBeats]

An MP3 CD player?

The iPod still employs some weird encryption so you can't sift through the files on it without iTunes or Winamp with a plugin.

I strongly advise against getting an iPod nano. I had one for two weeks and had nothing but problems with it. It locked up 3 or 4 times a day, deleted things I'd added on there, and once refused to display any of the music I had on it, an act which caused me to return it to the store and get the iPod video I have now, which is a wonderful device that I have no complaints about.

I hear great things about the Shuffle, but not being able to sift through my albums and mp3s bothers me. If it doesn't bother you, it might be a solution.

I don't know of any mp3 players that can stream music via wi-fi though.

[inmatarian]

Hrmm... They do make FM Transmitters that via standard audio jacks. Then you just tune everything to like, 89.something and listen to staticky goodness.
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2993 badness blog email

[108]

[psiga]

"literally THOUSANDS"?
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[108]

yes as in more than 2001 songs in the iTunes. as in more like 7000 or so. i have about 62GB of music okay.

i click "auto-fill" for the Shuffle, and it randomly selects 150 songs to put in, and makes a playlist out of them. for whatever reason, when i'm walking around town, i play the randomly selected playlist in the order it was created. i mean, the "shuffle" alludes to the process of automatically selecting the 150 songs to put on the iPod. i don't feel it's necessary to put the iPod shuffle into shuffle mode. it seems redundant. i usually refresh the playlist every day, see. when i get home from work.

so it was weird to hear eight songs by the same artist, in a row, and then five songs in a row by another artist. it just doesn't seem as possible as, well, it evidently is.
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[psiga]

Oh! Sorry, sorry, I mistakenly thought you said your Shuffle, not your iTunes. It was just the vague concept of a moon sized hole for a planet sized peg, y'see.
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[^^^^^]

I love the Creative Zen Vision: M more than any other DAP that I've encountered.

[Gironika]

IPods shuffle being not-so-random? and, unfortunately, the very good article linked there is gone.

Nevertheless, a good read!
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[CubaLibre]

I like iPods but I hate iTunes. I hate iTunes.

What should I do?
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Drem]

I know there are alternatives out there. Don't ask me where they are, though. The only one I can name off the top of my head is Anapod, which also has some other nifty features like streaming music off your iPod through the internet.

[Faithless]

I have an iRiver HP120 that I've had for years. It hasn't ever failed me. Also, it records voice for interviews. And has radio. And OGG support.

I like iRivers.
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my website

[Shapermc]

[chompers po pable]

tim, i think itunes tracks how much you listen to your songs. so when you put it on shuffle, it plays your "favorites." it also keeps track of which songs you skip. you can reset the count on both...it might help.

and luvcraft, don't get a radio tuner, they're shit in my experience. no good unless you think white noise cutting into your music adds to the atmosphere. i'd go for one of the headphone to tapedeck things myself.

[CubaLibre]

Are there any mp3 players that display by filename rather than id3 tag? Cause all my music is organized by filename instead of, you guessed it, id3 tag.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Shapermc]

There are free programs that can auto convert from filename to id3 tags

I learned this the hardway too.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Laurel Soup]

[!=]

Hey, winamp works with ipods. That's what I have been using for months on my ipod mini.

Now I turned my back to the ipod, and embraced the use of a sony mz-rh1, a minidisc device that plays mp3s, but more importantly allows lossless formats, a very cheap price per gigabyte ratio (about $10 or even less) and great sound quality.

Plus recording! For bootlegs or field recordings. In lossless PCM even!

And it's beautiful!



Great OLED display!

And the battery is super small, can be changed, and lasts!

I got it for 260€

It works on MacOsX and Windows but not Linux unless Wine counts. This is the only issue with it, as you are forced to use Sony's SonicStage software.

http://www.sony-europe.com/PageView.do?section=en_EU_Press&pressrelease=1142610580314&site=odw_en_EU&page=PressReleaseDetail

[chompers po pable]

that is awesome.

[psiga]

I know some people who are still diehard minidisc people. Iconoclasts among the flash DAP generation. Yeah, it's still hot. Definitely got a "fashion is now, style is forever" thing going on.

That said...

cough

I'm actually really interested in the new Slacker hardware (that isn't out yet).



Wi-Fi, 4" widescreen, SD card expansion slot (also about $10 per GB these days), touch-sensitive scroll bar, and it syncs with slacker.com which I've grown to adore in the past couple days (though kinda mainstream, and I can understand if it doesn't suit the punk/funk/jap/ska/goth guys around here).

Wanna see some VERY THOROUGH reviews, specs, and prices, though. What's the res of the display? Does the $150 2GB version still have the Wi-Fi and 4" screen? IMPORTANT QUESTIONS.

If I could get a dynamic radio station for $150, and pop some subbed Korean love dramas on an SD card to watch whenever I've got time to kill, I would just die smilin'.
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[gooktime]

[108]

[Kappuru]

yeah, i used to use a netMD, but man.. in this day an age, having to convert your media FIRST sucks. as well, the moving parts kind of suck too.
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[Chef Boyardee]

[luvcraft]

[newave]

Just curious since I've never used anything but itunes/ipods since 2001; does any there mp3 jukebox software/mp3 players actually have smart playlist functionality?

itunes/ipod allows you to auto generate / auto update playlists based on meta data, ratings, play count, ect. Its a rather advanced/hidden feature that i imagine most people don't use but is there any other software/hardware that does that?

Its pretty much the main reason I use iTunes/iPods.

[psiga]

That's one of the really good features that makes me scoff a bit when people trash on the iPod line. To my knowledge, no. A lot of MP3 players don't even have a Randomize button, let alone intelligent shuffle or playlists.

The as-yet-unreleased Slacker will do some things like that, though. Their implementation has yet to be fully tested, so yeah, who knows how it compares. My next big MP3 player purchase is either gonna be a refurb Nano or a Slacker.
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[Gironika]

I recommend Samsung's Z5. Might be a bit pricey if new, but can be found quite easily via ebay etc.

Can playback OGG, MP3 and other things (WMV), with the OGG-thing being the BEST thing about that, despite it's nice tft-screen no video-playback, has got several firmware-updates and improvements, can be used like an UMS-device (usb-stick) or an MTP-device (synchronize via winamp/windows media player), supports winamp-playlists.

Battery lasts for 20 to 30 (or even 40) hours, with a MAJOR drawback though. You can't really switch it "off", leaving it untouched for 24 hours makes it go into an "advanced" sleep mode that is a bit nicer with battery-drainage. That means you'll have to charge it at least once a week - and there's no charger included if you buy it.
You'll have to grab a third-party charger and the Z5 is a bit ... choosy there.



Nevertheless, I love it ... sound is a bit better than the iPods, with only the Cowon-players beating them to the #1-spot ... though if you aren't an audiophile person, you'll be fine with that.



Alternatively, Samsung's U1, a tiny but excellent player, OGG-support there.

Or you go for the K5, being a "hip" player and even making it into some music-vids of some ... "stars", alternatively (if you don't need the speaker), you can go for a shiny speakerless (K3)-solution. If it's Samsung, I can recommend any of the aforementioned.
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[Duckzero]

I have a sony nw-hd5 and a first gen ipod! I got the 20 gig HD5 for only 30 bucks because the ebay seller has this shady checkout system. But for me it's well worth it. The screen is in Black and White, and it does not do anything too fancy, but it does have FANTASTIC sound, so much better than the ipod. the only drawback is Sonic Stage, but you can use mp3filemanager to do all of your transferring work, which makes things easy and fast.

But, i honestly would get an ipod again, but if you hate itunes, get a zune. They really arent too bad and the screen is very nice, but I also don't use windows so it's kind of a waste of time to me.
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Keepin' it real like Oatmeal

[Hot Stott Bot]

I have an ipod and I don't use itunes!

I just use winamp, and it works quite nicely...

(The only thing it doesn't do actually is syncing up pictures and videos which I do use iTunes for, but that's quite minimal...)

[newave]

[ecchi]

Winamp does smart playlists, which you could probably get onto an iPod/many other players in some way (I just have a Shuffle so I don't know how playlists work). It wouldn't dynamically update on the iPod or anything like that, though.

[psiga]

Yeah, if you could get Winamp or foobar2000 or amarok or whatever to create a smart playlist, and automatically upload the songs to an MP3 playing device, it would be kinda nifty. I think they just haven't evolved into that yet.
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[Hot Stott Bot]

You can do the smart playlists, but I don't think having it sync the mp3s on your ipod based on what's in the smart playlists you can do... well, at least not super-easy. You'd have to remove the songs on your ipod, then add each playlist.

[sync-swim]

You did remember to check today's Woot, right?