Thanks Bob - I'll start researching.

Where I'm starting from is a fairly large 40 year music collection more on vinyl than CD, which I want to do a once-only conversion so that I can listen to any track thru earphones, car or home hi-fi.

Hm, that sounds like a pretty big task regardless of what mp3 player one used. Just getting the material off vinyl is time consuming and then there's the cataloguing...
And when the vinyl is on CD you need to rip it.

Yes, it's a big task alright, partly because once I've captured it from vinyl I won't be able to resist getting rid of pops and crackles and general noise with all this marvellous software.

It would work out cheaper to re-buy albums on CD, but a lot of mine ain't on CD...

A friend of mine bought a 512mb mp3 player for $50. He got it because it uses SD cards. he loves it: I helped him get many of his CD's on there. He also bought another one that has a small 20gb HD built in. That was $130 I belive. We got almost evert CD he owned on that bad boy. I forget the brand but he has no problem with eigther of them.

Tell ya what, i tried to avoid buying apple's ipod for a year now, and have had a few various other mp3 players,from 512mb - 20gb. Just bought my wife the Nano 1gb(129 education), and as much as i dont want to say it, i am a convert. It does what it is supposed to do(play music) perfectly. My wife is not a Techie, but was able to figure out the interface in about 20 seconds. The build quality is top notch, and the music quality is excelent. You definantly pay for the name though. I have thought about getting a psp, and no ipod, but have decided that i want both. The ipod interface has me hooked

Peter,

I've had 2 of them - an iRiver 256mb and a Samsung 512mb. Both have been good. I was looking for one that had an FM Radio and voice recorder built in. They both do, but the Samsumg FM reception was better than the iRiver. I do understand that iRiver has improved their early tuners, if radio reception is a consideration. I like the all solid state ones, but the max you can get seems to be 1GB - more than enough for me for most things, but some folks might prefer the HD storage. For trips, I cram about 60 old 30 minute radio shows, like Jack Benny, etc onto the Samsung at 32kbps and we've got 30 hours of fun! At stops, I can catch the local news on the radio if I like. It's also great at the pool to have the choice of sources to listen to. Plus, both of the players allow recording off of the radio (tuners are FM only) so if I hear a station I want to keep a record of, I can do so. As an ex radio DJ, I still like to keep up with the business. Also, with the bulit in voice recorders, I've made notes to myself if I have a brainstorm or see a phone number I'd like to remember while I'm driving.

Most of the players will also act as a thumb drive, so you can use them to transfer files from computer to computer via USB.

I use a cassette adapter in my wife's car to play the device through the stereo, and a wireless iRiver FM adapter in my car. The FM adapters are not great and I wasted money on several before finding the iRiver. It built like a cigarette lighter plugs into the cigarette lighter socket for power, so it has a good ground connection to the vehicle. I think that helps it work better than the others I've tried. There are better adapters out thaere that use the CD changer inputs on the car stereo, or go directly into the antenna jack, but I wan't ambitious enough to tear into the dashboard.

As far as home use, the earphone out's appear to be close enough impedance and level to plug into your amplifier line inputs with no problem.

An earlier post mentioned one that uses SD cards. That would be the best of both worlds, especially for long trips. I think that would be my next purchase if I find one that has all of the features I need.

One other possible consideration, if size isn't an issue, is a portable CD player that also plays mp3 or wma discs. I also have one of those, although I use the tiny flash players more often. With one of those, you can digitize your library into high quality wma formats and have it available on CD for the computer or the portable CD player. You could then get a component CD or DVD player for your home stereo that also plays back mp3 or wma discs, and you're covered there too, with one burn.

In summation, for what you want to do there is bountiful life after iPod.

Tom

The one thing that Ipod does very well is the UI/navigation.

Iriver makes some nice hard drive mp3 players. My wife has one of the earlier models, the sound is excellent and the battery life is great. They have enough power to drive a pair of headphones. They recently created the H10 which tries to recreate Ipod's wheel with a thumb slider. Here's a review.
The navigation is said to be improved. You can get the 20 gig one for just over $200. Some more comments.


If you do video professionally, you may want to get an mp3 player that does video too. So you can whip out the drive and pick up a client wherever. In addition to the video Ipod, the portable Playstation, Iriver and the other mp3 makers are making "media players."

whatever you get, you can get better earbuds starting at $15.

I looked at an H10 recently, and it really sounded good. The tuner was much improved over my iRiver flash player. The ONLY thing I didn't like about it (may not be important) is that in order to get line in recording, you had to buy an accessory docking station, which no-one seemed to carry. Both of my small flash players let you record from a line in and encode directly to mp3, and I believe wav. I thought that might be a handy feature to have. There were several other features that required the docking station, but I don't recall what they were right now.

I really like my PSP. With Media Manager I can sync. content on my computer. (My nephews think it's nuts that I don't have any games on it.)

- I carry video around on it and can use it as a monitor for foley work when I am doing sound design.

- I check out Google news every morning with my coffee because with a WiFi you can surf the web.

UMD movies look just fine with that 4.3 inch screen.

- If I want to carry music on it I can tweak the bit rate to get much better sound that the 128 Kbit sound offered by most MP3 players.

Of course it is bigger than some of those other brand players. But it is a much more vesatile device.

My few cents worth.

Cheers.

Hey Peter -

About a year ago, I bought myself a Creative Zen Touch 40GB player - It has a vertical touch-scroll similar in concept to the iPod's scroll wheel, and I love it. I have about 4000 songs on it so far - about 2/3 of my cd collection. I think I have about 18GB of space left. Most are at 192 kBps, so they take up a little more space than "typical" mp3's at 128.

My main uses are (1) I do a weekly live radio music show on the local community station here. Although I usually bring all my cd's also, the mp3 player provides an alternate input source to the board, so I can have something cued up all the time (I hate it when there's 30 seconds left on the song, and I'm still scrambling to cue up the next song...). Also, I can create a playlist for the day and just pick from that. My other main use is (2) I hook it into an auxiliary input into my truck stereo for road trips; (3) Once we arrive at our destination, I hook up some portable speakers and have 4000 songs to choose from in the room.

My reasoning for getting a Creative instead of the iPod?
1 - Cost per GB - Much lower with a non-iPod product
2 - A the time, my only PC's OS had Win98SE - Not compatable with iTunes, whic you MUST have to interface with the iPod. I just built a new system with XP Pro, so this would not be as much of an issue today, for me.
3 - Although I now have iTunes at home, I have had it at work, the protected, proprietary AAC format that iTunes uses just rubs me wrong. I "think" iTunes and the iPod can utilize your own ripped mp3's however...
4 - On edit - Battery life - The Creative can go for 24+ hours straight. I don't know what the newer iPods are like, but at the time there were some "issues" with a (relatively) short battery life
5 - Not that I've used it yet, but one can also put data files on it to transfer between PC's

The disadvantages are:
1 - aftermarket add-ons. The add-on market for iPods is rich with all kinds of stuff - carry cases, car chargers, home chargers, connectors, cradles, cradles with built in speakers, etc. If I want to get extra stuff for my Zen Touch, I'm limited to items purchased from Creative, or generic items that plug into the headphone jack and (in the case of cases or holders) may or may not fit quite right with the exterior dimensions of the Zen Touch.
2 - Sex appeal - The iPod has it, hands down.

For me, the advantages far outweighed ths disadvantages.

About 18 months ago, I got my wife an off-brand, flash-based 1GB USB mp3 player that she uses for running. It's great. for her uses. I can change the songs easily, it's tiny, solid, easy to use, and at the time was relatively inexpensive ($90) for a 1GB flash player.

Aditional advice - read reviews, narrow down your choices, and vist the user forums of the players you're considering (wade through the BS, however...)

My 2 cents worth.

Frenchy

We bought a Creative MuVo 512 Tx ($50) for my 15-year-old daughter, and she uses it constantly. She can hold about a dozen CDs on it when compressed using WMA. We have MusicMatch Jukebox on her home computer, and she can drag and drop any albums on her MuVo, which looks and behaves like a USB flash drive. She uses the FM radio often.

But the power of the Dark Side is remarkable. Seems you are nothing at High School unless you have not only an Ipod, but the latest model. Funny thing is, you can talk specs all day to a True Believer, and they don't care. No user-replacable battery? Don't care. No FM? Don't care. Only Itunes? Don't care.

Incidentally, no matter what you buy, do an upgrade on the earpieces. I'd recommend the Sennheiser MX500, which you can get online for about $15. Much better than original equipment.

that's why I haven't gotten an mp3 player yet.. size. I want something ~as big as my car door remote. I don't want a multi-function device, I want to just play music. I've seen them but not at prices I like. I don't care about portable video because when I'm out I don't want to cary a lot of stuff around.. (yes, no cell phone!). I'd actuatly prefer if video could be played on a NintendoDS. The touchscreen is nice & you could do DVD menu's with that puppy.


Anyway... here's what my friend got: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=RUBATO-20

The only issue he had was dealing with a crap computer with a copy of Win98 that hasn't been re-formated in 6/7 years now. but besides that, he loved it. It was $20 cheaper at the time of sale.

I want something ~as big as my car door remote.

How about a 2-gig player that is less than 1" square?

mobiBLU DAH-1500i

John

Thanks for all those ideas guys. I like the idea of a built in tuner, and I'm hoping for something small with "huge" capacity - I'll be wading through all those links and suggestions later.

Thanks again.

bite the bullet and go iPod....we've got 4 active iPods in the house and one psp gathering dust.

recently the harddrive on the video iPod I bought died, I took it to an apple store and they voluntarily and politely replaced it on the spot...without a receipt.

The number of accessories is rediculous, Apple just seems to be setting the pace on most levels right now.

I just bit the bullet and got a the iPod Nano.... actually I bit the bullet and bought it as a V-Day gift for the girl and I just bought a little Sandisk player on sale for $30 at Office Depot for myself. What gives with that? The nano is really nice, the interface makes sense, and it seems pretty solid.

I got an iPod Shuffle for my daughter. The iTunes software is absolutely awful. I don't like it; she doesn't like it.

I'm not a big fan of using hard drives in portable players, since the idea of portable seems like it should include small, rugged, long battery life, etc. I've spent the last two days using Ontrack trying to recover files from a crashed hard drive (don't EVER buy or use an external enclosure that doesn't have a fan -- someone gave me one without a fan as partial payment for a job, and it has fried two drives. I'm adding a fan on my own before I put a new drive in).

that's surprising, in general most people seem to like iTunes. Personally I'm not a big fan of the Shuffle though. However the Shuffle is not hard drive based, it's based on Flash memory.

For a Flash MP3 player I think the Nano is a much better way to go. They have a 1GB version at around $150

I also had this debate and finally gave in and got the video iPod. I had settled on the iPod in general for one of the reasons that was already given: Aftermarket add-ons. There is just no other MP3 player out there that has the amount of options and extras as the iPod. I also figured that due to its popularity it will probably have a better chance of continuing to have support and other add-ons as well as have a better resell value if I ever want to upgrade.

Beyond that the fact that I have a ton of my video work on it and can show it on the fly to any potential client or anyone anytime, anwhere, is just awesome.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

I have been thinking a lot about the Creative products. But...I think their sound cards have the buggiest drivers ever known. So I dont want another bad experience with Creative. But the features of their players for the price is very attractive to me. I do a lot fo running and I run with my old cassette walkman. It is heavy and the batteries shake and it glitches on and off and it sometime eats my cassettes. So on long runs I end up listening to the radio. I like the FM radio in the Creatives. I also dont want to be forced to use I-tunes. I had it for about a day when I installed quicktime and it forced I-tunes on me. I will never trust Apple again, have I ever really trusted them? if I did I would have a mac.....but I digress

I just want something reliable that can survive if my kids get a hold of it. Which of these can survive being dropped or dropped and run over by the little Burley trailer that I pull when I ride bikes....

Not gonna spend 300 bucks to see something smashed on the sidewalk.

TomE

Sorry to sound so cynical, but if you crave social acceptance then the Ipod is the ticket. If you just want a machine that works, then there are many alternatives. I like the little Creative flash drives very much, such as the MuVo Tx and the one-piece equivalent, the N200.

The Ipod user interface is nicely designed, but it lacks a radio and, as you mentioned, you're forced to see things Apple's way.

actually it's the other way around, the reason I went with iPod is precisely because when it comes to digital media Apple sees it the way I do...other than this I've been a confirmed PC user for 21 years.

Hopefully the other vendors will catch on. I think Sony and MSoft will ..most of .the others, I doubt it.