Audio Player

[Andrew]

I'm looking to buy an audio (mp3) player in the next month or so.

Any recommendations?

I'm not looking for anything expensive or special.

What do you look for when buying, or what do you use often with one?

I want to narrow it down and then buy one when it goes on sale.

Should have a radio so it can play in my old car stereo (car radio pick up transmission).

[Khan]

I'd go with an Iriver, but then I'm a big Iriver fan.

They have radio tuners, they appear as external hard drives on your computer, which I think makes them easier to load files onto, they have the most codecs. And they're sexy,

[Andrew]

After lots of research, I think I will be going with Sandisk Sansa View

Has video capabilities of 640*480 resolution (they only state 320x240, but lots of higher resolutions are possible).

I'll either get the 8 gb model $150 (same price as e280), or 16 gb model for $200.

Only bad thing about view is the size. But that is because one website had the height 2 cm higher than it really is. Will still fit in my pocket easily.

It was either that or the Sansa e280

But the e280 is an older model. And the view is basically an updated version of e200 series.

Downside is Sansdisk has had bad firmware problems, but they keep releasing new versions attempting to fix problems which is good.

[Dunenewt]

I've got a Sansa e280, and they're great, although I wish mine had more capacity now.  The firmwear is pretty rubbish though.

[Andrew]

You can put rockbox on your e280 to replace the one that comes with it.

http://www.rockbox.org/

EDIT:

I presume your e280 supports variable bit rate mp3?

[Vanguard3000]

Honestly man, just go to a pawn shop and buy a decent PDA.  I bought a Dell Axim x51v back in June, and it's great.  It uses Windows Mobile, so you can just use Media Player (Personally, I use CorePlayer) to play music (CP can play less commonly compatible formats like Ogg Vorbis and midi) to play music and video, and it has a larger screen than most mp3 players.  But it's also got a calendar and contact list, and you can download all sorts of third-party softs for them.  On my Axim, I can play Quake 1!

Or you could just go with an mp3 phone/blackberry and get the added boni of cameras and... well, a phone, obviously.  But the battery won't last as long as a PDA in "flight mode" (with bluetooth and wifi disabled).  My PDA can go for days on a full charge.  Much like I can, with the ladies.

[Andrew]

I do have an HP ipaq 2200

It only has 64mb space (32rom, 32ram). I don't think it would make a good mp3 player (great for avantgo news reader). More for GPS work.

I already have a 7.2 megapixel sony camera and a not fancy cell phone (for actual phone use and not other stuff). Both work fine.

So buying an all in one device is not really in my best interest at this time.

Getting an expensive cell phone is not an option. I prefer paying $12 a month prepaid, no contract needed. Yes all the rage nowadays is getting a fancy cell phone that does everything. I'm not into that yet. Always funny when everyone gets out their cell phone and start to play their music all at once... to see who is cooler, even though their music is exactly what the industry told them to buy. Also funny to see friends paying $60 a month for cell phone bill.

And yes I know that having a cell phone is more about social status than actual tool.

Phones Are the New Peacock Feathers, Study Reports: Attracting females is apparently what it's really about

Not only did significantly more men than women appear to own cell phones, but they clearly wanted everybody else to know they owned them, too.

Am I sounding like a hippy?

[Andrew]

Hehe. BestBuy has the sansaview 8gb on sale for $100 ($60 off). Futureshop has a price match policy of 110%. So if I'm lucky I can get it for $90 from futureshop. And I have a $25 gift card. Original manufacturers price is $150.

That guy better phone back to confirm! >:(

EDIT:

gone to pick it up

[Vanguard3000]

Well, most PDAs have a slot for flash cards.  My Axim has a slot for an SD card (I have two gigs in there - enough for me, but they make 4gb cards, too), and some other kind of card slot, which I haven't bothered with.

I just prefer it this way because it's an all-in-one for me (I don't have a cellphone, nor do I particularly want one).

[gunner154]

I got a Sony A300 because it was cheap for a 20GB player at less than S$300. Nothing fanciful, plus the same Sony format rubbish.

[Andrew]

Got back. I ended up paying $95 in the end.

It was $104 before taxes. With taxes $120.11. But then I had $25 gift card so only paid $95.

I agree Vanguard. I will most likely do that in 1 or 2 years once my current stuff gets useless.

The good thing is my ipaq and sansa view both use SD cards (micro for sansa, normal sd for ipaq). So if I get a card, it will work in both devices. Also lots of cell phones use micro sd.

EDIT:

Umm, is it normal that they are loud? I have volume turned down as much as possible, even went into system options and changed volume to "normal" instead of the "loud" option. Still quite loud.

Odd that mp3 players come with loud noise warnings, yet there is no low volume setting. wtf is up with that? How do you not get headaches from it?

[Vanguard3000]

Sometimes it depends on the earphones you're using.  I used to use the padded ones that rest against your ear, and they couldn't be loud enough when I was on the bus.  Background noise would drown it out, and I couldn't listen to softer stuff (Moonlight Sonata, especially).  But I spent $25 and got these foam earbuds that you can mold to fit the inside of your ear, and I only need to have the PDA volume on 1/5, and the media player at about 60% most of the time.

[Andrew]

ok, I guess the reason it seemed loud is because I was in a quiet room (only computer fan noise).

I've gotten the hang of converting files. Got 2 tv episodes, 1 movie (original 1.4 gb, converted 400mb). Now putting on youtube (ew bad audio quality) music videos.

[Dunenewt]

My Sansa is too quiet, but I think that's because I've only got cheap headphones.  However, converting files is an absolute pain!

[Andrew]

I am currently using

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

It seems ok.

The download link on that page is very difficult to find, you have to go through several links to get to it. I had to use IE7 to find and download it.

This picture shows what the program looks like.

[Dunenewt]

Does it reduce the resolution of videos?

[Andrew]

You can set it to convert it to whatever resolution you want.

I converted 720x448 movie file to a 640x400 movie file. Looks good on the mp3 player (I tried for good quality, and the source file was great quality).

For the youtube videos that are 320 x 240, I just let it keep the same resolution. I could have resized them but that would be bad, especially since my "advertised" mp3 player resolution is 320 x 240.

54 of 55 of youtube videos I converted I was able to put on my mp3 player. One of them gave me an error. Not sure why. Probably bad video type or something from the source.

youtube videos look ok. Not that great, but that is because of the poor quality of youtube video, then converting them makes them look even worse. But still easy on the eyes because of small screen.

EDIT:

Some youtube videos look better than others. Most likely due to the varying quality of youtube video source (original). I watched one video and the "artifacts" (or blocks) were plentiful, and the next video I am watching now it looks near perfect. No flaws. I think this has to do with the original source youtube files quality.

[Dunenewt]

What file types are you using?

[Andrew]

Original file sources are:

The youtube videos are .flv which is the way that miro downloads youtube videos.

The tv shows are .avi

The movie is .mkv

I am converting all these videos into the mp4 h.264 video format. I don't think the e200 series supports h.264 format. But you could convert to anything else. There are lots of video formats this software can change to. Whether it works on you mp3 player I don't know. I'm using this video format as it is one of the best formats available.

H.264

X264

EDIT:

I installed miro on ubuntu again and downloaded some more youtube videos. It doesn't seem to be crashing now which is good. But still missing lots of features.

It took me several tries to convert the youtube videos properly (filesize, quality). Converted a single video several times using different methods, and choose the best method. Mostly trying to match audio/video. At first I had it set at an audio quality that was higher than the original source itself which was pointless. I also did the same with video. So I lowered them to what I thougth original source was, and lowered it a little bit below to decrease filesize.

My previous screenshot is the settings I used for youtube videos.

EDIT:

One of the files I converted did make it onto the mp3 player, but when I tried to play it it said unsupported media type. So it doesn't always work, but it should usually work.

EDIT:

I figured out why sansa media converter was not working for me.

[Dunenewt]

I use a FF plugin to get Youtube videos.  Why wasn't Sansa Media Converter working?  Mine wont work.

[Andrew]

I was opening sansa media convert through start menu. It for whatever reason didn't recognize a player hooked up. But if I click on icon in systray and tell to open sansa converter it located the player. I havn't actually converted any videos though (it wouldn't find youtube video when I tested it).

So I got sansa converter to recognize my device but I don't know if it will actually convert anything. I'll probably just be better off using 3rd party software.

[Dunenewt]

There's a FF plugin called video download helper which is great if you want to extract Youtube videos or anything similar.  I then use another programme to convert the .flv into an mpeg, or simply just to extract the music track.