The Best MP3 Players
Which digital audio player should you buy? The range of products on the market is so vast that many are tempted to take the easy way out and "just get an Ipod". However, for many people that would be an inferior choice.
Rather than review all the products out there, I will present those I own, and why I bought them. I like to have two players: one to hold my whole music collection, one to travel with.
Travel MP3 Player
At the moment I have two travel players. I tried to transition from one product to another, but I still find myself hanging on to my old player because it runs on batteries and I can take it on camping trips.Creative Muvo TX
I love that this player plugs straight into your computer's USB port. And I love that it runs on a single AAA battery. This means you don't need to carry a charger or cables, praised assets when you're counting space and weight. What's the point of a tiny player if you need a bagful of accessories?
I run this player on the most expensive batteries I can find, at the moment the energizer titanium. It goes a long long time (compared with rechargeable players) but the battery drains on its own when you leave it in the player. I've removed the door to the battery compartment so I can easily dislodge the battery when I'm done listening. (If I remember.) You don't need to remove the battery completely, it stays in the chamber if you pull it halfway out.
The USB connection is brilliant. I've connected this player in dozens of internet cafes, and I never had to worry about forgetting the cable. It shows up as a storage drive on the file system, which makes it so easy to copy-paste files. This is a perfect system, because it's fast and you don't rely on software being installed on the host computer.
I've used the built-in microphone to interview people. The unit records to a low-quality WAV file. It's workable for reference, but it doesn't produce recordings you listen to with pleasure.
Nowadays 1GB is frighteningly small for a portable player, so I started to look for a replacement. The bad news is that the travel holy grail (AAA battery + direct USB connection) is no longer available. Creative's new Muvo unit plugs straight to USB, but it recharges via cable and the battery life is a fraction of what you get on a AAA. You can get a 2GB refurbished Creative V100 on Ebay, but that's still a really low capacity.
Sansa Clip Review
What I love about the Sansa Clip:
1. It is truly minuscule and gorgeous. It's hard to believe that this little guy can do so much.
2. The clip. I never thought I would use it, but it is very practical when doing yoga, walking etc.
3. The interface. The menus are extremely efficient.
4. The recording quality. It is outstanding. This is a great little recorder to take with you (as long as you don't run out of juice).
5. Adding music. No proprietary software, just the old copy-paste. Thank you!
6. The rewind button. When you keep the rewind button pressed, the player not only goes back to the beginning of a track, it then jumps to the end of the previous track. I love that. I hate that on many players, when you rewind a track, you only get as far as the top of that track. This means that if you want to hear the end of the previous track again, you have to go to that track and fast forward to the end! Awful when you're listening to 90-minute talks.
7. Rechargeable. I enjoy not wasting batteries. On the other hand, this makes the player unsuitable for long trips in the wild.
What I don't like about the Sansa Clip:
1. After adding music, when you unplug the Sansa Clip from the computer, the database takes ages to refresh.
2. Backlight. Because the Sansa uses a bright backlight, there is no option to display the current track at all times. This means that whenever you want to check where you are on a long track, you have to press a button to turn on the backlight. The backlight is beautiful, but I prefer the not-as-pretty, energy-efficient, always-on display of the Creative Muvo.
3. Rechargeable. Sometimes I camp out for weeks in a row. This excludes the Sansa Clip, because I won't be able to recharge it in the wild. For camping trips, I still rely on my Creative Muvo.
Home MP3 Player
Players come and go so fast: I don't claim to know which player is the best at this very moment.My first player was a RioVolt by a company called SonicBlue. It played MP3 tracks from CDs. This meant you had to burn your MP3s to CDs. It also played files in the WMA file format, which I prefer because it is more compact. (I don't have the sensitive ears of an audiophile who owns a $500 headset and prefers her music uncompressed.) This was a great solution at the time.
My next player was the Creative Nomad Jukebox. It stored 20GB of music on a hard drive, and it was the first player of its kind to hit the mass market. I still remember the ad for it, showing a couple driving in a convertible along the Pacific Highway in California. It was a very exciting time for digital music technology, the field in which I worked at the time.
Hard drives are fragile because they have moving parts. So hard drive players are only suited to an environment where they won't be moved, like the home or the office. I dropped my Nomad and it stopped working. Fortunately, it was still under warranty.
My next home player was another Creative product, the 40GB Zen Touch. I like the touch interface, though not as much as the IPod's wheel. I like that it is compatible with many kinds of software. This player records excellent quality audio, straight to MP3, through an external microphone. The jack is fragile. After a year I started to lose one of the stereo channels and had to jiggle the jack into its sweet spot. I wasn't thrilled to have to send the player to a third-party for repairs. To the manufacturers of digital players out there, please sell us players with jacks that will work forever!
I've been on the road for a long time so I haven't seen my Zen Touch for years now. I don't know what home player I would buy today, but I would start my research on this site.
Ipod, I cannot say "I love you"
Apple is brilliant at marketing. Some people think Apple invented the MP3 player! But the Ipod came on the market years after the first MP3 players, in fact years after some excellent players had already come and gone.I love the Ipod's wheel interface. But for my needs, the Ipod would be a very silly purchase. Here's why.
1. The Ipod doesn't play WMA files (Windows Media Audio). For someone who likes to compress files to CD quality (as opposed to audiophiles who want their music uncompressed), WMA is the best file format because it gives you the same quality at half the size of the old MP3 format. (You can encode at 64kpbs). This means that when you buy an 8GB player that plays WMA files, it can hold as much music as a 16GB Ipod! So when I look at an Ipod, I just divide the capacity by two. For my kind of use, an 8GB Ipod is only as good as a 4GB player.
2. The Ipod only lets you transfer files through ITunes, and ITunes is a dreadful piece of software. Most digital music players on the market let you use a number of media players to manage your music. And the best players give you the option to simply copy-paste if you want to! Not so with the Ipod. In fact, you can't easily pick a track to transfer from any computer to your Ipod. You have to install Itunes on that computer, and then you can't pick just any music file to transfer, you have to synchronize your whole music collection! Great for record labels, bad for people who want to share.
There are many other reasons some people dislike Ipods, including sound quality. I am no expert on sound so I can't add anything here. But my favorite site to research MP3 players has plenty of information about this. I love its name: Anything but IPod.
Smiles,
Andy
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