Best Portable Music Player. HELP!

[Dinner]

OK, I've decided I will buy a new portable MP3 player either today or tomorrow so I can take it on my road trip around Costa Rica. The thought of spending a week listening to tica music has driven me to this decision. :shiver:

Now I recall Asher and Boris were dead set against Apple's IPOD for a number of reasons the most notable were price, inferior sound quality, and limited formats. I can't for the life of me remember exactly which model they were recommending over the IPOD though. I'm looking for a large format MP3 style player and sound quality is my main concern though I also want it to be easy to use since I need to master it in a day or two before having to use it while traveling. I need a lot of storage space since I already have 20GB of music and I'm going to be buying and burning a dozen new CDs I've been eyeballing for a while. I'm going to need hi fi yet portable headphones for use on the airplane plus I'm going to need a way to play the music through the crappy cassette deck/CD player of a stock Latin American version of a 2003 Nissan Pathfinder 4x4. Any suggestions?

[Asher]

http://www.nomadworld.com/products/zentouch/

20GB: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...onics&n=507846

40GB: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...onics&n=507846

[Q Classic]

Well, some suggestions:

Creative Nomad Zens and Zen Micros are supposed to be good, as are iRivers. I'd stay away from Sony if you're a) price-conscious, b) don't want to be saddled with a proprietary program for upload/download to your device (Sony has a program just like iTunes--and you can't really use your player without it, though there are workarounds).

For playing in a car, there are numerous adapters for that--just browse at Radio Shack or Best Buy, etc.

Headphones? I personally like my Sony earbuds. I don't know the american model number, but I picked 'em up in Japan a few years ago: MDR-EX71.

[Q Classic]

The headphones:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-2897660-4688937

[Agathon]

Now I recall Asher and Boris were dead set against Apple's IPOD for a number of reasons the most notable were price, inferior sound quality, and limited formats.

More like because it is made by Apple.

[Dinner]

OK, the Creative Zen Touch 40GB is my baby. I'll have to get it on next day delivery though I might see about just buying it at Fry's and have them price match the lowest price I can find on the net.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
The headphones:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/se...897660-4688937

I can't get your link to work but I will do a search for that model number on Amazon's web site.

[Q Classic]

I have no complaints about the headphones--the only thing that'll take some getting used to is the asymmetrical wires.

Outside of that, for its price, I've found that it has fantastical sound quality and isolation. I can't hear anything on the El when I have them on.

[Nostromo]

If you're serious about sound quality, don't get earbuds, they're crap. They're probably not much better than the ones that come with your MP3 player anyway. Check here instead for better cans:

http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/all-headphones/

I got the Senneheiser PX-100 it sounds pretty damn good, much, much better than the earbuds that came with my iPod. (Yes, I have a iPod mini, it sounds great with my Sennheisers and it was cheaper than the Zen micro, so no complaints ) They're open headphones, however, so people around you will hear what you're listening to. But open headphones sound better than closed headphones. There's a closed version of the PX-100, its called the PX-200.

[Dinner]

I called around to all of the local places and the only one who will price match Amazon.com's price is Bestbuy. They've said they'll sale me the Creative Zen Touch 40GB for $319.00.

[Verto]

I don't own any MP3 player, but none of them seem to match the beauty of the iPod.

[Asher]

Not all of want to sleep with music devices, nor are the headphone holes big enough for most of us.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I called around to all of the local places and the only one who will price match Amazon.com's price is Bestbuy. They've said they'll sale me the Creative Zen Touch 40GB for $319.00.

I got mine for $285.00. Look around and see if you can get a better price.

I am quite fond of my Zen. We hooked it up to a friend's stereo system, and the sound was absolutely terrific. I've no complaints with it so far.

[Asher]

On a related note:

Winamp plug-in for your iPod betters iTunes

Brit student bites Apple

By Paul Hales: Wednesday 25 May 2005, 16:36
A COMPUTER SCIENCE student from Cambridge University has perfected a plug-in for the music management software Winamp that allows iPod users to dump Apple's iTunes and use Winamp instead.

Will Fisher said he picked up on the open-sourced project after buying an iPod and struggling to integrate his music collection on his iPod with that on his PC managed by WinAmp.

The 20-year-old took on work begun by Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp and P2P system Gnutella. Frankel decided to open source his work on the ml_iPod plug-in and Will says it sat on a virtual shelf until he picked it up and ran with it.

"I just found iTunes inconvenient," young Will told the INQUIRER. "So we added lots of features to the ml_iPod and now it's a little better than iTunes. It allows you to copy music from an iPod to a computer and it integrates with a DRM removal tool that allows you to remove DRM on the fly."

Apple's iTunes does not permit users to move music from the iPod to a computer. You can put 'em on but you can't take 'em off.

Will says he thinks that once you have purchased a tune you should be able to hear it wherever you want. DRM routines that prevent such use are "ethically wrong", he says.

He adds that he believes in the "fair-use" reasons for using the ml_iPod plug-in. "The point is that there are plenty of things you can do with it that aren't illegal. I trust my users to use ml_iPod responsibly and not steal music," he said.

The second-year student says other people contributed to the project and confesses he was rather shocked at the amount of interest his work had provoked, especialy when the INQUIRER - his homepage - got in touch. "It's interferfing with my studies a bit," he confessed.

The Winamp iPod plugin works with all kinds of iPod, from the first-generation, to the iPod shuffle and the latest models. You can download at http://www.mlipod.com/. So far it's been downloaded over half-a-million times.

[Dinner]

One Creative Zen Touch 40GB music player purchased for $314.99 and I picked up a few CDs I've been thiking of getting for a while. The selection at Best Buy is pretty crappy when it comes to much though. To get most of the latest Indy or underground stuff I'll have to buy online or head out to one of the specialty record shops.