MP3 player advice

[Abu]

Can you give me a bit of advice.
My 12 year old son wants the buy a MP3 player from the States.
It’s a irock 830 (www.myirock.com/players/irock830.asp)
It costs around $99.00 plus shipping.

Has anyone bought one and what are they like?

It’s not a brand I’ve heard of and am not that happy for him to spend his hard earned cash on something that he may have ‘No come back’ on.

Do any of you guys import such a thing?

[Saladman]

I bought a "coby" model when in the states in November for $80
It has 128 mb with an expansion slot for another 128mb
Its a neat bit of kit

Players are available on Uk sites from £52
Try here http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/

[Mart64]

Yeah..

the pen type players seem to be doubly useful as USB data media. Who needs a floppy drive with these great things. There is talk of a mini iPod coming out very, very soon with a retail price of under £80 but still with lots of storage space (several thousand mp3 files). This might well be a very useful thing.

M.

[gozzy]

Bought the Daughter an Iriver http://www.iriveramerica.com/default.asp from USA, very good

[willo]

Abue,
I have an Irock 530 player only drawback is you have to use it's own download software which means you can't upload to the PC.
I think this is due to copyright laws although I'm well pleased with mine I don't think it would take too many knocks as it does not appear to be too robust.

Hope this helps.

John.

[stranger]

Originally posted by Mart64
Yeah..

the pen type players seem to be doubly useful as USB data media. Who needs a floppy drive with these great things. There is talk of a mini iPod coming out very, very soon with a retail price of under £80 but still with lots of storage space (several thousand mp3 files). This might well be a very useful thing.

M.

and they bring it out at $50 and £50 less than the $/£299 model but the mini only holds 4GB

i would look at creative they do a 10GB for £124 inc vat.

that what i will buy

or the 30gb at £206

[jcmjrt]

I looked at different players but chose the iPod. It has good storage, doesn't skip easily at all (unlike other hard drive based players such as Creative's Nomad), reasonable size...but most important and far better than anyone else's that I've seen is the interface. Having the music on the device is good but how easy is it to organize and access? The iPod is intuitive. The new small one is 4GBs! That's several hundred to a thousand songs.

[stranger]

look at the problems with the ipod battery. the cost of replacing the battery is the same as a 40gb Ipod.

oh and it tends to go 18 months after you buy them.

quite alot of retailers are now refusing to sell them because of the problems.

over priced with to many problems

[fudge]

For Christmas '02 I bought my daughter an MPIO-DMK (http://reviews.designtechnica.com/review22.html) player, with 128MB. About £150 then, must be cheaper now. She still loves it - small, foolproof, 2 hours music storage, 10 hours on AAA battery, USB download from PC.
Tim.

[LittleSharkey]

I tend to stick to the sony CD players....44 hours battery life, much superior sound quality (as there is no compression involved), everywhere sells sony stuff aswell and has excellent customer support, no messing around with Mp3 files on computer. The only downside is having Cd albums around with you. But I prefer to listen to whole albums rather than bits and pieces.
Just don't get a minidisk player, because minidisks are dying.

Did you know: That Minidisks use even more compression that Mp3 and sound worse...the only bonus's you got with MD/MP3 is no skipping.

[stranger]

Mini disk is not worse than MP3

Developed for high end and professional use with easy re-recording abilities. Compresses audio data in 1:5 ratio using ATRAC technology to retain near original sound quality. Easily reproduced at low cost and able to record from all sources. Highly portable and personalizable.
Sampling rate: 44.1 kHz
Frequency range: 20 - 20 kHz

and MP3

Developed for massive reproduction through computers. Compresses audio data in 1:10 ratio and may sacrifice sound quality. Easily reproduced and distributed through computers (and only through computers).
Sampling rate: 44.1 kHz
Frequency range: 20 - 20 kHz

[jcmjrt]

You can get a replacement iPod battery for $50 at www.ipodbattery.com - a fair amount less than a 40GB iPod. As far as the iPod dying in 18 months - I haven't heard that at all. I've had mine for about a year. Used it a lot for long periods of time under fairly difficult situation for electronics - on the motorcycle being bounced around is one of the major uses - and it still holds a charge and works great. I think that it's a bargain for the quantity and quality that I've experienced.

[stranger]

Have you not read about 100's of unhappy apple ipod/ibook users turning up at the conferace to compline about the batteries

http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/12/23/ipodsuit/index.php?redirect=1073552078000


http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/34676.html

[jcmjrt]

It seems like you are referring to the battery as the reason why it dies in 18 months. People recharge and use iPods a lot - I do too because the thing works so well and is so handy. All rechargeable batteries die and particularly when used hard. It would have been nice if Apple had provided for this when they put out the first iPod. They did not but as given in the previous link, there are aftermarket batteries available now to replace the original for $50. That's still much cheaper than it would have been using regular batteries such as AAs. Since we are living in the current world - a replacement battery at $50 is way cheaper than a 40GB iPod (as you had previously stated).

[Mart64]

I would say that generally the MiniDisk compression is better than an mp3. Both formats are "lossy" compression which means that some of the quality of the original is lost through compression. However, the Sony Atrac system is excellent and the compression is good enough. Mp3 wins out here a bit purely in that you can get better compression (at a quality loss). MDs win out on quality (unless you make big mp3s). Bear in mind though that this issue of quality is difficult to measure. Some small mp3s sound fantastic while some large ones don't! Car players won't mind as quality is rarely heard in a car with all the background noise. Whether a high quality large mp3 file would make it on a hifi system is anyones guess.

Minidisk isn't the winner overall though. Currently copying to a MD player can be a slow old job and Disk size is limited. MDs are fairly fragile as they have moving parts.. i.e. a disk. MD disks are susceptible to magnetic devices..

MP3s, the devices were slow to arrive but there are now multiformat (mp3/ogg/wma) players out there for under £100 that use standard and cheap flash memory cards for storage, that can be written to by a PC in seconds. Mp3s are easily available and higher quality larger files are superb quality. A £25 128MB compact flash card might easily contain 30 high quality mp3s (2 albums) or 50 standard quality mp3s (3 albums). With the reduction in the costs of memory cards potentially 1gb cards (available already) could hold over 250 high quality or 400 standard quality mp3s (maybe 20 hours of music). Mp3 players can be tiny as there is no disk and are not susceptible to jumping or magnetic fields. With this sort of electronic format CDs have a serious competitor and with digital locking (to prevent illegal copying) these may take over from the CD completely!

Oh and mp3 players usually use a pair of AA batteries to drive them.

M.

[Oscar]

I've just bought a 128Mbit MP3 player with an FM radio on E Bay for £41, with postage it came to £48. Beware of overseas sellers as you'll be hit for excise duty
256 Mbit players were going for about £70-£80 quite a bargain I thought