im subscribing to this thread too...

I was looking at those I-river things..

Ipod's are over-rated and over priced,

As much as it pains me to say, if you're just after an mp3 player that does the job right and is easy to use an ipod is the way to go.
If you hate ipods, irivers are great too, although you can really feel the quality difference between them and the ipods...
Personally I'd be looking for something with removable memory cards. Its a ton easier to dump a bunch of music on a few different memory cards and swap them around than it is to plug the player in, remove songs you don't want and then upload the ones you do want again...

Still... Ipods are easy as hell to use and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, even if they are made by apple and targetted at retards.

WhiteRX;135775 wrote:

Herrrroooo Arex, Blenda and Goatse Herder!!!!!
Alex, the first thing we need to know is what sort of capacity are you after? 1GB, 2?, 3?, 4?... You get the drift.
Do you want radio included?
Do want it to be protected from teh aids with the inclusion of a ruber skin protective cover?

Rubbish questions. Go buy an ipod because its white and funky.

Oh no I've turned in to a mac user :suicide:

Doesn't anyone like using their phone as an MP3 player?
Alex, think about a phone with the lot, and make sure it's waterproof.

Iriver FTW!

Don't need itunes or anything to load music on and off - drag and drop in Windows.

My H340 is almost 4 years old and still going strong where many others Ipods have bit the dust - and I listen to it for several hours everyday.

My only fear is that if it dies Iriver haven't released anything to replace it.

Creative seem to be good also.

Ipods are ghey...

WhiteRX;135804 wrote:

If it's just going to get thrashed around at the gym, just go and get a cheapo of ebay or something, even a USB driven player might suit your needs.

They really don't take that much punishment in the gym to be honest. Unless you've got it tucked under a man-boob and its swimming in sweat or something that is :scare2:

irivers are great too, although you can really feel the quality difference between them and the ipods...

Ipods look good and feel good, however, they are as robust as toilet paper. Because they are slim as, there is either no protective padding inside the player to protect the components from shock etc or the materials are very thin and liable to being damaged. One guy I worked with went through 6 ipods - in less than 5 years - a combination of HDD failures, dropping them, headphone jack breaking etc etc. And they scratch up like buggery...

Whereas my Iriver has been dropped many times from waist height and still keeps on rocking - its twice as thick as an Ipod but thats because it has protective padding to prevent the HDD from getting shocked - and the casing is quite thick and therefore strong. But I will admit in aesthetics it lags behind the Apple product.

Anyway, generally most better known brands - Ipod, Iriver, Creative, Sandisk, Samsung, Sony - will be pretty good. Almost all these days seem to be 'flash' based capacity players - no HDD, therefore no moving parts which means they should be more robust. But this also means that generally they are nomore than 8gb in capacity, although you can get some that are 16gb. Anything bigger than that and then you are looking at HDD based players.

If you want radio, then that means you won't be wanting Ipod. Apple can't sell you 'radio' off itunes lol...

Personally I would get one that:

- is drag'n'drop, ie that is usb compatible and you can just drag your music files onto the player. This is by far the best way, and means that you don't have load music via itunes (ipod), sonicstage (sony) etc.

- has a screen - IMHO a screen is a must - what happens if you or someone else wants to know what song is playing. Also you can get players with screens for as cheap as ones without.

Apart from that it is down to how much memory you want, whether you want radio, and how much you want to spend.


This is a good website if you want Anything but Ipod.

2GB is plentaaaaaay for me.

A couple of other things.

the mp3 codec is also the standard format for converting music - there are various others such as wma, aac, ogg, flac etc which may or may not be 'better' than mp3, however, not all players will play music converted to those format types - whereas pretty much all players will play mp3.

Also if you convert your music at say 128kbs - which seems to be the standard - you will fit more music onto 2gb of memory than if you convert it at 192kbs. A song will sound richer at 192kbs than at 128kbs - but will be a larger file size. Depending on your ears and the system you play it through (speakers, headphones etc) you may or may not notice the difference. I generally notice it when I have played music off my iriver through an amp and speakers, not so much through the haedphones.

Therefore, 2gb might not be as much as you think if you convert them at high kbs rate.

I bought a sansa clip 2GB for $70.

I'm happy

review here

Not bad for a cheap little screamer.

wish i bought a 4GB one, but they're not available in shops.

regashi;136627 wrote:

I bought a sansa clip 2GB for $70.

I'm happy

review here

Not bad for a cheap little screamer.

wish i bought a 4GB one, but they're not available in shops.

Sweet!

Shame its not 4gb but at $70 its a bargain and cheap enough that if you want to upgrade to something with more memory later on its no big deal.

Nice purchase!

Sennheiser make great headphones - I had a set of dj type ones that I used to listen to my stereo with and they were bloody awesome.

I've been using some Shure E2's for a while now and these for me have been the best 'bud' type headphones I have owned. They are actually 'canal' type headphones which I find very comfortable, and help to block out a lot of background noise which means that you don't need to play your music so loud.

They are a bit more expensive - actually they have come down in price since I've had mine - but are awesome, great bass for bud 'phones.

I now know what you mean about 2GB vs 4GB.. I loaded some songs onto it, and wish now I had more of the space.

At least it is easy enough for you to go bigger - At 35gb+ of songs/podcasts/etc if my Iriver dies my options are limited. I could go smaller, but I want all my music whenever and wherever I am - not on my PC at home when I feel like listening to it now.