ipod vs. other playas

[kakomu]

Originally posted by BobDoleX
What mp3 CD players have you been using? My iRiver slimX mp3 CD has never skipped, even on the bumpiest of car trips. Most mp3 CD players have much better anti-shock capabilities than standard portable CD players.

RIO SP250. As said in my post. It's not car rides, but me walking around from class to class. When walking, my arms swing around and the player is held vertical. Which doesn't make the player all too happy. I typically would have to hold the player in front of my horizontal, which becomes a pain in the ass. In the end, I want something small with a large storage. I have around 22 gigs of songs I'd like to throw into a singular player.

After doing some minidisc research, this is what I have to say about it: It can be a viably cheap alternative to flash mp3 players. However, the thing about MD players is that you write to them, and that is all you can do with the audio beyond deleting it (a la CD-RW). it uses sony's proprietary ATRAC and ATRAC3 scheme to record the music to the MD (via a USB port and software). Using the SP mode, you're looking at a CD's worth of music (74-80 minutes) at "CD-like" quality and when using the LP2 mode, you're looking at slightly better than 128kbps mp3 quality (possibly up to 160). With LP4, you're looking at around 128kbps mp3 quality (the real bitrates are 132 and 66 kbps). The players's good qualities are that it has really good skip protection and you can rewrite the discs multiple times. However, I liken this to a flash mp3 player as opposed to a HD mp3 player. The storage time with LP4 is still only 5 hours (at least half as long as I usually achieve on CDs with more bitrate). So it may have a slight more, but it's still way under a gig's worth of mp3s. i'd reccomend spending only as much as you would spend on a flash mp3 player. I see the Sony MZ-NE410 on ebay for quite cheap. Personally, I'd actually probably pick one up, only because I'd want to jog with it (and it comes with a arm strap player holder )

Originally posted by ElVaquero
Man, I can't decide which to hate more: Sony or Apple.

I know what you mean :-\