audio players....

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 11:13:22AM -0500, Gordon Marx wrote:
> On 31/01/06, David Hummel <dhml at comcast.net> wrote:
> >   http://olduvai.blu.org/pipermail/discuss/2006-January/024549.html
> 
> The thread is singularly unhelpful, as only one person has chimed in
> with actual personal experience. I find it hard to believe that only
> one person on the entire BLU list has a portable music player. Digging
> up this topic for further discussion seems completely reasonable.
> 

Here's my actual personal experience.

About a year ago I studied the state of the market. I wanted a
device to play music for me while I was taking the T, and I
didn't want to spend a lot of money. Linux compatibility was
absolutely vital. Compatibility with any online music store was
a non-issue -- 90% of my music is ripped from my own CDs, and
the remainder is MP3 format podcasts, DJ shows and so forth.
Battery life was a significant factor. I was going to carry it
around in a pocket, backpack or attache all the time, so size
and weight were mildly significant.

For $40 I bought a Panasonic MP3/CD player with a remote, and I
spent another $35 on Sony MDR-EX71 earphones, which are highly
recommended by Siegfried Linkwitz ( http://www.linkwitzlab.com/reference_earphones.htm ).

Here's my rationale:

- CDRs are quite cheap, especially when you buy them a hundred
  at a time from CostCo on sale. Storing 700MB is enough for
  about 75 high-quality songs, about 5 hours worth per disc. If 
  I like a set, I can keep it permanently. If I hate it, I don't 
  mind having lost a disc.

- I can carry a standard CD wallet with 15 or 20 discs and not
  notice it, especially.

- At 52x, I can burn a full data CD in less than 3 minutes. It
  takes longer than that to choose songs to put on it, unless
  I'm dropping a few complete albums.

- The player fits in my jacket pocket quite nicely. There's a
  remote inline with the headphone cord that will clip to a
  shirt or pocket or whatever; that means I rarely take the
  player out, except to change discs.

- Battery life is around 80 hours of playtime on 2 AAs. Yes,
  really. I often go a month between battery changes. The
  antiskip buffer holds raw MP3 data, so it has several minutes
  of music stored in RAM rather than 30 seconds or so.

- Finally, it also plays normal CDs -- the most common form of
  music distribution media on the planet. If I buy an album in a
  store, I can listen to it immediately, before ripping it.

- One more: our car has an MP3 CD player, so discs are
  cross-compatible.

-dsr-