Any decent Flash MP3 Players out there?

hamster

Hi. I have a lovely 128Mb flash memory mp3 player (about 1/2 the size of my fist) and it has radio/mp3/wma support. Great and all that....

What I was wondering what the best there is for a small 256Mb/512Mb mp3 player these days? I may be looking for another one early next year. But I'm just wondering what recommended these days? The player I have is a RCA Lyra rd1080. Important is the support of mp3 file directly and no need for OS specific programs to upload/download.

qBot

I got myself an iriver ifp-190t last january, and i'm very happy with it. i've looked on there site during the past while and they've brought out a new range of them going all the way up to 1gb in size. (My one was only 256)
They upgrade the firmware every month or so, each one bringing with cool new features. It's kept me busy anyway.
I think komplett sell them, but i bought mine through the american website, saved me a fortune.

www.iriver.com

Goodshape

I'd say go for a harddisc player. I think they generally work out cheaper per Mb, plus their's no limit to the capacity (10GB -> 30GB+).

I've got a 20GB Nomad Zen here, which I would recommend only the software you get - and have to use - with it is ****e and windose only.

Their are a few models on the market that show up as an extra harddrive on any PC/MAC you plug it into. My advice would be to look for one of them.

hamster

Hi Goodshape. Thanks for the input. But I guess I should have said I need 'em small as I going running/walking with it. Great to listen to the news in the morning and listening to music on the way to work.... and jogging during the weekends on the roads or down the fields to the river etc. These things are amazing...

I heard there is one the size of a zippo lighter/keyring now? With 256Mb/512Mb... and encoding at say 64Kbps/128Kbps.... I'm not really fussy about the higher rates but I can fit a hellva enough while I go for about 10 walks and still not hear the same ones.

My laptop counts as a POD player.... goes with ADOM.

qBot

one more thing,
i used use my player in linux all the time, there are drivers available on sourceforge. You can also set it up so it functions as a removable drive, in which case u don't need specific drivers.

As for hard drive players, they do them too, and if your into non os specific stuff,the hd players already support ogg vorbis (open source music compression format) aswell as mp3 and wma. Iriver are working to get ogg vorbis working with the flash players too , unfortunately my one won't be supported. only the series of flash players that came out after mine. Not enough zap in it supposedly

hamster

Hi cuan,

yep, I rate it highly if it is OS independent so that I can transfer my mp3 (or files) with me onto my Redhat box.

two commands away and I can use it on linux and use my player

* mkdir /mnt/usbkey
* mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbkey -t vfat -rw

Originally the player forced me to use Musicmatch 7.1 but now they removed the encoded .mpy format (of .mp3s) and allow playback of .mp3. This was meant to be a protection scheme. Ridiculous as you could put "files" of .mp3s beside the .mpy files anyways. They recognised this and removed it. Now it's OS independent... woohoo!

qBot

ya, it's fierce annoying having to run a specific media player not to mind operating system just to use an mp3 player. Unfortunately after two years of running RH solely on my machine, I gave up and went back to windows.

Those flash players have fm tuners, dictaphone and direct mp3 encoding too. Just be wary though if you want to use the dictaphone feature, my one encodes them to a special type of wav file with a .rec extension that's unuable in linux. However because the new players have direct mp3 encoding that should be ok.

hamster

Actually cuan, the player I got was in the States last year, so typically the FM part tends to skip crowded parts of the FM band. I'm hoping there is more attention on this next time round. One site, I think it the www.theregister.co.uk or Tom's Hardware site that mentioned a new player that has more sensitive stepping (.005MHz). I love these things to have med/long wave too. All in one sort of speak before the mobile phones cop on.

I haven't looked into the direct .mp3 encoding features yet but imagine a ciggie lighter recording all your peers in the office. Class!

BoB_BoT

hummm we just happen to be selling some where i work, they're called Magic Star Mp3 Player. They're flash drives and are supported by windows, linux and macs. Our prices for them are
128mb = €110
256mb= €150
512mb= €220
They look pretty sweet small, and have a mail client with them or something :P, google it and you'll probably find it cheaper than here I remember seeing them somewhere cheaper online (about €6 less)

hamster

Hey they don't look bad at all! The screen shot says it all! drooool! And the specs are there. Gimme gimme!

http://pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk/memory/magic-star-mp3-player.asp

joc_06

Build yere own - im in the process of interfacing an mp3 decoder chip to an atmel and onto an ide connector. I have a 128*56 graphical display and usb2 connector. It all shows up as a mass storage device under winxp and should be finished sometime next year!

If all goes well i may produce a kit etc!!!

Only thing is its limited to 137gig limit - not a biggie

djr

i got my girlfriend one of the magicstar 256mb ones, they charge by usb (1 hour charge, approx 20 hour discharge, li-ion battery), show up as removeable drive.

got it from pc-memory-upgrade crowd in celbridge. delivery free, €138.

only miff = no shuffle, not a hooj issue.

strat

Originally posted by joc_06
Build yere own - im in the process of interfacing an mp3 decoder chip to an atmel and onto an ide connector. I have a 128*56 graphical display and usb2 connector.

sounds like a leaty project
got any pics so far ?

blorg

www.pixmania.com have 'USB key' players from £59 (GBP) for a 128mb, £86 for 256mb. The Aiptek ones have got good reviews from what I can see - they are the same as the JazPipers on Komplett AFAIK (actually they are a newer version). Advantage over the Magic Star is that they have a screen, but they don't charge through the USB port, which is a cool feature.

CyberGhost

Creative MuVo NX

netman

i got my wife the aiptek 256mb player. it's got a backlit screen, a couple of different equalizer settings, usb 2.0 for faster transfer, and FM radio.

the radio part of it is crap, it's on the headphones, and has a separate lithium battery. no presets either, and if you want to use different headphones you loose the FM radio.



pretty decent sound coming off it, solid built, and half the price of iriver

joc_06

Originally posted by Strat
sounds like a leaty project
got any pics so far ?

here

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by CyberGhost
Creative MuVo NX

Why? Can you give us some more info?

The iriver ones don't act as USB drive though do they. They MP3 players only.

blorg

Originally posted by netman
i got my wife the aiptek 256mb player. it's got a backlit screen, a couple of different equalizer settings, usb 2.0 for faster transfer, and FM radio.

Where did you get it? I was planning on getting one from Pixmania.

netman

Originally posted by blorg
Where did you get it? I was planning on getting one from Pixmania.

got it on http://www.computeruniverse.net , they ship to ireland, and it comes with an english manual (phew!). cost me about 120 euro for the 256 meg version.

Mr E

Originally posted by Goodshape
I've got a 20GB Nomad Zen here, which I would recommend only the software you get - and have to use - with it is ****e and windose only.

Ah not so, Goodshape.... I direct you to http://www.redchairsoftware.com and their lovely Notmad Explorer. Its contains the functionality Creative's File Manager and Mediasource rolled into one application, with tons of extra functionality and useful features added on top. $25 worth spending.... Its license key is portable too, so you can install it in work and at home, or on your laptop......

Its windows only, unfortunately, but worth every penny.

- Dave.

blorg

Thanks, I'll have a look at them. Any other downsides to it? I really wouldn't care about the radio/headphones. How fast are the USB transfers?

Clinical Waste

Originally posted by cuan
I got myself an iriver ifp-190t last january, and i'm very happy with it. i've looked on there site during the past while and they've brought out a new range of them going all the way up to 1gb in size. (My one was only 256)
They upgrade the firmware every month or so, each one bringing with cool new features. It's kept me busy anyway.
I think komplett sell them, but i bought mine through the american website, saved me a fortune.

www.iriver.com

Are you sure they do a 1Gb one? I think 512 is the biggest for iRiver.

qBot

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Why? Can you give us some more info?

The iriver ones don't act as USB drive though do they. They MP3 players only.

Yup they do, you just need to flash it with a different firmware (officially available from iriver.com), one firmware works with there mp3 manager and the other works as a removable driver

qBot

Originally posted by Clinical Waste
Are you sure they do a 1Gb one? I think 512 is the biggest for iRiver.

Yup, check out the link.

http://www.iriver.com/product/info.asp?p_name=iFP-599T

Hey strat, that looks fairly slick, how much do the parts cost. love to build one just for the sake of it. I got a cool rucksack i could use to carry it around with me.:D

RicardoSmith

That nomad explorer is great. My friend has it and I've used it a little. Works very well.

About the iriver. Does that mean you can't use both the functionality of the USB drive and their manager at the same time? Thats a bit of a snag no?

qBot

Yup, unfortunately you can't. but you can use windows media player while it's functioning as a removable drive. It is very slow. It didn't bother me though, cause i always had the player jammed up to the last with music and didn't use it as a removable drive.
Another point worth noting is that when it's using the non removable drive firmware you can't take any music files back off it, you must delete them to free up the space. Bit annoying:mad:

qBot

Yup, i just noticed i gotta stop using yup to open my posts.

MiCr0

www.mp3cola.com is where i got my iriver

saved a packet

joc_06

Originally posted by cuan

Hey strat, that looks fairly slick, how much do the parts cost. love to build one just for the sake of it. I got a cool rucksack i could use to carry it around with me.:D

i built it maurice

CyberGhost

i think it does work as a storage for files
and it looks good too!

here's link to it

http://www.peats.com/cgi-bin/shop/db.cgi?view=1&id=7167&type=6&path=12x124x512