Hey guys

This is too much for me. Iriver, ipod, rio, creative...? I don't have all that much money, so I'm looking for the player that'll suit me best. Some help?

Features I'm looking for.

20GB or +

Radio tuner

Recording(microphone, radio, ...). I'll be recording some of my classes next year. Is it possible to record someone who is in front of the class? (ie: more or less far away) Doesn't have to be super quality, just understandable.

Import via playlist would be nice, keeping my music folder hierarchy. Or just drag and drop, hierarchy included.

I've been looking around for a while now, and for the moment the iriver ihp120 looks best. It seems to have lots of little bugs, like no shuffle option or something, I'm not sure. It seems nice though...

Any advice?

You might like the Neuros Jukebox. It has a built-in transmitter and some neat features. It's built like a tank too.

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I believe only the iPod would have all of the above, but I'm not a guru in this area anymore.

iPod - 20GB = $299.
radio receiver = $25
mic = $25

so around $375

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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

I have a Dell Digital DJ, and it comes in a 20 gig version. It has a built-in mic and it works pretty well. It's worked perfectly for me. Easy to use and navigate

The 15 gig model is $199 and the 20 gig model is $237

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

[This message has been edited by Avenger (edited September 02, 2004).]

iRiver is all those things for only 330+S&H I believe. But really, it's just preference.

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There is no signature

iPods seem like they cost more than other MP3 players on the market. Are they actually any better, or what?

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

Who cares? They're sleek and sexy. They go well with most clothing and dont look like a geeky mongoloid strapped to your arm like some of the other players.

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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

In other words, just like everything else from Apple, IT COSTS TOO DAMN MUCH!



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Maximum PC did a review of a bunch of MP3 players, the Rio Karma was the only one that could hold up to the iPod. They said it was actually superior in every way except that you needed proprietary software to manage music. I don't believe they included the Neuros Jukebox, but they did say the iRiver sucked.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

I don't trust pc mags anymore. Besides that, Buck has no complaints.

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Good enough for me

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

PoGo RipDrive does it all.

It has an FM Tuner with 20 preset channels.

Built in Mic, it can also record off the radio, or through a line-in jack. (Ripping CD's from your friend's CD player!)

I got my 30 gigabyte one for 250 dollars. A 20GB iPod sells for $299, and doesn't have a built in radio tuner, or recording capabilities.

I've used it, there are small annoyances. You can't have a playlist longer than a 100 files, BUT you can have a folder hierarchy, so it becomes irrelevant. You can also search through folders by the first 3 letters of the file name, allowing for faster seaching.

The biggest downside is it's size, but it comes with a beltclip carrying case, and I myself don't find the size an issue. It's about 5 inches by 3 inches by 1 inch, with the case on.

10 hour battery life, on average. It hooks to your computer via USB, and it is just my little baby. *hug*

Also has user customizable EQ settings, shuffle, repeat track, repeat SECTION OF THE TRACK (This is fun, you're playing guitar and trying to get that one riff down, you can just set it to automatically play one section of a song)

All of this for about $250 (AM). All of this comes with and on the unit itself, so there are no adapters or accessories you need to buy, like with the iPod.

Therefore, the RipDrive is both cheaper, and has more features out of the box than all of the above products.

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I'm thinking "Christmas Present"

Does anyone know of one that plays .flac files?

And .shn for that matter... I have alot of both.

I just bought a Creative Jukebox 3 20gb (£140.. dunno what that is in $)

It came with a bunch of accesories in cluding
Fairly decent headphones
FM Tuner with built in microphone
Wireless remote
and a carrying case.

It can record directly to mp3 format too. It has a headphone out and two other line outs (Can power 4.1 speakers)

11 hour battery life (22 if you buy a second battery, which there is a space for). It even uses EAX

Oh and a firewire connection for fast transfers. Although it has USB too in case you don't have firewire.

I bought it a few days ago and so far i love it.

I don't know about .flac, but there's a plugin for winamp called SHNamp.
But I suppose you'd want something like an Ipod.
You could just convert them to wav's in that case. There are programs to do that, do a google search on "shn to wav" and you'll find something.

Newer versions of Winamp will play .flac files without any special plugins.

Wheover said the iRiver sucks is freaken nuts. iRiver is the only contender to the iPod.

I have it, and it's freaken amazing.I have no clue what the bugs are that were mentioned in the first bugs, as I have come across none (new firmware was jsut released, and there was shuffle originally). The thing is just as small as the iPod, looks very sleek and sexy (compared to the Karma), has the 20GB you want.

It's got the easisest use of all of the playesr. No stupid software or sync manager needed. Just completly drag and drop, no matter what OS. Works under Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X without any drivers.

It's got the most features, including the Voice Recorder (with an external mic that is certainly aint that bad), Line In Recoriding, and even DIGITAL IN/OUT recording.

It's got the SRS Surround Codec with does a prety good job of creating a surround sound type experience with regular stereos.

Plus, the player supports Ogg, mp3, wma, and more (whrease the iPod is just .mp3 and it's special iTunes format (mp4, I think).

Batterly life is near 16 hours (if you aren't so skip-happy Otherwise, it's 14 or 15)

Get the iRiver. If you don't get the iRiver, I would have to suggest the Creative player, or the rio Karma. Both are really good players. Creative has the best sound of all of them, and the Rio Karma has the ethernet jack on it's dock which is just too kickass. But in the end, iRiver looks the best, plays the bset, lasts the longest, and has the biggest set of features.

BTW, you can read the reviews of it on IGN. There they praise it as the true iPod killer.

Martyn has an iPod in the post, and is most looking forward to its company

Thanks guys, this was helpful. I'll be sure to keep all your suggestions in mind...

JKwhosaysNI, nice sig man, you must've spent ages on it...

Thanks. It took less than 5 mins.

I diddnt go through and colour every letter. I used PNG2HTML to convert a small (50x6) png image which i made in paint into HTML. Then I used find/replace to convert it from HTML to BBCode.

Well done.

You know what would be extra-cool? Right now there's some random letters lighting up (brightest shade). It would be nice if you could write 'TheJkWhoSaysNi' across your sig by using that bright color.

I got an iRiver a couple days ago as an early birthday present, which was today. I had it out of the box and within 15 minutes had my entire music collection(around 8gigs) on the thing and was dancing around the house in my underwear to the music.

I havn't used the radio very much, but if its anything like the FM Tuner they put on their SlimX CD players, then its pretty decent.

I have played around with the recording feature using both the internal mic and external mic provided. I was very surprised at the range that both mics had. I was recording myself talking to my parents who were across the room and it picked up the whole conversation and the TV just fine.

I love the little thing and would have to echo everything that mscbuck has said.

The iRivers do look pretty durn good... I perfer their styling to the 'please mug me I have white earphones and hence an iPod' whiteness of the iPod. Although apparently iRivers could be a little hard to find out here...

My iPod just arrived and it is soooo much smaller than i expected - I'd only seen a 2nd gen one, and was expecting something that size!

mmmm....charging right now

The newest-gen (and insanely cool) iRivers are really freaking expensive, $700 + is a little excessive. Leaning back towards an iPod now...

The iPod is worth the money. With the new model out now, with 20 GB for $300 and improved battery life, it's the perfect time to buy one.

mine was $320 in american
http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/H120.aspx
only twenty dollars more than an iPod:confused:
what kind of money are you aussies using?

Ooo I like that one, Martin. But I was talking about the 300 series.

Um....that's if you order the new PMP (personal media players) that have the 3.5 inch LCD sceren with like 80GB of storage. I personally think those PMPs are usueles until they can perfect them. None that are coming out are truly great. They all at least hae one major flaw that hinders them from beign widely acceptable.

We are talkinga botu the iHP series.

I dont' know wher eyou got yours for 320, but you got ripped off Martin. I got mine for 285.

Yeah, the MP3 players are only ~300 for a 20 gig model, usually less. And they're way more functional out-of-the-box than iPods. Nothing against iPods, just prefer the iRiver lane.

They just plug in - drag and drop? It was a slight hassle getting the iPod to work, but I already had iTunes - so that was no real problem.

I just love its interface, and the sexy click-wheel thingy.

I'm going to sit in the garden with mine now that the sun is out, and read me a book.

Jesus, putting SHN files on any portable player would eat up those gigabytes very fast.

On my 20 GB iPod I could hold probably around 500 songs SHN compared to 10,000 with mp3

Muggers are scared of white. It reminds them of Gandalf and bleach.

well, if you really need the color screen and ability to view jpgs.... then sure go ahead

but my iHP-120 does everything else that thing can do for considerably less money



well, i got it for my birthday from my parents and i don't really know how much they paid...

I have a Karma. It plays flac. However, I just play ogg vorbis with the quality set at six.