Portable audio/mp3 players

[Incog Neato]

Do you have one? If so, what brand and, most importantly, does the shuffle/randomization work like it's suppose to!?

I have an 1st gen iPod shuffle, 20 GB iPod (Video ...? One of the thin ones), and a 8 GB (I think) Creative Zen.

The iPods randomize the songs all right and I don't get the same 5 tunes 35046804 times in a week but with the Zen, it's like it's FIXATED on the same 20 or so songs. Completely drives me insane considering I have over 6 GBs of mp3s on the damn thing.

I think I'm gonna put together a playlist and have it randomize from THAT. >:(

[Incog Neato]

Hirm! Maybe I should have rephrased the post a little!

I'm just wondering if anyone has an audio player that is not any of the 3 I listed and randomizes intelligently! Or do you people not even set your players to randomize? >_>;;;;

[Ashurei]

My first mp3 player was an iriver. When I finally had enough money saved I researched the market like crazy with one notion in mind: ipods are dumb and trendy and I want a better player that nobody else has. Every tech review and forum I happened upon screamed iriver, so I went that route. Thing lasted me damn near 6 years before it finally started to flake on me. To get to the point, though - shuffle worked great and it was an amazing piece of hardware.

I have a 16gb Zen Xfi now - I was disappointed to find that iriver doesn't make anything of a reasonable size anymore. I don't use the shuffle on it so much as thier "album of the day" feature, which is essentially a button I programmed to play a random album. And yes, that does cycle through the same albums quite a bit - it even frequently plays the same album it was just on when I hit the button. I likes it, though.

[Lunar]

I have a 5th gen iPod video and I suppose the shuffle works just fine. However, I'm more of an albums person so I tend not to use it

[Lumi]

I've got a 20GB Creative Zen Sleek or somesuch... I've had it for a good five years or so now, I think, and it treats me pretty nicely. XD

As for the shuffle... I'm honestly not sure, because I generally just use playlists I've created that suit my musical mood of the day/week/month. Within those playlists/albums, it doesn't seem to fixate on the same one or two songs, at least.

I refuse to put money into an iPod, for the same reasons as Ashurei. =P

[Mutagene]

I have a 30GB 1st generation Zune. I got it for Christmas of '07, and it serves me well. I like that with my case, I can use the controls through my pocket.

Also, the games are actually pretty fun. Hexic is addictive as hell.

I rarely use shuffle though, because I like being able to choose what song I want to play next. Same reason I usually listen to whole albums in a row on my PC.

[macroidtoe]

I've got this thing:

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16855125012

It's served me well enough, although it's kind of annoying how it doesn't have a basic option to browse by folder. Instead, it reads the ID3 tags and browses by artist/album, etc. (I don't organize things into my own folders just for fun, ya know!)

As far as randomness goes, it seems to work reasonably well, except one odd blip I've noticed: if it hits any song on a specific album that I happen to have on it, almost every time it will then proceed to hit the next 4 or 5 songs on the album in sequence. It only happens with that one album, but it happens almost every time.

It also happens to be the album that I most recently loaded onto it, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. I guess I'll find out next time I add something to it.

[Red Hairdo]

I have a PSP.

[Incog Neato]

Sept 7, 2009 10:20:37 GMT -5 Ashurei said:

My first mp3 player was an iriver.

Goofy but true story: I was actually looking to get the iRiver because it's like one of the only players capable of playing the Ogg Vorbis format but for some reason, I had it stuck in my head that it was the Zen that could do it. ^^; So I ended up with that instead. ^^;;; Pretty sure I checked the files it supported before I bought it too. Oh wells. XD

Nyahaha. I figured I'm probably in the minority in terms of living off of the shuffle feature. I mean, although I put albums onto the thing, I don't listen to them straight through.

The only way for me to listen to albums from start to finish is if I "zone out" (like when I'm concentrating on reading a book or something). ^^ Sort of like just having noise in the background.

[macroidtoe]

I was actually looking to get the iRiver because it's like one of the only players capable of playing the Ogg Vorbis format

Ooo, I'd definitely like to have ogg support. That way I could just dump my Felghana/Origin folders straight onto the player. Hmm, wonder if there's a custom firmware for my player that adds that...

[Incog Neato]

I just realized that the Zen is a little pissy when it comes to playlists with m4a files.

Basically, the m4a songs WILL NOT SHOW UP ON THE PLAYLIST ON THE ZEN.

Since I already put together 240+ tunes on MediaMonkey, I was not going to redo that on the stupid Zen Explorer just so MPEG-4 files can be acknowledged.

As a result, I ended up converting stuff to mp3 format so the list could be fully synced. 9__9

[Abbot]

I've got an Insignia NS-DV4G. Used to be Best Buy's house brand.

I used to have an iPod Classic 80GB. Screwed up on me, so I got my mom's old MP3 player, and am more satisfied, even with less space, than the iPod. I like the Insignia's ability to use microSD cards.

And the shuffle randomly creates a playlist from all the songs, then picks a random song to start from IN that playlist. You can check the playlist by pressing ^. It's actually quite awesome.

And I like making my own playlists lately.

[Lunar]

Weeeeeell, the iPod's hard drive went kaput over the Labor Day weekend, unfortunately. I took it to the Apple Store, they diagnosed it and unsympathetically went RIGHT into all of the brand new iPods I can buy for full price. Blech. I'll wait for a bit before deciding on a new one

For now I'm using my PSP. The playback is nice and there are a decent amount of features but the sound quality is sort of low and it's unweildy to put in my pocket =\

[Red Hairdo]

"sound quality sort of low"? =o No chance in hell. You need better head/earphones. I, myself, only buy the ones from Panasonic, which are the best. At least around here. Of course, they also are by far the most expensive. But naturally, the prices are very viable.

[Lunar]

Compared to the iPod, there's a marked difference in sound quality, both from my headphones and my car speakers

[Red Hairdo]

Something is undeniably fishy: I have an iPod as well and there is NOT such difference in sound quality. =o Either is your PSP sound output damaged, your head/earphones/car speakers are damaged or something else.

The possibility of my iPod being damaged is ruled out, as what I just said about it also applies to both of my cousin's iPods, one of which is brand new.

Though... whatever. xD Really.

[psybuster]

PSP is about the same quality wise (sound signature could be different to people of course) as a Gen 5 iPod classic.

Never liked iPods on account of them being overpriced/overmarketed. Creative sucks (and anyone who knows their stuff that's ever used their sound cards before pretty much knows this to be the case), dunno much about the Zune.

Sony NWZ-A818 is/was magnificent, as is their entire NWZ-X series line, dunno if they have more up to date models out. Anything from Cowon is good too.

Sansa Fuze and Clip are great bang for the buck (only these two though, the other Sansa models have terrible firmware and stability overall).

As for the shuffle, it seems a lot of players "save" the order when you turn them off and on again. Disabling shuffle and re-enabling a few times will mix the order again.

[Mutagene]

The 4.0 update for the Zune software basically made everybody unable to sync anything to their first- and second-gen Zunes.

Good goin', Microsoft. I just lost that tiny little bit of faith I still had in you.