What's the best MP3 player?

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d3tox

d3tox

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I just bought a sandisk sansa mp3 player for about $50 via newegg to give for an xmas present. This particular person has incredibly stubby fingers so an anything apple was offering these days wouldn't work. It had an expansion slot for the micro sd card and seemed to work pretty slick. It had 8gb onboard, and I think the capacity varies depending on what you spend, but it worked pretty nicely to load etc...
 
zynthetic

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Firefly said:
I prefer sound quality.

thanks to all :D
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mp3 is a standard so it's going to sound the same on any device that supports it. It's the devices that claim to improve quality you should scrutinize (ex: Beats lineup) since this typically means it's heavily colored.
Given how little (if any) difference there should be in sound quality between most devices, comparing battery life and storage capacity will probably get you better results.
 
nELsOn

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Zer0 said:
Then use your phone.
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Yep, I had several dedicated mp3 players (the last one was an iPod, even) and my HTC Desire is the best of them by far. Installed WinAmp on it and I couldn't be happier with it.

BITE_ME said:
Ditto for camera, handheld computer, video player, and interplanet communication device
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I agree with everything except for the camera bit. I have yet to see the phone camera that really comes close to a proper camera. And I prefer watching videos on a TV but if you're on a train for a while watching movies on a phone is actually a nice thing, yes.
 
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Zxanphorian

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zynthetic said:
mp3 is a standard so it's going to sound the same on any device that supports it. It's the devices that claim to improve quality you should scrutinize (ex: Beats lineup) since this typically means it's heavily colored.
Given how little (if any) difference there should be in sound quality between most devices, comparing battery life and storage capacity will probably get you better results.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that. My iPod Touch 4G sounds much better than my old Palm TX which I used as my previous music player (Horray for only being able to use non-SDHC SD cards, which essentially limited myself to 2GB cards each for music!)
 
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Lruce Bee

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I've had a couple of mp3 players in the past that I used to use until I switched to dumping music files on my old Nokia and currently my iPhone 3GS - I honestly can't tell the difference in quality (if there is any)
You'd have to have a very discerning ear to really notice any real difference for casual listening walking down the street or the home commute - usually it's the quality of your headphones that's the issue.
 
ambershee

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zynthetic said:
mp3 is a standard so it's going to sound the same on any device that supports it.
Click to expand...

Absolutely not. Mp3 is just an interpreted file format - the software, firmware and the hardware that converts that into a set of electrical signals for whatever is attached to it will dictate heavily what you're going to hear. I'll still agree that the quality of your headphones play a much bigger part, however.

My HTC Mozart 7 is without a doubt not all that good. I would personally take a look at Archos' offerings at the moment (the 605 is pretty reasonable). The Creative Zen used to be pretty solid, but these days they seem to have painfully short hardware lifespans on top of other issues.
 
Hadmar

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I currently use a Sansa Clip+ 8GB with a 32GB microSDHC card. I like it, it's tiny, lats for ~15h and the clip is really handy; much more so than I expected actually. It also runs Rockbox in case that's a criteria.

It really depends on what you want to do. If you only play a bit of music while commuting for 20 minutes and don't care about quickly pausing or rewinding you can use a smartphone. If you want more that might be a pretty bad idea.
 
zynthetic

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ambershee said:
Absolutely not. Mp3 is just an interpreted file format - the software, firmware and the hardware that converts that into a set of electrical signals for whatever is attached to it will dictate heavily what you're going to hear. I'll still agree that the quality of your headphones play a much bigger part, however.
Click to expand...

Altering the signal chain after decoding MP3 doesn't make the format interpreted. The decompressed bitstream is going to be the same 1s and 0s on any device decoding it. While it may sound different on some devices that alter the signal chain with a comb filter, this does nothing to actually change the stream quality.
 
TWD

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Firefly said:
I prefer sound quality.

thanks to all :D
Click to expand...

I've noticed that the sound quality coming out of my Galaxy S is subpar. However, I don't think what you'll find in budget mp3 players will be much better. It could be a lot of things, including the AD converters. If you look on audiophile forums you'll find that most of them have a ipod with an amp connected to it to get around some of these problems.

It should also be pointed out that I'm used to listening with HDJ-2000's and a Native Instruments Audio 4 DJ through my Xone92 mixer. Anything other than this setup is going to sound odd to me anyways. Point is, if you want pure sound quality you aren't going to get it in a consumer mobile package. So you might as well just get the Android.
 
Firefly

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Hadmar said:
I currently use a Sansa Clip+ 8GB with a 32GB microSDHC card. I like it, it's tiny, lats for ~15h and the clip is really handy; much more so than I expected actually. It also runs Rockbox in case that's a criteria.

It really depends on what you want to do. If you only play a bit of music while commuting for 20 minutes and don't care about quickly pausing or rewinding you can use a smartphone. If you want more that might be a pretty bad idea.
Click to expand...

this is what I'm getting and I already have the 32 micro card. yeh they are tiny :D. :)
but I'm getting better headphones for it
thanks again all

dedicated mp3 players will always out perform phones.
How I morn the loss of my creative nomad3. The sound quality still is superb but win 7 won't recognise it and creative aint gonna release a patch to fix this. ever

thanks zenpirate, that's cool
 
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Rambowjo

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SleepyHe4d said:
Any cellphone after 2005.
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Having a seperate device is nice for battery life. I listen to music constantly, so I know my phone would die two or three times as quickly, if I used it for music.

I like Apple's iPods. I have a simple iPod nano 8GB, friend sold it to me. It has served me well for 3 years, battery still lasts very long, excellent sound quality. The interface is great, and it's a very discrete device.
With all that said, I hate Apple, and the only reason I got it is because a friend sold it to me. They make good devices, but their prices are obscene and so is the company as a whole. Do not buy their stuff unless you can get it used and cheap.

On the subject of bad DACs in music players, iPods are praised for having great quality in that regard. Really though, most modern DACs, even in cheap devices, are perfectly fine for most headphone use. Unless you plan to connect your device to a hi-fi system by jack, you shouldn't have a problem.
 
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