Which is the right player for me?
Answer:
While this is a very subjective area I will share with you the thought processes and logic I used in selecting what was right for me. The conclusions you reach may differ from mine and that is 100% ok since my ears and music preferences are not the same as yours. In the end as long as you are happy that is all that matters.
I took the player selection and broke it down to several parts that made sense to me. I wanted a small player that sounded great and held a bunch of hours worth of music. Not too much to ask do ya think?
Storage Media and Capacity
There were to me several choices out there in the world of DAP’s and I looked at the pro’s and con’s of each. You have CDRW, Flash and HDD. Each have their upside and downside. Here is my thinking on each one. Remember it is my thinking not yours but here is what I was going through.
CDRW-Been around a long time; proven; not expensive; but big and bulky. I did not want to carry around a bunch of disks and their storage capacity mean I could not fit much of my music on just one disk. I saw this as a possible solution to my DAP’s search but not really the way I wanted to go.
Flash-Small, quick access; low power required allowing for impressive battery life; physically small allowed for a small formfactor player but only had 1 GB (at the time was 512 mb max) of storage space thus limiting the number of tracks it would hold. Could be a solution to my DAP quest but I wanted something bigger
HDD-could be large in terms of storage space; larger in size than flash so the entire player would be bigger than the flash based unit; required more power than flash player so battery life may be a consideration; somewhat shock sensitive so not as robust as flash memory.
At the time 20GB was the max available so this was a solution I could live with. If I were buying a new unit today I’d go for the 40 GB but at the time this was not a choice. Knowing that @ 128 kbps a one minute encode yielded 1 mb file I did the math and figured a 20 gb player would give me the amount of music storage I wanted. Knowing this you should select a HDD player that gives you the formfactor and amount of music playback time that fits your needs. So to some people a 5 or 10 GB player may meet their requirements. Here it is again,
@ 128 kbps you get a average of 1mb file per minute of music. A average song is 4 minutes and an average CD holds 11 tracks so this will give you a 44 mb file.
44mb average album X (your required number of albums) = HDD Size*
* All this is meaningless if you encode at another bitrate but it gives you a baseline to work from.
Supported Codec
There are several codecs out in the world of audio compression and I wanted to audition each one. I needed to find a piece of software that would allow me to give each codec a road test. I
Googled for a audio compression front end and downloaded one. You can do the same thing or use a ripper that takes external encoders ie
EAC . Next I need to find the encoders. I went to Google again and found
rarewares and got the most current flavor of mp3 LAME, ACC, MPEG4, MPC and OGG. Next I took a wav file and using
Foobar2000 v0.8.3 which includes a
ABX Test Comparator tested 10 second segments of the wav file. In the end I found that one that sounded best and ripped and encoded fastest was MPC which I was real happy about. BUT no players support MPC…..go figure! I had to go with my second choice…bumer!
To my ears, playing my music using my gear Ogg Vorbis sounded better than AAC (Apple’s codec used in iPods). So I went searching for players that supported ogg.
In the end it was a balance of storage size, supported codec and audio playback that led me to the player I use today. I did not want a FM radio, lyrics support and did not require video so these were non issues to me. What was right for me may not be right for you but I got what made me happy and that is what is important.
So use your mind and your ears to figure out what is right for you…..don’t post a question on the MR board asking if the H3XX is right for you. Heck I didn’t need the MR board to help me figure out what player to buy (MR did not exist then anyway). I already had the tools: My Brain and My Ears. Chances are that you have the tools too!
Enjoy the music,
sdz
ps: there are several hidden messages in this thread
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