OT: Hard Drive based MP3 Players

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:32 am

Dave:

Bummer. Sorry to hear that.

Take care,
PK

LAking · Post by **LAking** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:45 am

Question for you MP3 experts. IS there anything under $200 that could hold maybe 150 albums or more? I'm thinking (thinking until they get cheap) about getting an MP3 player for my car. Not too long ago someone stole my car, yet i recovered it less than one hour later (long story). They stole my CD player (portable) but didn't get my cd's. I keep all my cd's in a big book. I would like to get an MP3 player so i can just record all my albums onto it and keep the CD's at the house instead of risking losing them. Problem is these iPods and the like are so freakin expensive! I do not want to spend $300-$400 on something that i will mostly only use for my car. So is there anything out there that can meet my needs for a reasonable price?

My other thought is that i could just get a cd player that plays MP3 cd's then burn multiple albums under the same artists to one cd's, thus vastly reducing my collection and keeping the originals safe.

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:56 am

What the hell is that avatar?!?

LAking · Post by **LAking** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:22 am

it's my pet, monty, having his dinner.

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Tue May 04, 2004 2:24 am

LAking wrote:My other thought is that i could just get a cd player that plays MP3 cd's then burn multiple albums under the same artists to one cd's, thus vastly reducing my collection and keeping the originals safe.

I have the Mini Ipod for the gym and I burn all my MP3's on CD's for my car MP3 CD Deck. I can put about 10 CD's (at a bitrate of 128) on each. So I've got a case of 48 CD's and I'm essentially carrying about 500 cd's around. It's beautiful.

LAking · Post by **LAking** » Tue May 04, 2004 3:08 am

I have the Mini Ipod for the gym and I burn all my MP3's on CD's for my car MP3 CD Deck. I can put about 10 CD's (at a bitrate of 128) on each. So I've got a case of 48 CD's and I'm essentially carrying about 500 cd's around. It's beautiful.

I guess i'll just do that then. It's a lot cheaper and i don't have to worry about having an expensive MP3 player getting stolen. However i have a question. Are you able to burn the CD's in a way that it can recognize different albums? Let's say i decide to burn all my Rancid albums onto one CD. I would want to be able to tell the CD player to just skip directly to the begining of the second album. Is this possible or would i have to hit "next track" over and over until i get to the song i want?

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Tue May 04, 2004 3:56 am

On each CD you just separate the albums by folder...you can select "folder advance" on the stereo and it'll move through the folders you have on the disc. The organization is up to you...the cd player will play them in the order they are organized. For example:

I've got a CD

It's got 2 folders on it, one called Rap, and one called Metal. M comes before R so it'll play whatever songs are in the Metal folder first (you can organize the songs by track number if they are albums or just by song name if they are random songs compiled on the disc). After it has played through all of the songs in the Metal folder it'll advance to the Rap folder and play all the songs listed in there. If at any time you want to advance from the Metal folder to the Rap folder you just hit the button and it'll skip right to it.

Therefor you can organize all of your Rancid albums on one CD...just put each album in it's own folder with the Album name as the title. Then it'll just play them in the order you put them on the disc.

Hope that makes sense...hard to explain it without being able to draw a diagram of some sort.

matthewk · Post by **matthewk** » Tue May 04, 2004 11:55 am

DB - Can your stereo randomize individual folders? The one I had installed in my truck has a random play feature, but it can only randomize the entire disc. Damn annoying, but oh well, it's still nice to be able to get 8-10 CDs worth of music on a single disc.

About the portability of MP3 players: I have the Archos 20GB, and I do use it while mowing the lawn. It's bigger than the mini, but it's not like luggin a brick around either. The Archos can be portable as well.

About 128kps vs. 192kps. I converted all of my MP3s to 128 just so I could fit more on my player. I have over 600 CDs (purchased), and a bunch of *cough* "other" MP3s. Even at 128 I can't fit them all on. Anyways, I haven't found 128 to be bad, but it seem slike sometimes I can sense a lack of quality. Not sure exactly what it is. Maybe it's just my hearing on that day, or what.

I have always wondered if there is a quality loss when leveling the music to the same decibal level. As many know, a CD from 10 years ago sounds quieter than a CD from today. I level everything so I'm not constantly reaching for the volume control. Any one have any thoughts on this? I use MP3 gain to do the leveling, and I've haven't seen any reports of quality issues.

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:05 pm

MattK:

Legitimate concern, but I would rather be able to listen to an hour or so of music without adjusting the volume knob every other song, even if there is a slight loss in quality to equalizing volume.

And I'm not even sure if equalizing hurts quality. Lowering the decibel rate does cut clipping on some tracks, a plus.

Take care,
PK

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Tue May 04, 2004 12:18 pm

The thing about bitrate is that we now have better codecs now. But obviously, MP3 is more pervasive, especially for "other" music you get besides your CD collection.

So supposedly, AAC, which is based on MPEG4 while MP3 came out of MPEG1 standard, is suppose to be as good or better at 128 compared to 192 for MP3s. Same thing for WMA.

I don't download that much. I'll digitize my collection, maybe join the CD clubs a couple of times and then start looking again for more music.

dbdynsty25 · Post by **dbdynsty25** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:31 pm

matthewk wrote:DB - Can your stereo randomize individual folders? The one I had installed in my truck has a random play feature, but it can only randomize the entire disc. Damn annoying, but oh well, it's still nice to be able to get 8-10 CDs worth of music on a single disc.

I've heard of a few decks that can do this, but mine can't. Which really sucks because I've got a fairly high end Kenwood Excelon deck (ebay is great...700 dollar retail, got it for $350 brand new, not refurbished off ebay).

I really wish it was a feature on all decks, but I think that's more of a 'playlist' issue. Hard drive or memory based decks can use the on board memory to create playlists throughout folders or just inside a single folder. When you add files to a CD you're essentially doing that for it...creating one big play list, just organized a bit. So without being able to access memory in the unit itself, there really isn't a way for the deck to know and remember what folder its in so it can continue to randomize from within.

That's just a guess of course, I've got no hard proof on that. It's just logically the way I see it.