TubeNet

Ok folks, as Christmas is nearing, and the 13 year old in my house gives no response to the "what do you want for Christmas" question, I've been thinking about getting her an mp3 player. Suggestions? Comments?

dwa

I just got myself an ipod 40 gb. Although it's among the most expensive mp3 players out there, the quality is generally thought to be superior to others. However, there are limitations to the software portion of it. For classical music, it needs more thought. For rock, it's OK - but some of the classical problems creep in. I am in the process of importing my huge cd collection into it. The more music I get into the ipod, the cooler it is. There's nothing like having your entire collection at your fingertips.

Stefan

My son has a MUVO

http://www.creative.com/products/produc ... duct=10919

He likes it a lot. Not as much storage as an Ipod, and not as much social cachet, certainly. Tiny and light, though. Plays forever on one battery, and very easy to lod from a USB port on the PC.

FWIW
jlb

For rock, it's OK - but some of the classical problems creep in.

I'm curious as to what problems you're talking about.

Doug "who will probably end up getting one of these things eventually and wants to know the pros and cons"

I do not like the click wheel as much as a lot of people seem to. I find it difficult to get the album, composer, etc., selected easily. It takes a few tries. In the car, it's a real pain to get it to go exactly where you want it. Still, I don't hate it. My main problem with it is the lack of flexibility in organizing the music on the ipod. It is definitely NOT classical music friendly. I would like to change some of the sorting options - like be able to search by different fields. For example, since there is no conductor field, I started putting the conductor in the grouping field on itunes. But the ipod won't show the grouping field. I would like to be able to change which info gets displayed during playback. I would like to be able to manually scroll through and see all the info. The top space scrolls, and you can't easily read it when it scrolls. Fine - but give me the option to manually scroll all the lines. Sometimes, the classical cd's have a lot of info that can't be read.


And my #1 most annoying gripe. When you have a piece of music which is long, but continuous, and divided up into tracks, the ipod will join them together but turns it into one track. For example, a piece like Alpine Symphony which is about 50 minutes long. You have to select all the tracks and then hit "join tracks". Or else there will be a slight gap between each section. You now have 1 large 50 minute track.

I have a problem with some of my Zappa cd's too. They tend to connect their songs.

Stefan

For a 13 yr. old, an ipod is expensive... more than likely they just use it to store rock/pop/r&b/whatever songs on it. If thats what you're looking for, the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox is almost half the price of an ipod. I picked up my 40GB jukebox for $250 whereas the 40GB ipod i think runs around $400 but dont quote me on that. Good product for the price, loooooong battery life and short charging time.

Jay - my feeling about the ipod's support of classical music is described above.

As far as the ipod being too expensive for a 13 year old. That's an odd statement. The issue is the quality of the product. Not what type of music you assume they listen to. Through reading tons of reviews, I learned that the Creative line of MP3 players were full of problems. Problems like the software freezing too often, the player itself freezing, the headphone jack failing, the player just quit working.

To me, I would rather spend a little more to get a superior product.

I have been using a Dell 15 gig player for a few months. I just saw it on the Dell Outlet for $178, not a bad price although I bought mine on a one day sale for $129 - have never seen that again. I bought an FM converter for the car which works OK.

Like with any compuer-like machine, how it is used depends on the software. I have some client kids who only download from the net, hardly have anything on their machine and a 40 gig IPOD is not being used to it's fullest. I transfered my CD collection to mp3 then loaded it to the max. Now we have something.

Problem is that if there is a similare filename, it will overwrite - you have to rename files! As far as being Classical firendly, you need to rename to keep order for a symphony like brahms2-1.mp3 - here the composer, sym no then movement is identified. It will work. The other thing is load a lot of overtures. Personally, I wish you could use folders like you can in Windows.

You should also check out mp3 players by iriver. I just got an iriver h120 and I am very happy with it. It uses a windows style menu system, like a previous poster wanted, and is very easy to use. I use it for music, but mostly as a digital recorder. Yesterday I recorded a concert and burned it to CD very easily, and the sound quality is great. Comes in 20 gigs or 40 gigs like the ipod, and a little cheaper.

It is a big competitor of the ipod and because it is black to ipod's white, some people call it "the anti-pod"

Stefan wrote:Jay - my feeling about the ipod's support of classical music is described above.

As far as the ipod being too expensive for a 13 year old. That's an odd statement. The issue is the quality of the product. Not what type of music you assume they listen to. Through reading tons of reviews, I learned that the Creative line of MP3 players were full of problems. Problems like the software freezing too often, the player itself freezing, the headphone jack failing, the player just quit working.

To me, I would rather spend a little more to get a superior product.

I have had my Creative MP3 player for over a year now and no problems such as the ones you described yet and with proper care and handling of the machine, I dont plan on ever seeing any of them.