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I want a simple mp3 player. Never owned one before; AFAIK I don't want fancy stuff like video....but perhaps mp4 would be useful. Not planning to jog with it or use it in the car; it's for listening to stuff I would otherwise listen to on the computer but I don't want to have to have the computer turned on, or to be tied to its location.

Easy to use, not expensive, good battery life. Helpful if it comes with "real" headphones and not those ear bug things, which are always too big for my ears and I can't use them.

TNFJ?

MA

I bought a pretty solid one from Menard's a few years back for 10 bucks, looked like a thumb drive. They had a whole display of them at the time.

Hi MaryAnne

I don't own anything like this but I've picked up a bit of information while reading up on headphones and digital to audio converters.

Audiophiles on a budget buy the Sansa Clip. It's meant to be cheaper than the various iProducts and have better sound quality.

It will also read a variety of lossless music file formats like wav. flac. and ogg. whereas I think the iStuff pretty much only does Mp3. (Yeah, yeah, before anyone jumps on me, ogg. is a lossy format).

I've been told by a shop salesman with better than average product knowledge that the Sony equivalent is also cheaper and better sounding than the ipod line and able to read more file formats.

I think all this stuff comes with ear buds (ugh), so you'll have to buy headphones seperately.

These things have a fairly low output so you need low impedance headphones - below 64 ohm or so, alothough I did read a review of the Sansa Clip where it did very well with some serious high ohm headphones.
Generally speaking the better headphones need a good DAC and headphone amp to sound their best. This is definately the case with my Denon AH D2000's.

For the truly fanatical you can buy a pocketsized, battery powered DAC/headphone amp to use with your Mp3 player.

Important - headphones are divided into several distinct catogories.

First is open backed or closed backed.

Close backed blocks out room noise for the listener and stops other people in the room from hearing your music leaking out.

Open backed has potentially better sound quality due the sound not booming around inside the headphone itself but they're more suited to a quiet room. There are some better closed models which have a nice open non-boomy sound.

The second second very important division is between headphones which pump the hell out of the bass for the young people listening to doof-doof music(!) and those which just reproduce the music without doing anything to it.
This is pretty important for classical music.

Most cheaper headphones pump the base.

In the cheaper Sennheiser range the HD202 pumps the base, the HD 280Pro is very neutral and natural sounding. Both of these are closed and cut out background noise very well. Both of these are below the serious audiophile level.

If you've got the motivation you'll find more headphone information than you'll ever want at http://www.head-fi.org/f/" target="_blank - warning - this is the headphone equivalent of Tubenet.

Feel free to PM me to pick my tiny brain further.
I am NOT an expert but I've done a LOT of reading on all this in recent times researching my own equipment needs.

Regards

Gerard

I got a SanDisk Sansa clip, also a set of closed headphones with individual volume controls because I hear less well with one ear.

Thanks for all the info!

MA

That was quick!

Enjoy.

Gerard

Second the vote for Sansa players. The Clip Zip or Clip Plus are good players, and are on sale at Best Buy right now I think. Avoid the Sansa Fuze. The best part is the ability to load an alternate firmware that greatly expands the capabilities of the player: check out http://www.rockbox.org/. As for headphones, it all depends on your head and your ears.

Yane wrote:Second the vote for Sansa players. The Clip Zip or Clip Plus are good players, and are on sale at Best Buy right now I think. Avoid the Sansa Fuze. The best part is the ability to load an alternate firmware that greatly expands the capabilities of the player: check out http://www.rockbox.org/. As for headphones, it all depends on your head and your ears.

+1 for Sansa and Rockbox. My favorite feature in Rockbox is the car mode, where it turns on the player (when connected by usb to the car) and shuts it down when the car turns off, provided the power source does the same. Fade in and out between tracks is nice as well. I have an old C240 that is still going strong.

+1 for rockbox. I use it on my iPod video 80gb. I like how easy it is to put music on it. It also allows me to play my ogg files.

I know you said you want something simple, BUT I would look at an iPod touch or iPhone with the Cappricio app. It allows you to do the same simple drag and drop to the Capriccio data folder. It also plays ogg and flac files. I use this on my iPhone and ipad as does my wife. It is super simple to use and has a ton of features.

http://www.appover.com/search/capriccio ... 434828497/