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i know someone who has one and i stole it in a lesson the other day to listen to

its alrite i spose, nice and small/light, his was 20GB and sonys format of music at 64K means u can get quite a few songs on it, doesnt sound to great at that bit rate tho

controls are strange but functional when u get used to them, only bad thing i thought was the fact it doesnt go as loud as my one and the display is a little small/bland

CymruPolo wrote:Ok, thanks.

Can anyone recommend an mp3 player for me? I'm after a 20GB (or larger) one.

Firstly depends on whether the size of the player itself matters... judging from the Sony... you're budget is £170-£200?

Perhaps take a gander at iRiver for their jukeboxes... problem is they cost abit in the UK and beware of shopping on ebay from outside sources... I got hit with duty... bloody UPS taking a brokerage fee for that made the duty total up to £20

Always best to get them sent as a gift from overseas, if buying from e-bay you avoid the tax then, that's what I have done for me if I buy from USA.

Get an iRiver - cheap as chips and quality. Go to Dixons/Ebuyer/Dabs etc.

I'm afraid I'm an iPod user and think it's really good.

I use a PocketDock Line Out and a dedicated headphone amp (with really nice headphones), so it's a bit different to listening to it with the stock earbuds from the headphone out... Which sucks!

Im with Josh on this one, i've an ipod nano in black, good quality and cheap.

i cant comment on how good the actual player is, it'll probably be quite good, but in this game the codec is half the story (the control and audio circuitry being the other) and anything that encourages Atrac3plus needs a swift boot onto the scrapheap. I didn't think i'd find anything more atrocious than WMA, until i got my Hi-MD.

it's actually a very efficent, good quality encoder, but they've chosen some awful default rates for it that you can't change. 48k is best suited to use as a dictaphone more than anything else, but oddly sounds better than 64k (probably because the low-pass filter is comparitively more severe, so the codec isnt being worked as close to the limit as it is with 64k). And the poor compression artifacting at 64k cant even be explained away by good treble response, as it tops out around 14-15khz, which is cloth ears territory even compared to 128k mp3, more on a par with 80-96k WMA. And, come on now, you seriously can't be that desperate to get THAT much playtime value for your storage space that you'd sacrifice the sound quality so much, if you're shelling out the extra for a Sony unit.

wouldn't be so bad if they offered the midrange bitrates in that format, it would really shine if they had... but your next stop on the A3+ scale is 256k. 256!!! It's near-CD at that point, but oddly not actually as good as original short play (292k, and a couple generations of codec development earlier).... which isnt an available mode. To go in between you'll have to use regular Atrac3, at 66k (sounds similar/worse than 48k+), 105k (ditto 64k), or 132k (Minidisc "LP2", the winner's choice, but still not optimal).

so you may as well use MP3, and if you're going to do that, may as well get a better value for money player. and i think even the pod might fit THAT bill, god forbid.

there's a million smaller-brand players out there - such as creative, iriver, etc - and its only the very, very cheapest that will suffer any significant quality issues. Such as the £20 256mb players from tesco (crashes continually, half the memory chip is blown, poor sound reproduction, hard to use, etc)... but a £29.99 variant of it from an online shop is streets ahead, and is about as good as you could want it to be, in usability, size, battery life AND quality of the sound output - other than not supporting a folder filesystem (there's probably a £30.49 one which does that)
This includes a good many hard disc based ones - many of them were there "first", too.

That's what I always think when I think of getting one, I never really walk anywhere, can listen to music on the PC, or in my room and have a portable CD player anyway, granted they don't hold songs but if I do walk anywhere, one CD usually lasts the distance.

I'm afraid I'm one of the iPod gang, so I have to push the product.

Absolutely fantastic, not had a problem with my battery either.

whatever you want it to be so long as it's...

between 32 and 320kbit
multiple of 8 below 64k, multiple of 16 between 64 and 128, or multiple of 32 upto 256k
or, a variable bitrate file (which actually chooses one of the above on a frame-by-frame splitsecond basis and so appears continuously variable) that has a set quality level and varies the bit-rate to compensate for changes in sound complexity, rather than varying the quality to fit into the set bitrate

which is pretty much standard for all mp3 players.

But if you're thinking "iTunes", the AAC ("MP4") files that come from there are generally 128kbit i think, and should sound pretty good - probably on a par with atrac3+ in terms of efficiency?? its almost identical to the dolby digital codec used on DVDs, just lower rate (mainly because its stereo and not 5.1 surround, which uses 448k )

i'm a ipod-style device advocate, if maybe not the pod itself (overpriced, overstyled/hyped, under capable and itunes-locked yuppie totem*). since getting my novatech NPod last year (20gb, £120 inc vat & delivery, sold out and never restocked more's the pity) i've got a hell of a lot of use out of it. 'normous library of choons go almost everywhere with me (providing it's charged!), can be added to very easily (rip CD into computer, plug in pod, transfer files over ATA-speed USB2 link, walk), a radio for frustrated times, a voice recorder for when you need it (surprisingly often), and also pendrive-like portable storage in the spare space of the same file area (including backing up digital camera memory cards without a PC).

incredible bit of tech, i guess kudos has to go to apple for brewing the idea and bringing it to market at least, before all the chinese guys aped them better and cheaper

its replaced my cd walkman, minidisc and micro-radio for portable tunes, the tapes in the car (via tape adaptor), dictaphone, carries large files around when a 512mb pendrive just doesnt cut it (or isnt fast enough), and works nicely in complement with the digicam when on hols. only thing it hasn't replaced is my main (and decade-old) hi-fi, which is still more convenient than rigging up the otherwise-sexy portable flatpanel speakers i got for the mp3 player.

* that the shuffle was more or less the only over-£20 player on the market not to have some sort of screen sort of shows their style-over-functionality ethos. as does the new ipod video having a laughable 2.5" square-ish screen, so that it can fit into the case the same way up as a regular ipod and not spoil the brand styling. Every other manufacturer who's serious about building portable video machines (ignore the kiddy ones) ... which they've been doing for a good 18 months already ... puts it in landscape to make best use of the casing surface area, getting a 5" PSP-esque widescreen in a pod-sized body - but not apple, because that would be ugly and not look like an ipod any more.