Linux compatible MP3 player

December 21, 2006 4:03 AM

Linux compatible MP3 player. I would like to get suggestions for a good quality, Linux compatible larger MP3 player, and it would be nice if it also played Oggs.

My husband and I are looking at getting our first large MP3 player. I have an Ipod mini and he has a shuffle, but we would like to invest in a larger MP3 player. We are thinking about the future and we don't really want to be locked to Windows (he already runs Linux on one of his machines, we are doubtful we ever want to run Vista).

We would like something solid, well constructed, but we do resent having to pay extra for fancy screens to look at video and photos. The screens are too small, and we both have nice laptops should we want to watch video (most of the time we use our players at work, or cooking, or lots of places where video would be inappropriate).

Price is a strong consideration - we don't have a lot of money, though I would rather get something of quality that will last and do what we need for a bit more than regret the purchase.

I guess I am asking for suggestions for players which are quality, but cheaper; I'm willing to go offbrand, but would feel more comfortable if I have a recommendation on the quality. (I went off-brand on a laptop, only to have the case literally fall apart on me).

Necessary:

- compatible with Linux, preferrably working as an external harddrive to load audio files
- 20+ GB (our collection isn't that big, not the bits we listen to mostly; we both do have a lot of podcasts, as we are addicted to BBC and CBC)
- ability to move back and forth in an audio file, especially longer ones (this is the reason my husband is unhappy with his shuffle)
- Ogg compatible (though flexible on this if it is a problem)

Nice extras we would use:

- FM radio
- voice recording

Annoying extras we resent having to pay for (but realise we might have to):

- video, photo, fancy screens (the screen needs to be good enough to read the file name, that's it)

(there have been previous posts, such as this one, but these things go out of date quickly. My friend has an iRiver from a few years ago which would be great, but they no longer make that model and the new ones do not support OGG.

* Also, we are in the UK - not all brands will be available here, and when they are, they are more expensive. So if you are mentioning prices, please mention where you are, and I will check what the UK price is (one player I was looking at was over £200 here, and in the US it is about 200 dollars).

posted by jb to technology (25 comments total)

Also, I should have put it in the post, but thank you in advance for your help : )
posted by jb at 4:05 AM on December 21, 2006

I love iRiver, but, if you don't want to buy a (surprisingly expensive) used one, I'd suggest a Cowon/iAudio M5 or X5. And, to preempt later posters, an iPod is a large-capacity mp3 player that can be made to work under Linux (and, with either Rockbox or Podzilla firmware, might even be convinced to play .ogg's).
posted by box at 5:12 AM on December 21, 2006

ability to move back and forth in an audio file, especially longer ones (this is the reason my husband is unhappy with his shuffle)

Holding down the forward or back button on the Shuffle lets you seek on the current track, by the way.
posted by mendel at 6:05 AM on December 21, 2006

I own an Archos GMini XS202 and I'm happy with it.

Con's:
* No OGG
* No FM
* No Voice Recording
* Browsing in large Collections is a bit slow, because the cursor does not accelerate fast enough

Pro's are:
* 20GB of Hard Disk
* Small
* Good battery lifetime
* Very good sound quality (tho the included headphones are a shame!)
* Equalizer
*It is a usb-storage volume, so it's supported under Linux (I use it exclusivly under Linux)
* The killer feature (I'm not aware of any other mp3-player device that has such a feature): It has an auido database that is managed by the player itself and does not need software support. So you can browse your collection by mp3 tags.
* Shows up in amazon.co.uk, so I assume it's available in the UK. :-)
* You can move back and forth in audio files.
posted by donut at 6:15 AM on December 21, 2006

I have been much happier with my iPod since I installed Rockbox. Unfortunately it doesn't support the newest iPods (they have drastically different guts inside).
posted by thedward at 6:56 AM on December 21, 2006

I am a linux guy, and I have a Cowon iAudio X5L. The device itself will mount as an external HD and you can just drag files back and forth. Works great.

I loaded Rockbox on this device and it works excellent. The Cowon works fine with Linux right out of the box, but Rockbox has a nicer interface (esp. after loading a skin that supports cover art).

Two major plusses on the Cowon: voice recording and FM radio. I use them both a ton more than I thought I would.

If you do choose to go to the Cowon/Rockbox route, here's a script I wrote that converts all cover.jpg files on my Cowon to 75x75px .bmp, which Rockbox can print to screen:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;



my $dir = "/media/cowon/music";



use File::Find;

&File::Find::find(\&check, $dir);

exit;



sub check {

        if ($File::Find::name =~ /cover\.jpg/i) {

                print "$File::Find::name\n";

                my $file = $File::Find::name;

                my $newfile =  $file;

                $newfile =~ s/jpg$/bmp/;

                my $command = "/usr/bin/convert -geometry 75x75 \"$file\" \"$newfile\"";

                print "$command\n";

                open(PROG, "$command |");

                print while ();

                close(PROG);

        }

}

posted by mcstayinskool at 7:09 AM on December 21, 2006

sorry about all those newlines. It didn't look like that in preview. I blame the <pre> tag
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:10 AM on December 21, 2006

I'll point out that gtkPod works great on my linux notebook. Although it requires me to use thier interface to load up music.
posted by niteHawk at 7:17 AM on December 21, 2006

Rockbox now supports all iPods but the 80 GB and the Nano 2. You can find a list here.

My iPod is much cooler with Rockbox on it now. Oggs live!
posted by ActionOxford at 9:44 AM on December 21, 2006

iPod is fully supported on linux. Check out amarok for all your music needs. It's probably the best music application out there, on any OS¹.



¹:limited exposure to itunes and various windows applications like jriver media center and music match jukebox. ymmv.
posted by aeighty at 11:19 AM on December 21, 2006

Yeah, I think it's kind of ridiculous that iRiver stopped supporting all of the awesome things that they used to. I have an old iHP 20GB and I love it. Basically, when I was looking for an MP3 player, my goals were: looks like a plain USB drive and lets me organize my MP3s exactly as they are in my HD file structure, plays OGG and MP3, records from mic-in and line-in, good battery life.

The iHP easily met all these goals, but their newer players have taken away some of my favorite features.
posted by atomly at 11:34 AM on December 21, 2006

If you're willing to buy used, you can still get an old iriver. I just bought an h340 from eBay. The Rio Karma is another old device that has the features you define as necessary, and are Linux compatible, with some effort. (You can transfer songs slowly through an ethernet interface to the dock just by installing a Java app for that purpose; you can mount it as a USB drive with significant effort.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:45 PM on December 21, 2006

Watch out for Archos. They make neat players, but the hardware quality is abysmal. I had a Gmini 20G player, but I gave up on it after having to get three replacements in six months. All three of them would suddenly turn off at random moments, which is incredibly obnoxious in a music player. I hated it so much that I bought another player and got rid of the Archos entirely, less than a year after buying it. From the Amazon reviews, I'd say that I'm not the only one who has a problem with Archos, either.

I now have a Creative Zen Touch 40G player. I use it under Linux with gnomad2. I really like it, and I'd buy another Creative player for sure. This one has been inexpensive, utterly reliable, and easy to use, though the touch slider takes some getting used to. It doesn't do ogg/FM/voice, there are a few things I wish it could do (like move to the next album on the drive after finishing the current one) and you do need to use special software to move files on and off, but if what you want is a cheap, simple, and roomy player, an older Creative model might be worth looking into. If you can find one, the model I have ought to be dirt cheap by now.
posted by vorfeed at 1:42 PM on December 21, 2006

I forgot to mention: you can move within files using the Creative Zen Touch, and it remembers where you were if you turn it off and then on again, so it would work for podcasts. If you're listening to a whole lot of long files like podcasts or audiobooks, though, the mp3 player feature you really want to have is usually called "bookmarking". The Zen Touch doesn't have it, but some of the newer Creatives do, as do some of the Rio models.
posted by vorfeed at 1:49 PM on December 21, 2006

I would recommend you check out the http://www.anythingbutipod.com forums. I also second the Rockbox compatible players.
posted by imjosh at 1:50 PM on December 21, 2006

You've already marked your best answer, but for the record (and as I've said before), my iriver works great on linux using easyh10.

On a side note, as time goes on I'm loving seeing just how many people are seriously considering sidestepping to Linux as opposed to 'upgrading' to Vista.
posted by chrissyboy at 5:31 PM on December 21, 2006

oh, and dapreview is a great site for comparitive reviews.
posted by chrissyboy at 5:33 PM on December 21, 2006

I can also vouch for Rockbox.

If you're up to the task of making your own, though, this might interest you. Not only Linux-compatible, the player itself is open-source. The kit doesn't come with a screen, but I believe you can rig one up for it.

I swear I saw another one of these somewhere that did have a screen, but I can't find it for the life of me. Sorry.
posted by Spike at 6:31 PM on December 21, 2006

Thank you all for your responses. I had actually seen the Cowon iAudio and been impressed by the specs, but I didn't know anything about the brand, so it's good to hear that it is a good product. Unfortunately, it seems like their support for Britain is not very good (from an Amazon.co.uk review), and the prices are much higher here than in the US.

(Cowon people: if you ever randomly google for things about your player - get your UK act together and you'll get a whole bunch more customers.)

I accidentally put the best answer on the Archos (a slip of the mouse that I didn't realise) - it does look like it fits our needs perfectly (plays audio, nothing else, great price), but it also seems like they have some poor quality control, and problems getting replacements in the UK (they expect you to pay for shipping, according to an Amazon review).

The put it together player looks so cool, but unfortunately a screen is a sina qua non (did I spell that right?) because my husband's main frustration with his shuffle is that he can't chose tracks from the title, and can't see how far he's moved when scanning through tracks (very important for hour long pod-casts).

But again, thank you all - this has given me much more information to make my decision by. (and if anyone has any further suggestions, please feel free to make them).

Oh yes, I'm not going to Vista - I'm not really into compiling my own kernel, but I've just heard too much to freak me out about Vista DRMing my files - I have enough trouble with old files I can't read because I made them years ago with WordPerfect 5 or 6, why would I want files that I can't read on my husband's linux box? So yes, MS is just making Linux converts with its idioticy.
posted by jb at 5:06 AM on December 22, 2006

Don't know if you can find it over the pond, but my wife and I both have Dell DJs -- I have a Gen 1 and she has the Gen 2. I've played around with IPods, and I can honestly say that I prefer the DJ's interface and control scheme.

Dell's digital MP3 payers were manufactured by Creative, so there is some support for the Linux crowd.

There's even a Wikipedia page with links to the Linux software.
posted by Jim T at 8:50 AM on December 22, 2006

Props on swearing off Vista - my SO and I have done the same thing after reading one too many DRM reports.

Good luck with your new player!
posted by Spike at 10:38 AM on December 22, 2006

I can't make any specific player suggestion, but I do suggest running the model name of any player you consider through Ubuntu Forums to get an idea of the amount of work you'd have to go through to get it to work.

Also, not to go too far off-topic, but compiling your own kernel isn't really necessary to use Linux. Many distributions include processor-optimized kernel packages that work well enough for basic desktop use.
posted by concrete at 2:35 PM on December 23, 2006

ubuntu for teh win.
posted by chrissyboy at 6:13 PM on December 23, 2006

Well, it's my thread, so I guess I can talk Linux if I want to : ) Who else will get annoyed for going off-topic? (except those who do on principle)

I'm aware that compiling your own kernel is optional these days (I was using it mostly as humorous overexageration - I could have just said "you have to...config it", but the tone of voice from the switch parody is hard to do online). But Linux geeks tend to sometimes underestimate just how much knowledge it takes to run Linux, because they are used to it. It's like how people who know how to cook don't understand other people getting confused when the book says "cream butter and sugar until fluffy". (Mmm...christmas cookies). See, I'm not really entirely sure what a kernel is. (My ignorance, I know and I'm not proud, but it is an ignorance one I share with many people).

Ubuntu does look like it is moving in the right direction - but my husband still does have some problems with it (no flash right now, and the anti-virus hasn't been updated in a while). But I'm even willing to work on my computer a little more than many people - I've had friends and relatives who you have to talk through installing simple programs. There is no way that they can make the switch without support.

My dream world would be one in which switching to Linux is really as easy as switching to OpenOffice, but maybe that's asking too much. Or maybe I just understand office programs better than operating systems.

--------------------------

That said: back on the MP3 front - after doing some research, my husband and I realised that we liked the Cowon player, but it's much more expensive in the UK than in the US, and their service record here is not good.

In fact, the best combination of price and quality (looking at review sites, etc) we could find was the 20 GB iPod. It's £20 cheaper than a Cowon (that's $40 CND), and we know we can get service. And we have confirmed (with my mini) that his version of amarok (Ubuntu) does talk to iPods just fine.

Thanks again for the advice - and please feel free to continue with the Vista bashing.
posted by jb at 10:32 AM on December 25, 2006

Adobe Flash 9 beta works fine in FireFox for me on Ubuntu - the occasional glitch every so often but nothing major. There was a digg article on the easiest method of installing it (pretty much unpack the extension and copy it to the right folder) but I can't seem to find it at the mo.

And if memory serves, Clam wasn't updating via Ubuntu's update checker for me but did from within the program itself, dunno if that's any use to you.

Enjoy your ipod and the rest of Christmas Day :)
posted by chrissyboy at 10:55 AM on December 25, 2006