Please won't you help me to drown out the voices in my head?
January 10, 2007 8:46 AM   Subscribe

Ipod Killer? Qu'est que c'est?

I need to buy a new portable music/video player. I would like it to come with the following features:

1. Support for .flac
2. 40-80 GB capacity
3. Available in UK, hopefully under £250

I have found several players with some of these features, but none with all. I'd also like to avoid buying a player and having to hack it with Rockbox, if possible.
posted by Optamystic to Technology (12 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: It might be useful to list the players you've already looked at and why they don't work for you. For example, a simple google search suggests you might like the iAudio X5 60GB, which is available for around £200 on eBay (you'll pay even less if you can get it shipped from the States).
posted by Deathalicious at 9:01 AM on January 10, 2007


Response by poster: Yeah, I saw that one Deathalicious. Problem is, you need to carry around a separate adapter to charge or add music to the device. The screen is also very small.

I also looked at the Creative Vision M, which would be great except for the lack of flac support.
posted by Optamystic at 9:22 AM on January 10, 2007


Best answer: Go here.

And forget about charging adapters for most players -- Check to see if there's a USB charge-and-sync cable available from a third party. Like this one, for the aforementioned X5.

You're not likely to find support in major brands, there's just not enough money in supporting an obscure open-source standard, no matter how superior to high bitrate MP3s or PCM WAV it may be.
posted by Merdryn at 9:48 AM on January 10, 2007


Also look at Rockbox to see if it runs well on a player that is physically what you want. It plays .flac on most platforms.
posted by oats at 10:12 AM on January 10, 2007


I love my iAudio X5L... Just to third that suggestion.
posted by knave at 10:37 AM on January 10, 2007


Rockbox on the iAudio X5 60GB here works perfectly. Best player I have ever used.
posted by aye at 11:35 AM on January 10, 2007


What about iRiver? I don't know if they're available in the UK.
posted by Brittanie at 3:36 PM on January 10, 2007


Pardon my question if you are sure, but: Are you sure you need FLAC? Unless you're piping the sound into some seriously good equipment (more costly than the music player is), then you're casting pearls to swine.
posted by cmiller at 4:38 PM on January 10, 2007


Response by poster: I just know that FLAC sounds much better than mp3, even through my Sony headphones. Is there a way of encoding in mp3 that approaches that fullness of sound that FLAC seems to bring?
posted by Optamystic at 1:24 AM on January 11, 2007


This thread discusses different standards of mp3 encoding. If you use a high-quality preset like V0 or VBX, you can buy a smaller capacity player and spend the extra cash on a nice pair of earbuds. I suspect you would notice a positive change in the sound quality from upgrading your headphones and sticking to a decent compression scheme.

But should you discover that your ears demand lossless encoding, and you decide to spare the iPod its cruel death, you could consider using Apple Lossless in lieu of FLAC for lossless encoding.
posted by sixacross at 2:57 AM on January 11, 2007


I'll admit that MP3 doesn't sound good for me, either. There's a world of choices between FLAC and the mpeg monstrosity, though. I, for instance, encode everything to Vorbis (q=6; with an Ogg wrapper) and I'm completely satisfied with it. My wife's player (a few years old, iAudio 5, IIRC) plays the tunes well. There are lots of Vorbis players out there.

I'm only trying to point out that FLAC is pretty hard core for a hand-held player and if you change your criteria to be wider, you're not necessarily giving up quality that you can notice.

Good luck.
posted by cmiller at 6:04 AM on January 11, 2007


Response by poster: Many thanks for all the great answers. I bought an iAudio X5 and I'm very happy with it. I will also try the 320 VBR mp3 encoding instead of FLAC.
posted by Optamystic at 3:36 AM on January 15, 2007


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