Non-iPod Flash DAP/MP3 That Plays WAVs?

March 9, 2007 7:36 PM

Best non-iPod flash MP3 player that will play WAV files and allows drag-and-drop?

I have owned several MP3 players/DAPs and have had bad luck finding one that does what I want.

I listen to some meditation tracks that recommend WAV format due to some binaural encoding. Ripping them from CD to WAV is no problem...finding a player that will play WAV has been problematic.

My iPod Shuffle would play WAV...but it had no screen and required me to use the oh-so-annoying spyware 'iTunes' to transfer tracks. Most other flash players don't seem to support WAV at all.

I had high hopes for the Sansa c240 I just bought...it says it plays WAV format, but when i copied one over the song wasn't visible. i wrote to tech support and they informed me that it only plays voice-recorded WAVs! plus, if i want to play non-DRM WMAs i have to sync them from windows media player...drag-and-drop only works for MP3! highly annoying.

i want a mass-storage flash player, preferable with an expansion slot for micro-SD, windows-compatible, that will allow me to drag-and-drop files, and that will play WAVs ripped from CDs. i like sony products but they are like apple: transferring any sound files requires you to go through their proprietary software. i like this sansa - direct USB is preferable to me - but how do i know if their WAV support actually means it will play CD-ripped WAVs?

any advice is most appreciated.

posted by jjsonp to technology (11 comments total)

I'm not sure that there are many players at the moment that take micro-SD.

I have a Cowon U2 which has served me pretty well. Most/all Cowon players are mass-storage compliant and don't care what OS you're using. Cowon claims the player supports WAV, but I can't verify this... perhaps I'll give it a try this weekend.
posted by selfnoise at 8:07 PM on March 9, 2007

Here is a pretty good roundup of flash based players. Creative and the Cowon look like your best bet.
posted by sophist at 8:48 PM on March 9, 2007

I have two Cowon players and I love them both. A little 'AA' powered 2Gb Flash G3 and a larger 30Gb Hard Disk X5.

I love them both. The are USB Mass Storage devices, so they just look like a Hard Disk and you can drag and drop to your hearts content. The play almost everything, Ogg, Flac, WAV, Mp3, WMA. Some also do the MPEG4 Video thing, but I don't use that much. They also have FM radio, Voice recording, Radio Recording, Text File viewing, Picture viewing.

I've played CD ripped WAV files with no problem. Or you could save some space and convert the WAVs to Flac. Since Flac is lossless compression you won't loose the 'binaural encoding'.

I use Linux and Solaris exclusively, these players are the *bomb*.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:55 PM on March 9, 2007

Cowon here, as well!
posted by anaelith at 9:02 PM on March 9, 2007

I have a Cowon iAudio X5 and I love it. I thas 30gb of storage and has a ton a features, but it is not flash based.

Still Cowon make some great products.
posted by idlm at 9:28 PM on March 9, 2007

The Sansa I had froze for no reason within 5 minutes of starting it up. I'd be wary of the mp3 players they have. I got a Zen V Plus and love it. It's durable and the price is good. This site helped alot. anything but ipod. They give pretty good reviews and have a forum so you can find out the problems with something before you shell out the cash.
posted by Attackpanda at 11:19 PM on March 9, 2007

MicroSD? The good thing about that is that nearly any MicroSD card, put in a card reader, turns into a mass storage device. The bad thing is that I can't think of any mp3 players that use the format. My cellphone takes MicroSD and plays .mp3s, but not .wavs. Other cellphones, though, might be worth considering.

I used to love iRiver players, but if I were buying an mp3 player today, it would probably be a Cowon.

And, while I'm no Apple lover, I feel compelled to point out that there are quite a few ways (Winamp's ml_ipod plugin, Ephpod, Vpod, etc.) to use one without using iTunes.

What's binaural encoding? I'm a little bit confused--it must be different than plain old stereo, but, unless these are SACDs or something, you've only got two channels of output.
posted by box at 5:30 AM on March 10, 2007

I'm a big fan of the USB stick drive mp3 players. The one I use currently is a Samsung YP-U1 1gig and it's worked out really well for me, though occasionally when dragging and dropping files they don't register for some reason and I have to do it again - this is fairly rare though. And it's got the USB connector built right in, so you can connect it up to anything at the drop of a hat. Supposedly it supports WAV files, though the only ones I've listened to are ones that it's actually recorded.

The only thing I really miss is an FM radio, which my last player had (a SanDisk 1gig player), but that needed a cable and an AAA battery (the Smasung charges off of the USB), so it's a fair trade off.
posted by Artw at 8:59 AM on March 10, 2007

Have you tried using ephpod to load the tracks on to the shuffle?
posted by zabuni at 9:24 AM on March 10, 2007

Get a Rockbox-Compatible flash player. Rockbox will even playback some compressed WAV formats that save space without compromising the original encoding.
posted by meehawl at 1:34 PM on March 10, 2007

how about a cheap Pocket PC? Windows Mobile has Windows Media Player which will play WAV files.
posted by indigo4963 at 9:27 AM on March 12, 2007