Well as the topic suggests looking for a mp3 player other than an apple.You might think i have somehing against apple but its just that i have heard a lot abt other brands offering superior players for similar prices as the ipods with better sound quality.So i would just like to know abt them before i buy a mp3 player. My budget is upto 10k, with audio quality being the main criteria. Any suggestions?
Anything except Apple!
- Thread starter jaber
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Creative Muvo2 5 gb is around 10 k 
here ya go
http://creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=215&product=10659
here ya go
http://creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=215&product=10659
superczar
Keymaster
frankly, the sound quality on all mp3 players is about the same....the only discernible difference is perhaps due to the bundled headphones.....as far as my untrained ears can make out, even a cheap chinese flash player sounds almost the same as my ipod if i use the same earbuds......perhaps due to the fact that most of us listen to audio not better than 192 kbps thereby cancelling out whatever difference would be there due to the better s/n ratio on the irivers and muvos of the world.....
Anyway, i'd still suggest you a ipod just for the fact that the startup times and ease of navigation are unmatched on any other audio player....if u still have some many left at the end, go for a decnet set of earbuds as they perhaps make the biggest difference to the sound quality of porta players...
BTW a 20 gig photo (not sure bout the street prices of the videopods) ipod was arnd 12K street price in chennai till a few months back
Anyway, i'd still suggest you a ipod just for the fact that the startup times and ease of navigation are unmatched on any other audio player....if u still have some many left at the end, go for a decnet set of earbuds as they perhaps make the biggest difference to the sound quality of porta players...
BTW a 20 gig photo (not sure bout the street prices of the videopods) ipod was arnd 12K street price in chennai till a few months back
ipod is good but not the best , if u read the reviews the Sony 20 gig NW-HD5 is the best sounding mp3 player available besides it has upto 40 hours battery life. The next generation of high capacity HDD based Sony player is already out and is gonna be retailing from 7th november , its the NW-A3000 , a neat looking player with OLED display .
The NW-HD5 is reconnized as a removable drive in windows XP , but you cannot drag and drop songs , u need to use the propriety software . Good for data storage , since u dont need to install software in every machine u wanna get/give data .
The major gripe here is that incase u put a song on the NW-HD5 , u cannot copy it back to the computer . This is due to DRM ( Digital Rights Management). Yea thatz only when u use the Propriety software to play the music on the player ,
The creative's also have excellent audio quality , be it any . You have the zen micro 4,5,6 GB ( removable battery, FM ,voice recorder) , then u have the 20 giger Zen touch with 24 hour battery life ( non removable battery, no FM and line recording) which is now phasing out for the Zen sleek , again a 20 giger and adds the features of FM, Voice recorder to the line of the 20 gigers which were absent in the previous generations of high capacity Zen's ( like the Zen NX , Zen Xtra , Zen touch ) . These babies ( the HDD based ones )need s/w to be installed on the computer before u can move things around.
The Cowon iaudio X5L ( previously known as X5, now comes with a new variant X5L which has upto 35 hours battery life ) has also excellent audio quality and has many features too. The best part is it plays various formats like ogg vorbis , FLAC ( Free lossless audio codec ) besides the regular mp3 ,wma, etc . Shows up as a removable drive , supports windows dragging and dropping .
This baby doesnt supprt ID3 tagging , not a very serious offence , but if your the " I carry my own playlist kinda person ", this lil bump wudnt even get noticed .I personally think its no biggie .
Here are the players which support FLAC : Portable/Handheld:
COWON's iAUDIO M3 and iAUDIO X5
iRiver iHP-120,iHP-140 via the Rockbox firmware replacement.
Rio Karma
about FLAC : FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo) just like you would an MP3 file.
http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html
Then there are the mighty Iriver's , very good audio quality again , i have time and again told on TE that the H320/H340 was one mighty b**ch ass niggaz , its made way for the H10 which isnt as good as it predecessor. Anyway someone told me that its available at heera panna i.e if ur from mumbai. The H320 shows up as a removeable drive , supports dragging and dropping , has line out/ line in all packed in a small frame hardly thicker the ipod by a few mirco millimeters and a LCD remote to top the icing with a cherry . In all terms this was one mighty b**ch .
A major gripe here is the NO " on the fly " playlists . Now this feature missing is a sucker and sooner or later ur gonna be a lil unhappy about it , the scrolling also isnt very fast , which wud make going through a very long list a tedious task .
On a very personal note , I had the Creative Zen NX 20 giger, and i have heard almost all the ipod variants of all the generations , the Creative had much better audio quality , yea the zen nx was a lil more thicker and not as cosmetically appealing as the ipod , but then that doesnt matter to me .
If you ask me what i wud go for , I wud say " Iaudio X5L " . 20 gigs , colour screen , audio out , very expansive format support , neat looking , FM & voice recorder ( this feature is a particularly good when u wanna record classroom lectures ) , has this feature called the " USB host " where u can straight away hook up a digital camera through a USB port on the unit and transfer files , hence eliminating the need of a computer , but then who doesnt have a computer
, so i dont even consider this feature , on a serious note , its good when ur carrying around a digital camera , the memory gets full , then u can dump the stuff on the 20/30 giger X5L. Gives me the pleasure of using it as a portable HDD , shows up as removable storage and doesnt require drivers .
Plays video's and the cherry ---> 35+ hours battery life , whoops , killer
.
The NW-HD5 is reconnized as a removable drive in windows XP , but you cannot drag and drop songs , u need to use the propriety software . Good for data storage , since u dont need to install software in every machine u wanna get/give data .
The major gripe here is that incase u put a song on the NW-HD5 , u cannot copy it back to the computer . This is due to DRM ( Digital Rights Management). Yea thatz only when u use the Propriety software to play the music on the player ,
The creative's also have excellent audio quality , be it any . You have the zen micro 4,5,6 GB ( removable battery, FM ,voice recorder) , then u have the 20 giger Zen touch with 24 hour battery life ( non removable battery, no FM and line recording) which is now phasing out for the Zen sleek , again a 20 giger and adds the features of FM, Voice recorder to the line of the 20 gigers which were absent in the previous generations of high capacity Zen's ( like the Zen NX , Zen Xtra , Zen touch ) . These babies ( the HDD based ones )need s/w to be installed on the computer before u can move things around.
The Cowon iaudio X5L ( previously known as X5, now comes with a new variant X5L which has upto 35 hours battery life ) has also excellent audio quality and has many features too. The best part is it plays various formats like ogg vorbis , FLAC ( Free lossless audio codec ) besides the regular mp3 ,wma, etc . Shows up as a removable drive , supports windows dragging and dropping .
This baby doesnt supprt ID3 tagging , not a very serious offence , but if your the " I carry my own playlist kinda person ", this lil bump wudnt even get noticed .I personally think its no biggie .
Here are the players which support FLAC : Portable/Handheld:
COWON's iAUDIO M3 and iAUDIO X5
iRiver iHP-120,iHP-140 via the Rockbox firmware replacement.
Rio Karma
about FLAC : FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo) just like you would an MP3 file.
http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html
Then there are the mighty Iriver's , very good audio quality again , i have time and again told on TE that the H320/H340 was one mighty b**ch ass niggaz , its made way for the H10 which isnt as good as it predecessor. Anyway someone told me that its available at heera panna i.e if ur from mumbai. The H320 shows up as a removeable drive , supports dragging and dropping , has line out/ line in all packed in a small frame hardly thicker the ipod by a few mirco millimeters and a LCD remote to top the icing with a cherry . In all terms this was one mighty b**ch .
A major gripe here is the NO " on the fly " playlists . Now this feature missing is a sucker and sooner or later ur gonna be a lil unhappy about it , the scrolling also isnt very fast , which wud make going through a very long list a tedious task .
On a very personal note , I had the Creative Zen NX 20 giger, and i have heard almost all the ipod variants of all the generations , the Creative had much better audio quality , yea the zen nx was a lil more thicker and not as cosmetically appealing as the ipod , but then that doesnt matter to me .
If you ask me what i wud go for , I wud say " Iaudio X5L " . 20 gigs , colour screen , audio out , very expansive format support , neat looking , FM & voice recorder ( this feature is a particularly good when u wanna record classroom lectures ) , has this feature called the " USB host " where u can straight away hook up a digital camera through a USB port on the unit and transfer files , hence eliminating the need of a computer , but then who doesnt have a computer
, so i dont even consider this feature , on a serious note , its good when ur carrying around a digital camera , the memory gets full , then u can dump the stuff on the 20/30 giger X5L. Gives me the pleasure of using it as a portable HDD , shows up as removable storage and doesnt require drivers . Plays video's and the cherry ---> 35+ hours battery life , whoops , killer
.
well i will say no answer to video-iPOD.
and about quality yes you need quality headphone and properly encoded songs.
here in MAC they have many headphones range from 1000 till 35000....
yes headphone for 35000....
i have taken audio-technica one of 5000 and it rocks...
when you make full volume it vibrate like anything and effect and clarity is sexy.............
they have few amplifiers connected to dock of ipod and all these headphones are connected to them..
you just listen the quality and power of 512kbps encoded songs you will forget everything. that amplifier costs almost 85000 rs......
but quality with bose speakers and audio technica / sony / panasonic headphone is simply great..........
you cat compare it to anything....
well again it is your choice..
and about quality yes you need quality headphone and properly encoded songs.
here in MAC they have many headphones range from 1000 till 35000....
yes headphone for 35000....
i have taken audio-technica one of 5000 and it rocks...
when you make full volume it vibrate like anything and effect and clarity is sexy.............
they have few amplifiers connected to dock of ipod and all these headphones are connected to them..
you just listen the quality and power of 512kbps encoded songs you will forget everything. that amplifier costs almost 85000 rs......
but quality with bose speakers and audio technica / sony / panasonic headphone is simply great..........
you cat compare it to anything....
well again it is your choice..
hey im also on the same budget, and after a lot of thinking, ive settled for the ipod nano 4gb. no doubt, the iriver is better in terms of audio quality, but i still need a good interface, and most importantly, color display
the iriver h10 fits the picture, but not the budget (think its arnd 15k). also, irivers bundle sennheiser earphones. so technically , getting a sennheiser should make the ipod sound a lot better
the iriver h10 fits the picture, but not the budget (think its arnd 15k). also, irivers bundle sennheiser earphones. so technically , getting a sennheiser should make the ipod sound a lot better
superczar
Keymaster
the bundled sennheisers are the cheapest sennheisers available and thr quality is the sam as the buds that come with the ipod.....
BTW, one small observation....do use the buds that plug on to the earphones.....they improve the bass reproduction dramatically by ensuring a snug fit in the ear.....
I feel that the ipod shuffles are horribly overpriced, but not the normal HDD based ones which are marginally overpriced
if u push up ur budget a little, u should be able to get the 20gig ipod in the gray market.....
And to reiterate what I said before, the ipod wins hands down on one overlooked parameter, the startup time!
BTW, one small observation....do use the buds that plug on to the earphones.....they improve the bass reproduction dramatically by ensuring a snug fit in the ear.....
I feel that the ipod shuffles are horribly overpriced, but not the normal HDD based ones which are marginally overpriced
if u push up ur budget a little, u should be able to get the 20gig ipod in the gray market.....
And to reiterate what I said before, the ipod wins hands down on one overlooked parameter, the startup time!
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