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Okay, for Dummy, aka Moi. I went to Borders the other day, and discovered that its once huge music section had shrunk down to almost nothing. And I said, okay, must be time for me to enter the digital age.
Aside from saving some files from CDs to my computer and making little setlists in Windows, I'm really pretty clueless. I've gotten by so far w/o iPods and MP3 players. (well, not entirely true - I got a Sansa clip on Ebay about a year ago but I found the menu impossible. I learned that I had old software in there and never really did anything about it and the thing is so tiny that I've lost it!)
So assume I know nothing. I'm not even completely clear about what an MP3 player does. I mean, I know that an iPod or similar is portable and I can use it w/ earbuds and put anything I want on it, and that most of them have more capacity than I'll ever use. But are all MP3 players portable? What about when I want to play music w/o a headset? Do I need to attach them to speakers? Are there docking stations made for other MP3 players besides iPods?
I'm not a purist about sound, I don't need a phone that plays music, I don't have a large audio collection and I don't need something that plays movies -- I just want to adapt to what's out there now. I have a totally ancient stereo and a boom box currently. I have an old car I bought cheap and all it has is am/fm cassette stereo, so I'm not set up there either!
Sorry for all the questions. I know the info is all out there online, but I'm so far behind the knowledge curve that most of it assumes I know more than I do. If anyone's just in the mood to impart a little basic knowledge and help me put it all together, I'd appreciate it -- thanks!
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Oh, and just for a bit of additional info -- I was looking at the Sony E-Series Walkman 8G as an MP3 player that seems like a good starting place. Any thoughts?
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Uprooted: But are all MP3 players portable?
Nope. Many of them are called "computers." For those, you'll want a large hard drive, and some sort of media library program; iTunes and Winamp are both good, if you're on the PC side.
As with portable cassette players and portable CD players, most portable MP3 players don't have speakers, opting for headphones instead. Also like their antecedents, they can connect to speakers that use a 1/8" plug connector, such as computer speakers. (There are also adapters for car listening, either through the cassette deck -- with which I haven't had much luck -- or the radio.) If your stereo has a "line in" option, then you can patch it through there as well, after a trip to Radio Shack for the appropriate cable.
MP3 boom boxes exist as well. Those outside the iPod family generally use SD cards, which can easily be filled with MP3 files from your computer. (You can get an adapter that lets you access an SD card via USB for ten bucks.)
There are other options as well... my brother has an alarm clock that plays MP3s.
Still, for home listening, I'd say the computer is your best bet.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Shmuel: There are also adapters for car listening, either through the cassette deck -- with which I haven't had much luck -- or the radio.
If your car is less than 5 years old, it may also have a jack to connect directly to the sound system. Then you just need a $5 cable to connect your player.
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One of these people always speaks true. One of these people always speaks false. One of these people answers randomly.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Wow, didn't think anyone would be hanging around the computer on Thanksgiving. Thanks for the responses. Does anyone have an opinion on the Sony I linked to, which is not an iPod, Sansa or Zune, but is pretty inexpensive and seems to have everything I need?
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The Sony E-series is actually pretty good. The interface is a bit unusual, but I like the software and the sound quality. You can get a better price from Amazon right now.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Uprooted: Wow, didn't think anyone would be hanging around the computer on Thanksgiving. Thanks for the responses. Does anyone have an opinion on the Sony I linked to, which is not an iPod, Sansa or Zune, but is pretty inexpensive and seems to have everything I need?
I have an opinion. SONY SUCKS. That is my opinion.
As it happens, we don't get to celebrate 4th of july in CR, but since I'm unemployed and live with 4 other people who have all also just coincidentally quit all their jobs as well (what are the chances right?) and 3 of whom are Americans, we did cook turkey and make apple pie and get drunk, which was fun.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: The Sony E-series is actually pretty good. The interface is a bit unusual, but I like the software and the sound quality. You can get a better price from Amazon right now.
Sony invades our marketplace, and we fall back. Sony assimilates entire stores, and we fall back. The line must be drawn HERE! THIS FAR, NO FURTHER! And IIIIII will make them PAY for what they've developed!
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Heh. I love how Orincoro gets all wound up about evil corporate empires after recommending an iPod. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Umm, okaaayyy. . . Orincoro, if that was a joke then you had me convinced you hated Sony, so as helpful goes, it wasn't (although I did make a note of the "get drunk" part of your post and didn't exactly take it seriously).
Actually, I was seriously considering that Sony (thanks for the Amazon tip, Tom) but I'd sent an email to a friend of mine asking the same stuff. I just heard back from him and he said not to bother buying one because he has several and just bought a Droid and probably won't be using anything else so he'll send me his Sansa if I want it.
Which of course means that I will find mine if he does . . . I may take him up on it, though. If he tells me the menu makes more sense than mine did. Although I bought it because it was tiny, I must say I didn't really care for the smallness of it in practical use.
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Sansa is good, and you can get radios that will play MP3's, as others have said. A lot of home stereo players now have the in line option for them, even. You can even get a bluetooth or wireless option for them, which means you can store your music on a hard drive and use your compter to play thins, wirelessly, thought a home stereo system.
If you have surround sound for DVD/Blurays, you can even sometimes play music though them and it sounds pretty good for normal home listening.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Depending on your needs, you can also just burn MP3s to a CD and play them that way through an MP3 compatable player or stereo, which has the benefit of being harder to lose than all those itty bitty SD cards.
My wife has this bad boy. Svelte, it is not, but it's nigh indestructible and plays MP3s through either a line-in cord connected to an exterior source or through the CD player. It also plugs into a standard power outlet or uses D-cell batteries.
I also have friends who swear by various iterations of the Squeezebox from Logitech.
If you just want something you can carry around with you and slip into a pocket, honestly, there's a ton of products out there that work perfectly well. I will gently suggest you may want to avoid any product that absolutely demands fealty to one media organization software product or another. I have a Disney MixMax; that uses SD cards, plays video as well as audio, and cost about $50 on clearance. The only problem (with any MP3 player) is connecting it to speakers. The benefit of an IPod- sorry, loyalists of other brands- is that it hit the market so early and so hard, and gained such a level of market saturation, that a majority of the companies that make MP3-player-intended speaker systems were thinking of IPod compatability first. Standard headphone-style connections for other MP3 players often seem to rank a distant second. But there are still simple battery-powered speakers you can get that will work just fine; just be sure to get a power source that will work for you and not be dead or unavailable when you need to use it.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: That would be astonishing if true.
Be prepared to be astonished. My first MP3 player was a sony- an MD player. I loved it. The reason I switched to an ipod was that I hated windows and not many devices, especially at the time, were mac compatible and could do all of what the ipod could.
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For those, you'll want a large hard drive, and some sort of media library program; iTunes and Winamp are both good, if you're on the PC side.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
