But since the lights went out I’ve never been the same

[venta]

Yesterday I had one of those moments where I realise I have a very specific opinion on something - but no real justification for it, and no clear idea where I got it from.

So, you, my dear self-selecting sample of guinea pigs, have the opportunity to prove me right. Or wrong. But I'm not going to tell you which is which. I'd hate to bias my otherwise-scientific survey.

I'm asking here about portable mp3 players (or mp3-a-likes). If you use your computer to play mp3s at you at home, or have some form of mp3 monster in the car, that's not what I meant.

[Poll #442057]

Comments

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

I have a Muvo from Creative. 304 songs in one tiny little box. Mmmm I love my Muvo.

[diffrentcolours]

I find the iPod interface very annoying. I prefer the interface of just about every player I've used.

And there's that whole Digital Restriction Management thing which means I won't be buying Apple any time soon.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Digital Restriction Management?

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

It's like Digital Rights Management, which you can Google for, except that it approaches the purpose of DRM in a cynical manner pleasingly reminiscent of Orwell's use of "doublethink" to highlight certain tactics of the political class.

aliter: It's software designed to prevent you from using digital content in ways not approved by the copyright holder of that content.

[diffrentcolours]

The copy protection thing, which means you can't play AAC files from iTunes on non-iPod players. DRM is a bad idea for everybody - this article is quite a good read. Other effects include dodgy market pricing, unilateral restrictions on purchasing terms, shutting out competing music vendors, and locking you out from your "own" purchased music if your iBook has to be sent back for repair.

You can apparently buy some non-DRM tracks from iTunes, but I personally am not going to support a company which has such a huge investment in selling me restricted music while treating me like a criminal.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

If you're likely to want interoperability between the devices you're no more likely to choose DRM'd AAC than .ogg. iPod plays mp3 just fine, I have a 30 Gb collection (legal!) and have never bought anything from the iTunes store. DRM's irrelevent as far as day-to-day use of the iPod goes.

[diffrentcolours]

I believe I made that point later down the thread. But I understand that it's perfectly reasonable to refuse to give your money to a company because you don't approve of their business practices, whether or not those practices directly affect you or not.

I also believe that Ogg Vorbis is significantly better supported on portable music players than FairTunes AAC, going by this list ;)

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

ipods - about equally as good as the comparably priced players. So far I haven't found much of a functionality difference between my creative mini and a mini iPod. Oh, mine has an FM radio - big deal.
iTunes has started annoying me (it is what is on the Mac mini) but then the creative software also has its quirks.
The creative mini glows blue and comes in black - all very important :-)

[kauket.livejournal.com]

Actually the FM radio would be the thing to sell it to me, if the prices were the same. I like XFM, I have no means of hearing it when I travel.

But then I have no music when I travel because I am poor.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Rings on your fingers?
And bells on your toes?

(Although how you then walk is anybody's guess. Maybe that's why you'd need a cock horse to ride!)

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

I've got a Creative Jukebox 2 (10 gig). angelhands said "Why do you want one of those?" when I first ordered it. After a long journey round the south of England and round Wales its purpose became apparent. "Never ending music without having a car full of CD's or tapes!"

If I were to lose it today I would have to seal myself in a box until it was returned.....

[triskellian]

(Need an ipod icon ;-)

"Some other things which I will comment about": I want to say "indispensable", but since I've only had it for a couple of weeks, it seems a bit much. Oh, and some sort of answer along the lines of "I already had an ibook and used itunes, so getting an mp3 player which didn't start with an i would've been daft".

And I was thinking to myself last night that I'd have to remember to make the following comment on your next entry, and that I'd have to apologise for it being OT, but it's actually not!

I was innocently driving along yesterday, with my ipod plugged into my car's cassette deck, playing my "bouncy" playlist on shuffle, when on came a song I didn't recognise, which confused me because I didn't think there were any such songs on my ipod. A moment later, all became clear: it was "Music for girls", from BAYD a few weeks back, and it's lovely. Hurrah for BAYD! And why was it absent last week?

[venta.livejournal.com]

(Need an ipod icon ;-)

Don't you mean iCon ?

:)

I'm glad to see Music For Girls getting the respect it deserves, and hurrah for it finding itself in a "bouncy" playlist :)

BAYD was absent last week on account of me being off sick on Friday. It hopes to make a triumphal return this week.

[diffrentcolours]

"I already had an ibook and used itunes, so getting an mp3 player which didn't start with an i would've been daft"

So an iBead or iRiver then? ;)

[triskellian]

:-P

(Damnit. Forgot about iRiver and didn't know about iBead.)

[diffrentcolours]

I am getting into the habit of listening to full albums more, though I still default to just listening on random.

[narenek.livejournal.com]

I currently listen to complete albums. I keep meaning to put together some playlists (the absolute requisite is a "Bouncy" playlist to help keep one awake when driving at night) but suspect that I'll want to keep listening to albums because I generally considered them as complete works rather than a sequence of individual tunes.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I have a 'Dangerous Driving' playlist that serves a similar purpose.

It contains both Killing In The Name and Birdhouse In Your Soul...

[wimble.livejournal.com]

My Muvo is only 128 Meg, which comes to about 40 to 60 tracks. So it's easier to punt entire albums to it than pick up a selection of tracks. Another example of my putting off the decision making (ooh, should I have track 3 or track 6 off this album?) :)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I [heart] shuffle mode. Why should I suffer for someone else's art?

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

iPod is nothing special without iTunes. The whole point is to be able to say to your 40 Gb collection "make me a playlist with these artists, this long, which I have personally rated between 3 and 5 stars, in this genre, with stuff that I have not listened to for 2 weeks".

Does the Creative software do that?

For me iTunes is a tool that reminds me of all of the great music I have. If I only ever see 10% of my music collection, then I will only ever put that 10% on my mp3 player. The iTunes functionality is a convenience that I am willing to pay for, it's what made the deal for me at the time.

iTunes is not nearly so good as an mp3 player for your computer though - far too much overhead. But at the same time, it does pick playlists nicely.

Downsides of the iPod are lack of direct drag-and-drop functionality and the lock-in to either WinXP/2000 or MacOS. I hear the iRiver can be mounted by Linux and files transferred directly, which is a big plus.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

The whole point is to be able to say to your 40 Gb collection "make me a playlist with these artists, this long, which I have personally rated between 3 and 5 stars, in this genre, with stuff that I have not listened to for 2 weeks".

That may currently be a killer app, but won't be for long. It wouldn't take much of a change to Winamp to make it quite easy to create the playlist you wanted - basically you'd have to be able to put a playlist into the "media library" view so that you can sort it by rating, chop out those below 3 stars, sort it by genre and chop out all the ones you don't want etc. Other media players will be copycatting iTunes soon enough.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Does the Creative software do that?

Yes. And doesn't rip to AAC by default :-)

I did look at it properly eventually and got round to putting real music and playlists on my toy :-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I don't listen to audio on my MP3 player and consequently was unable to find a suitable answer to one of the questions !