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.

[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 :-)

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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 !