Help with buying a MP-3

[Terry7]

I am new to MP-3 players. I want music, radio, video, and books. I know that librarys dont let you down load things. But can you down load at other places that have computers like coffee houses, ect. I want to know if I can down load new stuff while I am on the trail. Where are the best web sites for music, video, and books?

[Bob S]

Libraries do let you download things, I see people downloading things to USB drives all the time.

If your MP3 player requires device specific computer programs to install songs on it as my Palm Pilot does I don’t think you will be able to upload music to it. But if you have one that can use Windows and just download from a web site directly to your player I see any library able to fill your needs.

I don’t download music so I don’t have any sites to recommend to you. But I’m sure others will.

[berninbush]

For free books (e-text) www.projectgutenberg.org (http://www.projectgutenberg.org)
For free audio books www.librivox.org (http://www.librivox.org)
For paid audio books www.audible.com (http://www.audible.com)


I know www.itunes.com (http://www.itunes.com) , www.rhapsody.com (http://www.rhapsody.com), and www.walmart.com (http://www.walmart.com) all have downloadable music (for a fee).

[Bob S]

I have downloaded lots of free e-books from here http://www.memoware.com/

[sloopjonboswell]

i got a whole new music library on my ipod in hanover. just found a college student with itunes and a boss hard drive. once i was out hiking though, i wish i had gotten the player that runs on batteries instead of having to plug it into a computer.

[ScottP]

You won't find an mp3 player that can hold a charge and have video, that I know of.

The longest battery life belongs to the Moby Blu, at 153 hours. http://web.mac.com/mobiblu/Site/MobiBLU.html I used this mp3 player on the PCT and absolutely loved it. I won't use it again, because I hate towns, and don't even want to spend 4 hours once a week in town waiting for my mp3 player to charge.

The iRiver T60 runs for a long time (19 hours, i think they claim) on one AAA battery. I plan to use this MP3 Player for next year.

Some internet cafes will let you download and hook up a USB device, but most won't. You should really try not to mess with the computers of hostel owners or trail angels. Your best bet is to re-encode everything at a lower bitrate so that you can fit more data onto your MP3 player. You could also buy two and flip flop them with your support person, who can load new material onto your mp3 player.

[BrianLe]

Part of the planning process for me is to gather audio material ahead of time; my MP3 player has a 2 GB capacity; if I use up everything I can fit on there, I'll mail it home and ask my wife to put new content on it (content that I'll have obtained ahead of time). Better would be an MP3 player that uses some sort of micro/mini SD card to allow swapping in content, but I didn't find anything that wasn't an unhappy compromise in other ways --- I agree that getting one that uses a standard battery type is paramount.

[johnny quest]

mp3 players are getting pretty inexpensive. what about buying 2 identical, maybe the creative labs type, and have them loaded at home and swapped out via maildrop?

[HikeLite]

B & H photo has a bad review of the iriver T60

[Terry7]

Thanks for the good info. There are so many to chose from. Are any mp3s able to use both regular and rechargable batts?

[Rain Man]

From Yahoo Tech--

Going Green: Solar-Powered MP3/Video Player
Wed Jan 9, 2008

"It's not exactly the sleekest portable media player I've laid eyes on, but it'll outlast your iPod during, say, a 10-day hiking trip in the boonies—and it'll charge your dying cell phone in the process.

"The eMotion EM-SOL1GIG is pretty chunky as media players go: at five inches across, an inch thick, and a hefty 10 ounces, you won't be putting this sucker in your jeans pocket anytime soon. Open it up, however, and you'll find a pair of solar panels that'll charge the player's lithium-ion battery in about three or four hours (good for 17 hours of music playback). Even better, the player comes with a set of six connectors for charging laptops, cell phones, and other portable devices.

Rest of article at this link--
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/11392

Rain:sunMan

.

[doodah man]

On a month long AT section hike last year, I took a Panasonic SV-MP020 player. It is has 2GB of built in flash memory and I was able to fit a little over 600 songs. Amazingly, it gets about 80 hours of play time with a single new AA battery. An added bonus was that 'expired' AA batteries from my camera were still good enough for several hours of music play time when swapped into the player. doodah-man

[ScottP]

Thanks doodah--I now plan on using one of those panasonic mp3 players.

[doodah man]

Thanks doodah--I now plan on using one of those panasonic mp3 players.

ScottP, you are welcome. To add a bit of detail, I just checked and my Panasonic SV-MP020 play list had 40 hours of music with 609 songs. I had done just what you pointed out and custom ripped music from my CDs at a low effective bit rate and also used a low pass filter removing content over 15.2 KHz. I did the filter thing because the file size is smaller due to getting encoded at 32KHz versus the normal 44KHz encoding that accommodates standard 22KHz digital music. Also, because typical ear buds just don't do high frequency, there is no point wasting the bits there (plus at my age, I don't hear much above 16KHz anymore anyhow). In addition to a low bit rate, I used the variable bit rate (VBR) encoding to get maximum benefit out of the bits used. I would guess the average file had an effective bit rate around 110 kBit/sec but could have frames within the track that had as high as 198 kBit/sec. I spent a couple of days playing around with the rip settings to find ones with decent sound quality with minimum file size. doodah-man

[Terry7]

On a month long AT section hike last year, I took a Panasonic SV-MP020 player. It is has 2GB of built in flash memory and I was able to fit a little over 600 songs. Amazingly, it gets about 80 hours of play time with a single new AA battery. An added bonus was that 'expired' AA batteries from my camera were still good enough for several hours of music play time when swapped into the player. doodah-man
Thanks for the good info. I go on the trail for about 5 months,[time is more important than distance] and having to recharge all the time is not what I wanted in a player. I whould rather carry 10 extra batts. and be independent from the towns.

[BrianLe]

The unit I recently got is the Creative MuVo V100 based on a recommendation I read online (here or another site, don't remember). On the whole it's looking like a good choice --- takes a single AAA battery, claims battery life is about 18 hours. 80 hours on the Panasonic unit sounds very high; I wonder how heavy that is?

For comparison, the MuVo V100 is 1.6 oz (46 grams), including the AAA battery. The battery weighs 0.4 oz (11 grams), so the unit without battery is 1.2 oz (35 grams).
So to get something on the order of 80 hours of play time, I guess I would have to carry 3 additional batteries, with a weight total of 2.8 oz (79 grams).

I'd guess that both battery types are equally common (AAA vs. AA). One factor here might be the type of flashlight and/or camera you use, i.e., if either of those uses either battery type. Ideal would be to carry just one type of battery.

The MuVo works with audible.com content, which was important to me (audio books).

The biggest downside I've seen so far is in the software. I have another MP3 player (Rio Carbon) that has a built-in battery, so I didn't consider it for the trail, but in comparison the Muvo V100 is somewhat frustrating. Some things are easier, such as voice recording, but the MuVo has just four folders you can put music into (root plus three pre-defined folder). You can choose which folder your music is playing in, but there's no way to say "play all songs by this artist" or "play this particular album". With a lot of tracks in a given folder, all you can do is linearly skip from one-to-the-next until you find what you're looking for. With the Rio Carbon, you just copy a CD's worth of music automatically into its own folder, and the on-device navigation allow you to choose how you listen to it. Much better.

I suspect that the software for the Creative MuVo's was designed when predecessor units had a lot less memory (space for music). IMO their approach doesn't scale well up to the 2 GB available on the v100 model.

It will work okay for the trail, but FYI.

One thing I'm intrigued about is the (pretty sparse) documentation talks about associating lyrics with a track and the option to view the lyrics scrolling by on their little LCD screen as the song plays. I've not tried this yet, but it's an interesting idea.
Particularly for a lot of spanish-language music I have.

[doodah man]

.... 80 hours on the Panasonic unit sounds very high; I wonder how heavy that is?

....One factor here might be the type of flashlight and/or camera you use, i.e., if either of those uses either battery type. Ideal would be to carry just one type of battery....

BrianLe,
I just weighed my Panasonic SV-MP020 on an accurate 50 gm scale here at work. The player empty was 27.6 gm, the ear buds were 14.9gm, and the lithium AA battery was 15.1gm. For exactly the reason you state, I made sure my mp3 player used the same batteries as my camera. My mp3 player often ends up with lithium batteries because when a set of batteries can no longer deliver the high current demand of the camera, they still have plenty of juice left for hours of music from the low current draw player. With a new alkaline AA battery (~24gm), I have gotten between 75 to 80 hours of play time, depending on EQ & volume settings, etc. doodah-man

[Panzer1]

I have an apple Ipod 2nd generation for 2 1/2 years. The battery finally died. They want $189 to replace battery. I'm done with apple.

Panzer

[aPilgrim]

I have an apple Ipod 2nd generation for 2 1/2 years. The battery finally died. They want $189 to replace battery. I'm done with apple.

Panzer

Buy a battery and put it in yourself. It'll cost you about $25. Here's one link but you can google a ton. I would have given you a more specific link but I don't understand if you have a 2G iPod or 2G iPod Nano. They hold very different batteries. I have replaced batteries on the 2G, 3G and 4G iPod; the directions are on the web and the whole process is no more than 15 minutes.

Why would you want to "be done with Apple"? They produce the best computers and music players on the planet.

[aPilgrim]

Buy a battery and put it in yourself. It'll cost you about $25. Here's one link but you can google a ton. I would have given you a more specific link but I don't understand if you have a 2G iPod or 2G iPod Nano. They hold very different batteries. I have replaced batteries on the 2G, 3G and 4G iPod; the directions are on the web and the whole process is no more than 15 minutes.

Why would you want to "be done with Apple"? They produce the best computers and music players on the planet.

Sorry. Here comes the link:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ipod/

[Chainsaw 08]

The RCA Pearl is the best MP3 player for long-distance hikers.

- AAA battery. No need to charge
- Micro SD slot makes it infinitely expandable
- USB interface built in. No need to carry a cable
- voice recorder for trail notes
- $50

[BrianLe]

Following up on my comment about viewing lyrics to songs on my new Creative MuVo v100, I tried this out, and it works great, with the caveat that it's a bit time consuming to create the LRC (lyric) files for each song. There are a few available online for download, but not many, and unfortunately none for any music I have.
You can pretty easily find lyrics to almost any song online these days, and hopefully you find one that very closely matches exactly how it goes in the actual track. You listen to it real-time, and click a button at the beginning of each line of the song to make sure it stays on track.

Like I said, time consuming. But it works well. For me, it's a great way to maintain/improve my spanish. There are a number of hispanic artists I like, and reading the words while listening to music I enjoy works well, and I think will help some of the more boring trail miles go by faster.

[Bob S]

Following up on my comment about viewing lyrics to songs on my new Creative MuVo v100, I tried this out, and it works great, with the caveat that it's a bit time consuming to create the LRC (lyric) files for each song. There are a few available online for download, but not many, and unfortunately none for any music I have.
You can pretty easily find lyrics to almost any song online these days, and hopefully you find one that very closely matches exactly how it goes in the actual track. You listen to it real-time, and click a button at the beginning of each line of the song to make sure it stays on track.

Like I said, time consuming. But it works well. For me, it's a great way to maintain/improve my spanish. There are a number of hispanic artists I like, and reading the words while listening to music I enjoy works well, and I think will help some of the more boring trail miles go by faster.



Isn’t technology great? All these new toys to play with and consume our money & time. I love it.

[take-a-knee]

The RCA Pearl is the best MP3 player for long-distance hikers.

- AAA battery. No need to charge
- Micro SD slot makes it infinitely expandable
- USB interface built in. No need to carry a cable
- voice recorder for trail notes
- $50

How's the software? I had one of the early RCA Lyras and it was junk.

[Jason of the Woods]

Ipod, Ipod, Ipod

[ScottP]

Ipod, Ipod, Ipod


if you want a player that can only hold enough charge for 1 day's worth of hiking, then takes 4 hours of sitting in town to replenish.

[Chainsaw 08]

How's the software? I had one of the early RCA Lyras and it was junk.Works fine for me. It does not require software installed to add files, if that's what you mean.

[Chainsaw 08]

Ipod, Ipod, Ipodoverpriced, overpromoted, underpowered