MP3 Player, what kind? please help!

[DevilGirl]

Originally Posted by BailOut

Doh! My mistake, all. I was still waking up and I confused my old stock stereo with the aftermarket one I have now. Sorry about that.

As has been pointed out, you would get 700MB of storage for about $0.15 rather than 4GB at $0.50. Still it's much cheaper and easier to manage than an externalMP3 player.

Except for when you want to change out a specific playlist or rearrange a playlist. Once it's on the CD, it's there. So if you wanted to listen to just one particular song, you need to find it on the cd. I used to make my own cd's all the time. Typically can only get about 15 songs on average on a CD. So that's a lot more CD's to have to carry around inte car, taking up space, not to mention the time flipping through them.

This is why I suggest the iPod. While it is namebrand, and costs a little more, if you go with the Nano, you have a screen, can easily flip through the songs (playlist, genre, artist, song title, etc) to find a particular one you want to listen to at that time. Not to mention the creation/rearrangemet of playlists. Oh, and the new Nano's have a camera and an FM receiver in them (finally!!!).

I've tried (and still have) a Sansa and one other than I can't remember the brand of. I found them to be garbage. The use of external batteries means having to have a constant supply of batteries with you (major pain, at least I found it that way). If Sansa or the others makes any with internal rechargable batteries, you're better off with one of those, but I still say iPod FTW!

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by DevilGirl

Except for when you want to change out a specific playlist or rearrange a playlist. Once it's on the CD, it's there. So if you wanted to listen to just one particular song, you need to find it on the cd. I used to make my own cd's all the time. Typically can only get about 15 songs on average on a CD. So that's a lot more CD's to have to carry around inte car, taking up space, not to mention the time flipping through them.

I think you're speaking about making an audio CD when what I'm speaking of is loading up a data CD with 700MB of MP3s arranged in any folders (which are used as lists) you like, played randomly, in sequence, or by finding the one song you like (which would, by default, be in alphabetical order in whatever folder you placed it in, making it quite easy to locate).

If you ever want to make changes just burn another $0.15 CD-R. This is exactly what I did until my OEM stereo stopped working properly.

[talnlnky]

I've had mp3 capable decks since 2001. mp3 cd's are cool in the sense that you can back up literally 10CD's on one cd... or if you do a giant mix... you can get A LOT of good songs on one disc... talking in the range of 150-200 on average depending on song length and encoding process.

The problem I had with them is...
Usually decks will only do random play within a folder. So if organize the songs by type (ie. rap, rock, techno) then if you put it on random and are in the rock folder you will ONLY hear rock... sometimes I want to hear it all. And if you don't organzie the songs into folders somehow you end up with 200 or so songs all in the same directory and its a pain in the butt to find that one song you want to hear (unless you know which track it is.... and have a remote to enter in the 3 digit number.

Also...mp3 discs take longer to load and start playing... they are slightly delayed. An mp3 player shouldn't have any delay, turn on, push aux button... push play and you have sound.

Something I once started to do was actually backup all my cd's in mp3 format and then burn them to cd's so my car wouldn't have any of the CD's I paid for in it... that way if I got broken into... only my mp3 backup copies would be stolen.

The main downside to an external player such as an ipod is that they run on battery power... and if you hook them up to the cig lighter to charge you will most likely get a ground loop noise.