Off topic! I-Pod, Zune or sony walkman

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I know thare some audiophiles on WP and I need some quality technical advice I can't find it on the web!
I am embarking on entering the MP3 world, my CD player has broken. I want a device that's easy to use and has an excellent sound . I have been researching seven hours on the internet today and I am very confused it's an i-tunes, wma, aac, codec swamp.Help!

You can fit over 2 CDs worth of songs into 1GB! 100% solid state MP3 players can go over 8GB! ALSO, they take less power, are more stable, and are smaller, than CD players! So I would say an MP3 player is a good choice. I have the e200 sandisk series:

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Product ... px?ID=2057

I would say, get an Ipod.
I have a Creative Zen Vision mp3 player. I've had it since last summer. It has a 30gb capacity, and when I bought it, it was on sale for $50.00 less than an Ipod of the same capacity. My mp3 player works well and all, and music sounds great on it...but in retrospect, I wish I would have bought an Ipod instead. There are lots of accessories available for Ipods in a lot of different stores, whereas there are hardly any accessories available for my mp3 player.

However, I read somewhere that the battery on an Ipod dies out within 18 months, and you either have to send in your Ipod to Apple to have the battery replaced (and pay $100.00+ for the new battery), or you simply have to buy a new Ipod.

You can buy aftermarket batteries for the Ipod and just fit it yourself, very simple operation and should cost about 10 pounds uk.

I'd say get an Ipod - they are versatile and Itunes is pretty good. I mostly use mine for podcasts and audiobooks but they are all round pretty good. I'm on my second - had a 30gb gen-5 video Ipod and now have an Ipod Classic 80gb.

My gen-5 I had since they where released and just gave it my mum and its still working fine, was used at least 8 hours a day for all that time and had its battery swapped before I passed it on.

And alot more besides! You can fit over 200 tracks on 1GB.

I have a (Sony) Iawa MP3 player and also frequently use my Sony Ericsson Walkman phone for MP3 - it's easier as only 1 device and if you get 1 with a memory card slot you've still got all your music when you change phones!

Ipod's are fairly good quality but I've heard loads of problems with the batteries and Apple are very elitist too!

I was lazy, so I based it on data compacity. The fact is that I put like 5 movies, and well over 18 other CDs worth of stuff on my little 8GB player. That is over 4CDs per GB, but I wanted to err on the low side. A CD can handle(on average) about 680MB of data. BTW you CAN replace the battery on the sandisk!

I have an iRiver 1GB flash drive MP3 player that runs on a single AA battery(I use rechargeables), I've had it since 2005. One of the buttons stopped working, thankfully a not so important one, and I lost the battery cover but the battery is snug and doesn't fall out so not a real problem. It has great sound and is pretty easy to use. It came with a CD that contains a Manager program required for putting music on the player, but there is a software download that you can put onto the player that will allow you to drag and drop files into the player instead of going through the Manager program.

I used to have a Sony MP3 player that took these hard drive diskettes, it broke in less than a year of use and would skip when I walked around. It had good sound, not as good as the iRiver. It also came with a CD with a required Manager program, no options for changing software on the player, and you had to convert MP3/WMA/etc files to Sony's special music file before you could put music on the diskettes. Sony also limits how often you can put music on a disk/player. So screw Sony.

I was thinking of looking into other MP3 players when my iRiver finally breaks, it'll definitely be another flash player that can take chargeable AA or AAA batteries. I've been looking at the Muvo by Creative Labs.

A minidisc player?

I used to use IPods, I have had three in the past, and didn't like that I could not get Apple to replace the battery on the first one even though it died during the warranty period. I also didn't like that when you buy a song from ITunes, you don't own it, you only rent it. You cannot use the song on another MP3 player unless you can convert it from MP4 to MP3. I now have two Sandisk e200 series MP3 players, and they have FM radio as well as MP3, and they allow you to record a song from the radio (ie if you hear a good song you can record it and ask someone you know what song it is, or use the recording to get the lyrics down right so you can look the song up on one of the lyric websites when you get home,) You can also make a vocal recording, like a reminder to yourself. I like that you can change the battery yourself, although I haven't had to yet. Unlike the Ipod, you cannot listen to the Sandisk while it is recharging, which is the only thing I don't like about it. That's why I have two, because I couldn't hear myself think at work without music to drown out the background noise)

I have found all the accessories I need for the Sandisk, including several jackets (I got the neoprene one, same as I had for my IPods), and a gizmo to make it play over your car stereo speakers through your car radio.

I have the 4GB one (e260) and I used NeoAudio to convert my whole CD collection to MP3's or WMA's, and I now have 531 songs on my player so far, with room for more (I've used 3.71 GB so far).

All in all, I would not recommend the IPod, I would go with the Sandisk.

I would go with an iPod classic. They're available in two colours (black and silver - I would have preferred white, but oh well) and are 250 USD and up.
Don't bother with an iPhone/iTouch if you're just into music. You don't need the add-ons, and they're outrageously expensive.

I have a Zune, 30GB at $200. Everytime there is a software update, things get screwed up but it's otherwise pretty cool. I have a car adapter and a speaker system that recharges the battery. Storing the songs on the Zune software doesn't seem to use up storage on the computer. I only have a fraction of my CD collection in there and still so much free space.

Do you want a CD player or an MP3 player?

If former:

There's not a lot of variety in walkmans...you've just got to shop around for an high-quality one, because they're not in high demand.

Do you want a radio along with it?

If latter:

There's a lot of variety. And they are in very high demand.

How many songs do you want it to hold? (256 MB - 160 GB)

Do you want a screen? If so, do you want a color screen?

Do you want it do do anything other than play MP3s? (photo, video, game, etc. capabilities) If you only want music, but want more capacity, I would recommend an older iPod.

You should also consider brand, warranty/insurance, etc.

I have a Samsung YP-P2:

BTW it's iPod, not ipod, Ipod, IPOD, i-pod, or I-pod.

Specs:

FM radio
FM recording
Voice recording
file browser
custom/preset EQ
three cool menus
wallpaper
games
16.9 widescreen
bluetooth with cell phone connectivity
too many features to list. Go to http://www.samsung.com/my/products/audi ... p_p2ab.asp

Ah yes, that's it. The Net MD Walkman.

Thanks so much for all the informative posts guys!

Just had a quick look at the SanDisk Sansa looks excellent.

Okay I will elaborate on what features I would like and preferences.

-IPods well all my friends have them, I've never liked the canned sound quality or the fact Apple only allow you to "rent" songs.
-Without using itunes where can I buy/download tracks from on the internet, can't locate a reputable site. My friend gets his music free I have no idea how he manages this! Piracy?A grey area.
-If I go for a different brand I won't be able to hook my player up to friends IPod docking systems! (not a major requirement, I don't socialise much!)

Key Features
1. Great sound quality
2. Good software to download music, no scrambled audio!
3. Simple interface easy to use.
4. Colour screen.
5. Equaliser
6. FM radio possibly.
7. Reasonable battery life.
8. Big storage capacity
9. Good after sales
10. Compatibility with friends players?

Things I'm not fussed about
1. Downloading films.
2. Games
3. Sexy sleek design

My main area of concern is a way of finding and downloading tracks without paying Apples loads of money to rent one song! I've had a browse on the Sony site and it looks fairly poor. If someone could enlighten me on other ways to obtain music I would be grateful. Obviously I can buy CDS!

If I go for the SanDisk how do I buy and download songs off the net for it?

This is copied from the Amazon.com site on the Sansa e250 page: "Choose from a large number of digital music and video stores, including MTV's Urge, Rhapsody, Yahoo!, MSN Music, MusicMatch, MusicNow, Napster, Wal-Mart Music Downloads, and many more." EDIT: You're not limited to any site, as long as you can download music in a usable format that the Sansa player reads(MP3/WMA), you can get your music anywhere, the above are examples only. /EDIT

I don't know anything about the above sites. I'd research them and other sites to make sure that once you bought and downloaded a song that you have full freedom with it, that you can download the file directly into your music file, that you can burn as many CDs as often as you like or to make as many copies of it as you need, that they're in a usable format, that they can be converted to a usable format if not, etc. Once you've found a music store you'd like to join, you just download the music like any other download you've ever paid for, only it goes into your music file not your program file. From there you'd drag it or copy/paste it into your player.

I don't download, so I can't recommend a place to get it legally or illegally. I just buy CDs and rip them or borrow CDs from the public library and rip them.