ilxPod: Let's brainstorm a better digital music player

Instead of going for the slick plastique look, how about something more ghettotech:

http://www.jackbergsales.com/electronics/Panasonic_Portable_Cassette_Tape_Player_w-Headphones.JPG

48 hour battery life

http://techshop.earthlink.net/images/I344982.jpg

It should be called The Karl Malone.

xpost

Man, I am full of ideas tonight!

Sadly, some unfunny "snarky" blog like Something Awful or some shit is totally going to run a "funny" article where they expound your succinct joke into a paragraph-long unfunny mess.

Then you can price it however expensive you want it and no one will have anything clever to say about it.

Also, nested playlists!!!!

RICHDORK MEDIA

-- wordy rappaport (estiebuttez...), November 15th, 2006.

otm! also, there should be a "nekro enough" or not tag

oh, wait a min...
http://www.mp3playersreview.com/img/rio/karma.jpg

> random that is actually sodding random

it is random, it's just not what you expect random to be - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/

(ogg is named after a terry pratchett character btw)

OTM! Plus, the logo used to be Thor chopping a snake in half. Hello, clueless sexual metaphor makers, wake up!

YES

in addition to its MP3 playing abilities, it's also equipped with a built-in FM tuner and can record from FM to MP3, as well as record voice memos. Available in blue, black and yellow, the 512MB player is $179, 1GB is $249.

I second this.
I wanna jam!

but ogg is lossy and compresses better than mp3...

any 'mp3' players capable of aacplus version 2 yet? we use it at work and it's impressive even at 32kbps. (um, actually, i know the answer to that - new mobile phones)

Also, greater storage capacity so the 192kbps standard can be usurped by the more "component system friendly" 320kbps (although, it sounds like this Ogg Vorbis-business might obsolent the need) Codename: iStax

Also, i understand that some people are having trouble with theft - which stinks. So, why not incorperate thumb print recognition capabilities like they have on many laptops - which can protect the unit if it gets out of your hands for any appreciable time. Couple this technology with A-ron and Jim's i-Waist, and you could have the CHASTiTUNES.

damn whats up with the price, doesn't the Zen and a bunch of other players already do all this? i've been researching and i can't get over the question -- Is there any advantage to an ipod other than the nifty flywheel?(keeping in mind I hate itunes and that I barely have a use for an mp3 player I can think of, looking for one for my wife tho mebbe)

The new Creative players have this...not on the earphones though.

It would also be great if the software had one click avi and .mov ripping.

Also some sort of playlist editor - 'on the go' is really annoying cos you can't juggle songs around.

Oh yeah and NO GAPS BETWEEN SONGS please. Fuck making all my mix cds into one 70 minute track.

They need to implement the Compilations thing from iTunes. It makes browsing with the Artist tag really painful.

It'd be nice to have a really ergonomic, really light & compact remote with a screen, plus lots of controls to turn things like shuffle and whatever on and off, plus some navigation controls.

Plus wireless mobile streaming from your home PC/the internet to your MP3 player.
Impossible, but it'd be neat.

If there's one thing the "iPod wars" (like they exist) have taught us, it's that people think what they're listening to makes them extremely cool and would like to broadcast it to the whole world. Plus, it might help you get laid with dumb chicks.

-- Magnakai (magnaka...), November 16th, 2006

the new ipods do this too. very, very convienient.

Get on it scientists!

And volume restricted on public transport if user has shite music. Shiteness should be determined automatically by wirelessly connecting to the ilx server.

But yeah, GAPLESS PLAYBACK or at least .cue support.

Also, would be nice to be able to exchange songs wirelessly. Or have software that would look for other devices around and try and connect to them and then mix whatever is currently playing with what other people are listening to - imagine walking down a busy street with something like that.

Just to plug Creative again, Creative players can do this too! I can't imagine not having that functionality.

...any new developments...

Besides those that use the music players on their cellphones, that is.

My music Stax now include an SD card wallet to store my growing collection of Flash cards.

Dedicated audio players are a dying breed, it's all moving to your phone and the cloud. Android phones offer some nifty software that addresses virtually all the (reasonable) wishlist requests in this thread. Heck I think you can even make mash-ups and whatnot on your phone.

Have they solved the volume-leveling problem for shuffle mode yet?

that definitely sucks, was holding out for a 240 GB iPod but I don't think it'll happen

Volume leveling has been solved eons ago - use MP3Gain or Replaygain.

that definitely sucks, was holding out for a 240 GB iPod but I don't think it'll happen

I'm crossing my fingers for one last 10th anniversary model from Apple in September but you're probably right.

Volume leveling seems to be a pretty tough problem to solve on-the-fly. MP3Gain will certainly get the levels adjusted but even a screaming-fast CPU (on your desktop computer) may take several seconds to analyze each track. Also, most processes aren't architecturally robust enough to eliminate hang-ups and playback stalls. Point being, if one manufacturer spent the tons in R&D to deal with leveling, it's difficult to imagine that feature alone as a tipping point in its favor.

Television has already handled this issue by "turning down" loud TV commercials so the base-tech is already out there.

> MP3Gain will certainly get the levels adjusted but even a screaming-fast CPU (on your desktop computer) may take several seconds to analyze each track.

isn't the gain calculated during ripping and stored as metadata*? all the player has to do is read the tag and adjust the output level before it starts.

* in fact i know it is as i had a player that would display the tags, possibly erroneously.

here's one i prepared earlier, with itunes normalisation tag in it:

id3v1 tag info for ./2010/064_hlep_01/01_tallulah.mp3:
Title  : Tallulah                        Artist: allo darlin'                  
Album  : HLEP01                          Year: 2010, Genre: Unknown (255)
Comment:                                 Track: 1
id3v2 tag info for ./2010/064_hlep_01/01_tallulah.mp3:
TALB (Album/Movie/Show title): HLEP01
TPE1 (Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)): allo darlin'
COMM (Comments): (iTunes_CDDB_TrackNumber)[eng]: 1
COMM (Comments): (iTunes_CDDB_1)[eng]: 51046E06+85245+6+150+20189+33068+45959+65729+72698
COMM (Comments): (iTunSMPB)[eng]:  00000000 00000210 00000A5C 0000000000B3CB14 00000000 0061CBEC 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
COMM (Comments): (iTunNORM)[eng]:  000003CE 000003D1 00005C39 00005C82 000248CB 000248CB 0000829D 000082B0 0003DD97 0003DD97
COMM (Comments): (iTunPGAP)[eng]: 0
TENC (Encoded by): iTunes 9.1.0.79
TIT2 (Title/songname/content description): Tallulah
TRCK (Track number/Position in set): 01
TYER (Year): 2010
APIC (Attached picture): ()[, 3]: image/jpg, 284146 bytes

Just found this proposed standard on Replay Gain -- the only portable MP3 players that supports it are the Sansa models.

Apple has a similar tech called Sound Check

Hmm, so to get volume-leveling with MP3Gain I have to first run it on all of my MP3s and then re-upload them to my MP3 player? Sounds kind of like a massive project. What I'd like is a portable player that does the adjustment automatically, so I don't have to think about it.

i think anything ripped with itunes or bought from them (recently) will have the data in already. but yes, doing it retrospectively would be a pain. (and that's why i ripped everything to flac, reducing the work to 'just' re-encoding). plus itunesNORM seems to be proprietary and undocumented.

md players, i think, would analyse the upcoming chunk and adjust the levels based on that, not the whole file in advance. maybe that was recording. could lead to some odd effects though, especially on something that has a loud, slow drumbeat - everything immediately after it would sound quieter

functions as a usb mass sotrage device (aka linux support)

in this respect i'm pretty happy with this little thing

iPods seem to still have this weird glitch where if you skip, it reads the volume level of the next track first and will adjust, THEN skip to the next track. sometimes you'll adjust the volume of something abnormally quiet (or sometimes you'll get MP3s that are 'turned up' already), so if you're listening in shuffle, you hit next and there's a chance the volume will get super loud for a split second, it's stupid and always startling, why can't they fix that it seems so simple

Just run MP3Gain on your library overnight and reup the next day, then make it part of your usual rip-tag-upload process for any new acquisitions. It's not that big a deal and makes a big difference.

its not something that really bothers me, just the kind of weird bug that should take them all of 5 minutes to fix, yet all iPods have it

i'm very fond of my ogg-playing iriver lplayer. still going strong after 3 years and i'd buy another if they still made them.

http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/public/eYS02OcquqaNPJzKUyNk8NHne3hNVydLPjYK5YK6PUdgTOMq2-udwyl04HDqBtZuJYG4OKxhksiC5haoHw5KWLheX9Ahjjo6KDF1ZLy0vQAFmPJiu26XLgftTs-xXDTNgV-LRDIUGtas7ruJl_2Nzq3LrsKpjtWkerA_kacIx3pboJmdC4Op6-1S6Pjz6rtgvNb4heM

as it is, the next one will probably be the next model up from that Sansa of TPP's, the Fuze. gotta love sdhc card support.