mp3 players NOT by Apple!

[Albion]

Have you considered a myPod?

 

[parttime crackhead]

Get a Deep Fried Pod.

 

[knock]

Just worked out which is the memory chip. There is no way I can swap these little surface mount fuckers over. I can't even see the pins let alone point a soldering iron at them. I need to scratch my head a bit more.

 

[alasdairm]

i have an iphone 4s which i used for music but, for snowboarding and running, i use a sansa clip:

cost me about $20, simple to use and all solid state so if i take a tumble, i'm not going to destroy it. that picture is about actual size...

alasdair

 

[knock]

Ben, you are crazy, but correct; I-river H1xx series running Rockbox is the shit, as Knock said.

I have 2, one pimped to 120gb and I always keep an eye out for old ones - last one I was following on ebay went for over £80.. this is for now 10 year old technology..

Will eventually put a 128gb SSD in the other, so let us know how you get on with your conversion Knock - think I remember reading about a couple of issues people had when I was last looking in to it.

Well, the SSD works with Rockbox, squeegee. There is something wrong with my H120, I cannot play anything in Rockbox, I get an error message, and the most recent versions don't start at all. But I was able to find an older version which runs, and it lets me browse the contents of the SSD.

The SSD I have is a KingSpec KSD-CF18.6-XXXMS. I ordered it from an eBay seller in Hong Kong: http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/ameliazhou/m.html and it came in just a few days, I assume they have a UK agent or something with a stock of them. This SSD is one that I've read other people using in their H1xx players.

Have you checked out the rockbox forum? Haven't been there in a while, but they have lots of info on modding these little beauties.

Yeah I've posted the error message before and was told it looked like a memory error. Actually looking back at my forum posting it seems I was using daily builds for a while which were working OK and it was an update which stopped working; if I can somehow track down the last daily build I was using I might be able to get it going! Bit of at the possibility and a bit of at trying to find that build... I think that equals

 

[Si Dread]

Here's my faithful little old iriver, mines a red one! Poor old thing, it's only a gig or two! Louder than ANY Ipod though

I'm still collating data, sandisk & a new iriver are ahead of the pack, so far!

 

[Ben So Furry]

Knock, OP, everybody who posted: I love this thread, sorry if I go on about stuff a bit but this really did excite me and as it develops interests me even more. Quickly: I lost the love for the techy stuff a bit back when things happened, anyway. I used to believe I was OK at this stuff and it was good. But I've stopped looking at stuff and finding about stuff like Knock obviously does and the rest of you lot and his and everybodies enthusiasm for this stuff has really sparked me interest for this tech stuff again and has inspired me to start dipping a toe back in and discovering what's possible with these excellent toys once more. That feels good, so thank you lot. Inspiration is and no mistake.

You'll like this, not a lot, but you'll like it.

Yes it is, here are people talking about it and doing it: http://www.head-fi.org/t/471138/iriver-ihp-140-with-128gb-ssd

And that's magic.

It's lovely to see you, yes it is. Hoo hoe etc. I do like it but a lot, a real lot. My HDD is fine, everything plays fine etc. but I do get the 'there are problems with your device, we recommend a scan do you want to scan for errors now thing' in windows pops up everytime I plug it in. I ignore it now as it seems to cause no problems with the usability of the unit at all. But when it started a while back I always used to almost die for a second, I calmed myself and proceeded with the scan which stated bad block errors then took forever fixing them. The box thing wouldn't appear then for a bit but would return soon after, I stopped doing it and as I said I have never encountered any skips or crashing or anything you would likely expect from the disc hitting a bad block and stumbling on the data it needed. Thanks for the link Knock, I will have a look into that because I feel it may one day be an issue that I need to address and to know I can save my player (and I do love it, you know that don't you?) is superb news indeed. Yes

Have you checked out the rockbox forum? Haven't been there in a while, but they have lots of info on modding these little beauties.

No, sadly I haven't but I'm going to now, so thank you I will look into it again. Superb mate Sweet.

Well, the SSD works with Rockbox, squeegee. There is something wrong with my H120, I cannot play anything in Rockbox, I get an error message, and the most recent versions don't start at all. But I was able to find an older version which runs, and it lets me browse the contents of the SSD.

Hmmm... Knock this saddens me, I prey you can get this working. I don't know and could only guess, please tell me the player can't handle the speed of the drive?

It's worth mentioning that the iRiver H1x0 devices are pretty good.

Are they really mate? Contains decent hardware? Optical? No worries I'll look into it myself but if you say they are good then that's right so I'll look into it, thanks.

Now have a samsung which plays FLAC

Ok, this interests me also, I'll give them a squiz as well. The flac thing and going back to what Knock mentioned as well, does putting rockbox on an ipod actually make it good? Does it make it support flac and playback at the bitrate without any kind of loss of audio fidelity? I say this because I once won an ipod 160gb video thing, from Coke by sneakily posting my code at 3 am making me the only fucker up at that time so I won. ha. Anyway. It had an engraving metal back, it looked a bit tasty if I remember thinging and did wonder about seeing if rockbox on it would make a suitable replacement for the chosen one. In the end I sold it, long story, got fucked up by some crazy ebay scam business and ending up parting with it for £160 odd quid. Which was a steal for what the normal ones were going for. The bastards. Oh btw I don't hate anyone who has an ipod btw, that's cool, but I couldn't carry around a thing that had a piece of fucking fruit on it, personal you understand, no offense to anyone who does, it's just that and Knock said that twirly thing really freaked me out a bit, I saw someone playing with one while I was queuing for something and I was like really staring at this thing and I was like wtf? Mind made up and no mistake. I like good old fashioned buttons as well. I'm old. Maybe. to ipod users, it's fine.

 

[Treacle]

Talking about modding; you can get like a 5th or 6th generation iPod Classic, remove the hard drive and stick a SSD in there. Better battery life, less chance of it breaking, etc. My mp3 player is my iPhone - would be silly not to be. I know this is supposed to not be about Apple, so I'll leave it there.

 

[Ben So Furry]

I really thought when Apple mentioned the idea of an iphone as maybe could be a good thing, my reasoning was I thought instead of making a phone and patch a mp3 player on it that they would start with music player principle and they stick a phone on it. Which you would have on you at all time, made perfect sense to me. It appeared to me that that never really happened. I don't know though, was the music player and audio connects top notch? They would have to be coming what I already had. The app thing went nuts and people seemed the settle for the music side of it as a side note. Even though everyone listens to music this way today and just settle for it for convenience? Am I way off here? I couldn't just settle for anything less anymore, it's hard to hear an audible drop in quality and still the music like I have experienced in that way. If anything tops it, my god I want one.

 

[knock]

Hmmm... Knock this saddens me, I prey you can get this working. I don't know and could only guess, please tell me the player can't handle the speed of the drive?

No, Rockbox won't play anything on the original Toshiba drive either, at least not the versions I have so far tried. I hope to find the magic version that I was using in 2008 with no problems (can't believe it's been that long since I used my iRiver! I put it aside as a project to fix, and now it's five years later). My message to Third Eye Squeegee is really, the SSD is good to go, it's just my device that's got a "quirk".

I've been using my phones as a player in the five-year interim. Yet to find anything that does gapless Vorbis playback on android. Yet to find an affordable microsd card larger than 16GB.

 

[Josh]

This what I have, a 4gig sansa clip player, with a 32gig microSD card in. Also means if battery runs out I can stick the card in me missis's and rob hers for the day, amd won't lose your tunes when the player fucks up.

i have an iphone 4s which i used for music but, for snowboarding and running, i use a sansa clip:

3 of us can't be wrong!

I don't think the sound quality is inferior to much more expensive mp3 players either. Have mine hooked up to a cMoyBB headphone amp and Audio Technica M35s, sounds epic! Good point about setting the country to non-UK to get the extra volume though, I remember reading that when I first got mine.

 

[Si Dread]

Oh btw I don't hate anyone who has an ipod btw, that's cool, but I couldn't carry around a thing that had a piece of fucking fruit on it, personal you understand, no offense to anyone who does, it's just that and Knock said that twirly thing really freaked me out a bit, I saw someone playing with one while I was queuing for something and I was like really staring at this thing and I was like wtf? Mind made up and no mistake. I like good old fashioned buttons as well. I'm old. Maybe. to ipod users, it's fine.

Hahahah Lmfao!

Glad your enjoying the thread mate Everyone's being very helpful

 

[Mailmonkey]

4 or 8 gig sansa clip, 32gig micro SD card in.

No complicated software,drag and drop.

No ludicrous iRiver mods a la knock needed either.

You can't go wrong, and now I know alasdairm has one I realise my choice of player was elite.

 

[parttime crackhead]

160gb iPod Classic runs the show. Using a mac anyway means I don't have all the "waaaaaaa, it makes me use iTunes WAAAAAWAAAAAWAAAAA!" shit. I'd be using iTunes even if I didn't have an iPod. I wish it was easier to pull the tunes back off it on to another computer but it's not really an issue for me.

Still haven't found anything that beats it. I could be doing with a higher capacity now though (but I don't think there's much on the market that would suit me), hate having to rake through my music collection & select stuff not to copy to it.

Plus it's pretty much a chunk of metal, it can take a fair bounce without even a scratch.

 

[Si Dread]

Shit you're lucky! The reason my gf took her little Ipod back is coz she dropped her 160gig job on the bathroom floor & it got broke!

 

[Treacle]

I fucking hate iTunes. I use alternative software, usually. iPhones and iPods sound great, if your earphones do. I know they use decent audio chips. Crackhead, it's got a hard drive inside it, so don't bounce it too much, because it's going to cost you plenty to get that fixed. Haha.

 

[Too many doses]

Look for beats by dre equipped players. My phone HTC one has this capability. Beats are overrated but loud. Storage can be matched by any brand maybe go into a local shop and play with interfaces.

 

[Si Dread]

The Dre headphones are pricey & bit too chunky for my tastes! I'd look like an astornaut wearing them! But I didn't know there were Dre players, or Dre affiliated players, so I'll keep my eyes peeled in my travels

Yeah, as per Treacles post above, my gf damaged the little harddrive in her 160g Ipod when she dropped it, but it's gone to Apple now & they're replacing it for a steep charge, still less than half the price of a new one though. They're also replicating an engraving on the back, so that's nice.

 

[parttime crackhead]

^ Those Dre headphones are over-priced shite, plus they look like fucking UFOs.

 

[Si Dread]

Seriously Lol! Golden!

I wonder what them Marshall's sound like, I like the look of them. Doubt anything will replace Sennheiser for me in the headphones department though, I'm a DJ!