MP3 Players - Do You Have One? What Do You Think About Them?
 

In response to the Rather Ripped album cover thread, I've made an MP3 player thread. What's the connection? Well, if you download the album and listen to it on an MP3 player, you may not even see the cover. Or, you may buy the CD or record, but you don't really care what the cover looks like. Or the cover may be an integral part of the musical experience for you, inseperable from the music itself.

Whatever the case, what about MP3 players? Do you own one? What do you think about them?

i have a green mini ipod, i love it to bits, i listen to music before i sleep so i use it then and if im on a long train/car ride.
i have over 200 sonic youth songs on it which i think is pretty impressive.

I have one of the original Dell DJs. It is like carrying a brick around with you. Huge and heavy. A brick with 400 albums on it.

I have a Creative Zen Touch. It's really nice to have when travelling or sneaking music during school, but I don't really use it that often.
I still buy albums though.

I have Panasonic SL-CT810 but don't use it that often. It comes in handy sometimes. :)

I have a cheap one.
It's good for riding my bike or the bus and for wearing at the gym, but when I really want to LISTEN to music for real, I play records.
Way better than a cassette or CD walkman, but MP3s sound like crap and I refuse to pay retail for them as a finished product because they are sonically inferior and I like the concept of an album as a phase in a group or artist's artistic lifespan. I also like packaging art.

Yeah, I've got a 40gig iPod that I got about a year and a half ago. It has all my music on it but everything that is on it has been ripped from my CD collection. I've purchased 1 album from iTunes because I had it on either tape or LP and didn't feel like buying it again on CD. I also had to purchase Heather Angel because it wouldn't encode properly.

Having your entire collection at your fingertips kind of makes you a different music listener. You have the opportunity to switch around and listen to this and that versus sitting down and listening to an album in the context that it was originally placed in (whatever you want to think about that). I like the portability aspect of harddrive mp3 players but that's about it.

Very few people take what they listen to seriously in terms of sound, I think. I don't, in terms of gear and some other things, but I know to the majority of people out there, how their shit sounds doesn't mean anything to them as long as it doesn't sound 'bad'.

I don't want one or need one. My portable cd player and the cd player in my car play mp3's. I can get a good ten albums on one cd.....that's plenty.

I don't have one or want one for the majority of my music collection... though I do have this feeling that if I could convert the entirety of my tape collection to mp3 without too much hassle I may get one... the rationale being that I suspect one ipod (or whatever) will probably hold most of my tape collection relatively easily without me feeling the compunction to put every record I own on there.

I agree that it changes the listening process - just on the mp3's I've downloaded, I only really listen to my favourite tracks off and album when making playlists - and while this is quite nice, I know for a fact that my favourite tracks off some albums are not always the same.

Although, the prospect of having the entirety of the Falls back catalogue on random for a day or so is really rather appealing. But then I'd have to convert vinyl. And I like vinyl too much to desecrate it with reduced fidelity.

My choice isn't in there. So I'll write it here. I don't own one and don't really care.

I guess it was silly of me to assume that you'd have to have a reason for not owning one.....

I own a creative nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra. It's amazing. 40 gigs, and I have only taken up around 6 gigs. I prefer to buy my albums on CD and the rip them to MP3, so I still have a master copy if anything happens to the hard drive, which something did this summer. I always make sure to listen to the CD first, all the way through. I then rip it to mp3 and listen to it on my mp3 player for walks, or when I'm at work. I usually keep it on "shuffle" mode when I listen to it at home, but as I type this, to the left of my I'm playing "A Thousand Leaves" on vinyl, so I still get use out of it, but sometimes you just prefer other mediums.

i wanna buy an iPod but i don't have the money right now.

Thanks ever so much Lone Flanger... now I must save up the pennies...

i have one, i like it but only cus i like having music available to me wherever i am. I hate those types that buy the latest update every time one comes out and the types that go on and on and on about them and make sure everyone knows theirs is an ipod.

I hate ipods though, my sister got one at christmas and if you don't have it in a room made of kashmir all day everyday it picks up scratches far too easily

vinyl is also rippable. hook your phono+preamp into your soundcard, start audacity & then (after cutting into tracks, or not) compress to mp3 or flac or whatever format of your choice. also can be burned as raw sound file to cdr for portable amusement.

i have an mp3 player but i prefer to carry a cd wallet. mp3 sound can get on my cojones.

Good to see someone else bring this realization afront...
 

I've brought this up numerous times, even did a poll but it wasn't specifically about MP3 players, but digital downloaded music in general.

I think you will find that the older generations who were lucky enough to experience music in a time where vinyl & tapes were the medium of sound were able to relate to music being more of an "experience" that included visual art and representation of the band and album better than the younger generations who were brought up in a more digital age of music listening that didn't have a visual art & representation to experience.

I have an MP3 player that I bought before I took a trip to Europe a year ago and used it for the plane trip, but never used it since.

Life is so incredible and there's so much to learn and soak up in life that I think it's almost harmful for the progression of one's self to be self-involved for a great amount of time in any kind of musical listening device that isolates one's self from the world, physically or coherently.

It's good to take a walk outside...

I don't really think any of the poll options applies to me. I'm not going to claim that I wouldn't like one....but I'd only have one if, say, someone gave me one or I could get a large capacity one for ridiculously cheap. I'm not going to splash out over £100 on one when I can carry around my cd player and 50 cds in a wallet. Sure it's more bulky but it's really not that much of an inconvenience. And my cd player plays mp3s so, if I was so inclined, I could have 50 cds with around 10 albums on each....the only downer is having to swap cds.

I've got one (40bg) but it's a piece of shite. Just really badly designed but i'll keep hold of it 'cos i've spent too long putting my albums onto it. I've ever bought an mp3 and never will do.
Theirs something a damn sight more satisfying buying an actual album from a shop with packaging and all.