goodbye ipod

[ZekeySpaceyLizard]

i keep my music in a bucket and i pour it on my face when i want to dance
it carries 1 gallon of songs

[rtil]

Also whats wrong with itunes?

never have i witnessed such a bloated, ugly, slow and inconvenient piece of proprietary music software .. besides maybe windows media player. and ipods, much like zunes, are not open storage devices. while it is possible to take music off and on it (instead of just on), apple makes it difficult. and you are almost forced to use itunes to sync your ipod - i say almost because 3rd party software exists, but it can't keep your firmware up-to-date and it's hard for independent developers to keep up with apple changing their encryption schemes with every hardware and firmware update. recently the developer of ml_ipod for winamp gave up development on his plugin, leaving only winamp's aging default ipod plugin.

with players like the zen - they are in essence storage devices with music playback as their focus. i can drag and drop music and video onto it from anything from the folder to the drive itself. try doing that with an ipod and see what happens (nothing).

a few years ago, creative was falling apart and there were thousands of complaints of their devices locking up and failing. this actually drove me away from buying a much older zen line that looked a lot more like an ipod a few years ago. but today it seems they have stepped up their game. and while the zen does come with its own proprietary software as well, you can simply chose not to install it and sync it with the music player app of your choice - which, in my opinion, allows you to get the most out of the device.

as i'm typing this i am syncing my entire library to my zen via mediamonkey, which is seems to be doing a much better job than winamp was. mediamonkey has a much better id3/album art tagger than winamp as well. i think winamp has been dying ever since it was bought out by aol, which sucks because winamp was amazing for a long time. but it is lagging as the portable music industry keeps evolving.

[Michelle]

i'm afraid of how long those would actually last..it's been years since i've browsed music players but i always read how they would last 1-2 years before dying.

not the zen in particular btw, just other music players i looked into. random but why is it that other companies don't have large storage space like apple?

[rtil]

microsoft offers the same storage sizes as apple, but only in their "classic" models. i think that other companies don't do it because they can't offer the same products for a competitive price. microsoft and apple are able to do it because they can easily sell tens of millions, whereas others can't produce as many so they're more expensive.

[lenko]

itunes is slow and gay

[zembleborf]

winamp is a fucking horrible program jesus christ why do people still use it

if you're gay enough to use windows you can use foobar or something

[Jeinu]

my one and only mp3 i ever had was a little sandisk sansa. it hold 4 GB of music. it was the most reliable little device i could ever want.


my only beef with it is that i never figured out how to use any program except windows media player to work with it

[dilly]

i've never owned a mp3 player, however my sister bought a creative back in 2004 and it still works without any wear and tear. so at least that's an indication it'll last for a while.

it's also way cheaper, so there's a plus

[Ashington]

I received an Ipod nano for my bday recently and its the first MP3 player ive ever owned, i like it so far but without anything else to have ever compared it to, i guess i dont really know how good/bad it is. However for the last 10 years before this i'd been using a CD walkman so....

[rtil]

so last night's library sync with mediamonkey went flawlessly. mm is definitely my favorite media player now. it's skinable, lightweight and has every feature you could want. it also helped me fix an album art bug i was having with a ton of songs using the same piece of art.

so i've had a chance to use the zen a little more. you can add your own background image so that was nice. the player itself has very good sound quality, and a customizable EQ. so far it has been great, but i have a few gripes which i hope can be changed.

• some characters in an artist's name might cause a sync freeze. i noticed this with a band that had two forward slashes in their name. this would be rare, of course, but i found it strange. turned out the mp3 was mistagged anyway.
• you can make new playlists inside the zen, but once you make it, you can't seem to add new tracks to it without the aid of a computer. i don't see the point of making new playlists when you only get one shot at adding tracks to them until later. it's like on-the-go playlists on ipods, except less useful.
• artists that start with "the" are sorted in "T". it's a little sad for modern mp3 players to still be doing this
• if you have songs that don't have an album, they are kind of hidden. what i mean is, let's say you have 10 tracks by a band with no album on their id tags. if you open that artist's sub category, it will say there are no tracks for that band. but if you open the menu and say "show tracks", it will show those tracks. i found this kind of shortsighted.
• no "all tracks" option for an artist
• no "album shuffle" option

the firmware for ZEN hasn't been updated since early 2009, so i'm hoping some of these issues will be addressed in future updates, unless i'm missing something i haven't seen.

it's still a solid player and i'm glad i bought it, but it would be nice to have these features. in reality though once i have my 'favorites' playlist set up, i will hardly ever be browsing the artists, much less trying to fiddle with playlists and stuff.

here's what i think is better on the ZEN than the ipod:

• better design. i never liked the clickwheel and the stoic look of the menu. the ZEN looks and feels nice, and the custom background image makes it feel more like it's yours.
• built-in FM radio & mic. not sure what i'd use the mic for, but you never know.
• drag-and-drop, open storage system. things can go in and out easily, will sync with just about anything.
• very small, better built hardware. super light as well.
• SD card slot for extra storage.
• can queue songs to play
• will play many codecs video, resize unecessary
• more "smart playlists". not sure if you can make your own, though
• amazing color display. looks way better than the ipod

that's all i can think of for now

[DrRumack]

if you're gay enough to use windows you can use foobar or something

it almost sounds like youre implying macs arent gay

[Sapphire]

if you're gay enough to use windows you can use foobar or something

it almost sounds like youre implying macs arent gay

[funzop]

if you're gay enough to use windows you can use foobar or something

it almost sounds like youre implying macs arent gay

well actually theyre both pretty shit and hating on one specific operating system is stupid
i have used both macs and windows for long periods of time and from what i can tell, if you want a computer that you can customize down to every last detail and make REALLY personal, then youll prefer windows, and if you want a computer where everything is taken care of for you and problems are generally fixed on their own, then youll prefer a mac
in my opinions macs are the better of the 2, simply because its much easier to run windows on a mac then to run mac on a windows

[rtil]

zeeb is actually talking his hardcore linux box. he stores his weed that he smokes with his ultra indie college bros in it

[funzop]

rtil does your player run flac files

[rtil]

no it doesn't because i'm not an audophile faggot who pretends he can hear the difference between a 320kbps v0 mp3 and a 30mb flac

[funzop]

im just asking because i have downloaded a bunch of flac files by accident in the past and have found myself having to redownload them so they can run on my ipod geez dont have 2 be such a homophobic dick@!!!

[lenko]

one of my friends who is obsessed with FLAC kept telling me to 'compare the cymbals' who gives a fuck about cymbals

[funzop]

YOU ARE STUPID WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS AND NO ONE CARES EVERYONE KNOWS THAT PEOPLE LIKE THAT ARE FULL OF SHIT AAA

[rtil]

get dbpoweramp > batch convert to mp3