Mar
16
They’ve said it once before but it bears repeating
- Samsung’s YP-F2: spotted at CeBIT, this microscopic, sleek-looking MP3 player (that also does Ogg Vorbis!) weighs in at just 21 grams with up to 2 gigs of flash memory and 12 hours of playback. According to Gizmodo, it’s expected in Europe next month for $105/140/227 for the 512MB/1GB/2GB versions respectively. A model with radio tuner (YP-F2R) is expected later this year.
- Monolith’s MX7000 got a capacity boost from the measly 512 megs and now comes in 1/2GB versions for $208/260 respectively with a 19-hour battery life and FM/line-in recording. What matters about it is the sleek, ultra-durable aluminium finish—we dig.
[With apologies for paraphrasing the “Fell in Love with a Girl” lyric to those who subscribe to the feed and actually noticed the post’s title.]
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
- Review: FixTunes (September 14, 2006)
- Apple Lossless offerings from the iTMS not likely—for now (June 28, 2006)
- Review: Datasafe oomi (June 7, 2006)
- HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (May 11, 2006)
- Batteries 101 (May 8, 2006)
- Presentation: iPod Hi-Fi, plus a few thoughts (March 2, 2006)
- Presentation/Review: Creative Zen Vision:M (December 9, 2005)
- Review: Alegria Audio Ling bookshelf speaker system (November 9, 2005)
- HOWTO: Put together a $3K audiophile CD player for $555 (October 20, 2005)
- HOWTO: Build the CMoy pocket amplifier (October 16, 2005)
That Samsung looks sweet, and I’m game for a new player as mine is beginning to sputter, but my biggest complaint about the avalanche of new players hitting the market is sound quality.
I don’t know how many players I had a look at these past weeks and if you want small and reasonably priced players, crummy sound quality is almost a given. I mean, you could hook ‘em up to a tube amp and Stax headphones and 98% sound like utter crap. They make my ears bleed.
I’d rather have a smaller player that drops all the gadgetry and gives me the best possible sound. Ever since iRiver I haven’t really seen much development in that area. Their players sound mighty fine, but they’re too big for my needs and/or too expensive. Incidentally, at my local brick-and-mortar store, those rather old iRiver models are still very hot sellers with the audiophile crowd. The prices have unfortunately stayed absolutely stable because of that. No price-reduction in sight.
I’d also rather have a cell phone that enables me to speak to people and offers rock-solid quality. I don’t need one that takes pictures, plays music, plugs into Windoze, cooks my evening meals and does my tax return (on second thought, the latter …).
Just call me old-fashioned.
...added by Volkher Hofmann /// May 17th, 2006 at 01:38 AM
Volkher, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I was going to state the usual about how sonic performance is rated subjectively, etc. but I’ll skip this and ask you whether you’ve tested the iPod shuffle. I think that sound-wise it’s great, but don’t take my word for it; people who know their stuff and whose opinions I value greatly over at the Head-Fi forums have been saying the same thing time and time again. And hey, even Apple’s engineers consider the Shuffle to be the “golden standard” to which all iPods are compared. Have a listen, maybe you’re in for a surprise.
Plus, it’s aligned perfectly with your “I’d rather have a smaller player that drops all the gadgetry and gives me the best possible sound” sentence.
...added by Konstantinos Christidis /// May 17th, 2006 at 02:17 AM
Konstantinos,
the iPod shuffle (best ad camaign ever … you don’t get anything and THAT’S cool, man) was at the top of my list for a long time. I just don’t like the whole rechargable battery mess they produced in the past. I don’t feel like dishing out too much cash within a predictable time frame just to keep the player running.
Besides, as I stated elsewhere on your site, I’m not such a big Apple fan anymore .. at all.
...added by Volkher Hofmann /// May 17th, 2006 at 13:35 PM