J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Which is the best ?

angrynorth

Depends on what you want.

My choice iPod, unless you want a radio.

babber

Got an Ipod and love it to bits No experience of the other though.

The good thing about the Ipod is all the accessories available for it

Phill

dtriggs

After long discussions and arguments here I went for the iriver for 3 reasons.

1) It is windows based and a file system that is really easy to use. Not that the ipod isnt (but it is limited to using itunes) - just this style appealed to me.

2) I wanted a radio

3) Battery life is far better on the iriver even though apple have improved the ipod.

(It was alos very hard to get ipods when I was looking)

An extra benefit I didnt realise before buying was that you can record directly onto the iriver with no computer. The machine is not as pretty and trendy, but works wonderfully well. I get some 16-18 hours battery life too and charge it very rarely.

But ultimately they both do a great job.

scoobyjimbo

I have an iriver and it is great.. i didnt want to go the norm. route and get an ipod, IMHO they are overpriced and i dont like the conservative looks.. My iriver has been great and take it everywhere i go, i now have around 6k tracks on it.. so my only problem is what to listen to ...:-) I also have the bolt on to enable me to use the iriver in the car - so even better.. I havent used a CD in my car for a while now..

J

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Have just ordered an Iriver, have had a go of both and the Iriver seems to have the edge in terms of build quality, the sound quality is a bit more relaxed as well, I just couldnt get an Ipod but the longer I thought about it the less I wanted to look like somebody who would own an Ipod, I like stuff more low key, not that there is anything wrong with the Ipod or its owners, white just isnt me.

The FM radio was a clincher as well.

Cant wait for it to arrive, the missus is out tonight so I can sit and arrange my 600+ tracks.

kbsub

Daughter as a Iriver , had it since June and loves it , she has 20 G hard drive and 500 songs and is about a third full !!

angrynorth

Th iPod formats itself to Windows or mac based dependant on which type you use. And the ease of use is what made the the iPod the worlds best selling HD based player. I have not tried anything that comes close usability wise.

Jacko - iTrip FM transmitter
http://shop.ipodworld.co.uk/iPodWorl...ookie%5Ftest=1

Edit to answer your other question, yes the iPod does have a one button "shuffle all tracks" Thats all I ever use, shuffling 5000 tracks is fun. The iRiver also has this.

kbsub

dont think the ipod plays windows media files does it ?

angrynorth

iTunes supports wma files, it converts them to the AAC format.

The file system the iPod uses can either be Windows or Mac, whichever you prefer.

There are more Windows users with iPods than Mac users with iPods

Mumble

Have been on mission to make informed decision between these and the Sony NWHD3. Am veering toward Sony due to apparent 30 hr battery life, 20g hard drive, can hold 900 cds worth of music & can store audio, visual & data files. Also comes in cool colours!

Anyone actually tried the Sony one yet?

angrynorth

I would take an iPod or iRiver over the sony any day of the week. Everything I have read on that Sony has slated it, for initially releasing it with no MP3 support, lying to people saying a 20,000 "high quality" tracks on a 20 gig HD, really hard to use buttons, crappy UI...

I'd be skeptical of that battery life too. The iPod will play for 30 hours too if using 48k tracks sequentially with no user interaction. Which I would imagine due to Sony's habit of pulling the wool over customers eyes, is excatly the situation where the NWHD gets 30hours.

Do you listen to 30 hours of music continuously?

The iPods and iRivers can also store audio, visual & data files, both act as hard drives. The iPod photo and one of the other iRivers even display stored images on screen.

Sony = bad
iRiver/iPod = good

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, looked at the Sony and it didnt get good write ups.

Markus

Another vote for iPod. Have a 4th Gen 40GB chappy and love it.

Originally formatted it to PC format, as I was ripping CD's from PC. The PC would see it as a USB drive and let me use it as a hard drive, so that was cool. Macintosh also saw it as a drive, so no problems there, apart from it being a tad slow as it was FAT32 format instead of HFS+. I've since reformatted it to Apple format (HFS+) and if I need to use it on a PC, which I probably will, then I'll simply get a copy of mediafour's 'macdrive' software (think that is what it is called) This allow's pc's to read/write Macintosh format drvies, including the iPod.

I also have an iTrip, which I love, and that'll be coming to the UK with me

pslewis

Not an option here, but ...... simply the best value MP3 player in town with radio!

Philips HDD070 - at £117 - get one!

I have 2

Pete

STi-Frenchie

iPod every time. You will not regret it. Everything else is a poor imitation.

Iwan

Just bought a 4G 40Gb iPod this week, it's awesome.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

'Everything else is a poor imitation.'

Damn, I have just bought a poor imitation

andrewdelvard

Girlfriend wanted an iPod Mini for Christmas but after looking at one I didn't buy it. Why? She wants to user it in the gym. It's just too big. You can't comfortably fit it in your pocket. (especially when rowing) She wouldn't want to attach it to her arm via one of those arm band things (which imo look a little embarrassing). It has no radio. You actually have to pay another £15 or so for a case.
What did I buy? A 1gb solid state player with radio and a case. 2 year guarantee, progessive free software upgrades via the web. Looks cool as anything. Oh and it's the size of a matchbox but a little slimmer

STi-Frenchie

Iwan, make sure you remove the volume restriction...it's even better once you've done that. Damned EU bureaucrats trying to protect our ears...we want it LOUD !

hedgehog

As an aside has anyone had any problems with the Apple Lossless format and iTunes? I suspect that the problem is happening when iTunes rips the audio rather than on replay but I am getting occasional drop outs of less than a second in the audio and also had one track that the rip just stopped in the middle of the track.

I did notice on some material I recorded myself (i.e. that I was fairly sure was OK and had nothing strange in it) that I had on the PC as a .wav file that when I converted it to the lossless format there was a very tiny and pretty subtle drop out when played in iTunes but when replayed on the iPod this became a pretty dramatic hole in the music.

It may be my PC, i.e. perhaps I did something that put a load on the CPU and the codec couldn't cope but I'm not entirely convinced there isn't a problem with the codec and so am interested if anyone else is seeing this.

STi-Frenchie

You could be right hedgehog. I started out putting my mp3's onto my iPod and then switched to using AAC for later stuff that I hadn't ripped. I noticed a dropout in some songs but not in others, and just for the tiniest fraction of a second. I've since switched back to ripping in mp3 but with higher settings (using FreeRip) and haven't had any problems.

hedgehog

I've done a few more experiments using iTunes and the Apple lossless format to produce m4a files and am seeing lots of problems.

The most noticable is that I am getting tracks where only part of the track is transferred, so a 4 minute track becomes a 50 second track once it is ripped. The audio that is transferred is OK but it just stops dead.

I tried a reboot and then running just iTunes in case I had something else causing problems but that didn't help, exactly the same result. It is looking like a pretty nasty bug in iTunes to me. I have tried ripping mp3 files with iTunes with no problems at all so the problem seems to lie only with the Apple formats. Just about says it all really.

Warwick-hunt

well i hope i picked the right one for my brothers xmas prezzie, i went for the iriver, (fingers crossed)

Markus

Mr Prickly

pop over to ipodlounge.com and have a look for an answer, or post your question there, they should come up with something.

I've not tried lossless, only AAC and MP3, so I've not seen the problem personally.

Iwan

Hmmm, i've heard about this. To be honest it's ok at the moment, i bought a pair of Shure E2c headphones to use with it (recommended by someone on here) and haven't needed to use max (restricted) vol yet.

Besides, years of shooting and death metal gigs have left me with a bit of tinnitis so cranking it up louder may not be a good idea.

However, i might do it anyway "because i can"