crush her

Advice welcome !

Will only be used for tranferring old cd's. What i want is good battery life and great sound quality. Any preferences?

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I have had two Irivers (plugged the wrong charger into the first one and fried it, oops) and they are great, Ipods are easier to use (a little bit) but I think the Iriver sounds good (better than the Ipod I listened to), is a bit cheaper and isnt an Ipod as beloved by people who know no better. The Iriver's have two big advantages, 1 they dont need Itunes or similar, just drag and drop (any files) and they have an FM radio.

Also if you get the right firmware upgrade on the Colour models you can play video on it, using the Iriverter software (available free) you can convert pretty much any video including full films to Iriver format, as far as I am aware the Colour Ipods cant do that.

The Ipod is a superb piece of kit but for me the Irviver has the edge.

angrynorth

I would go for an iPod, the absolute only down side is that you have to listen to other people justify why they didn't by an iPod with comments like



I was staying out of this until I saw that. Is there any need?

Also, can you tell me why using iTunes is a disadvantage? Its an amazing piece of software that makes syncing music undeniably easy.

richs2891

If you are looking for decent sound and good battery life it would have to be an Iriver. But its quite bulky with the extended battery, If you want style / smaller size & less functions then an Ipod. (I work for a company that sells both).
Dont understand whats so great about the Itunes software - buggy, bloated and over complicated, its so so if you want to convert music to mp3's other than that its average.
For my money (after testing the above) I would buy a creative Zen - 24h battery life, and with a set of Sony EX71SL headphones, a whole lot better package than the above and much better sound quality.

Richard

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

"... and isnt an Ipod as beloved by people who know no better."

Apologies, does sound a bit bitchy !


However have used both and prefer the Iriver, more people have heard of the Ipod hence they go for that and they arent bad, as for Itunes why do you need an additional bit of software to put music on the thing ? you can only use it on one pc so its no use as a portable hard disk which is a handy thing to have.

I dont think its worth a holy war but I prefer the Iriver, I am not justifying my purchase as I have had two now and for same money could have got an Ipod, very nearly did and I do rate them but what the poster needs to do is try both, decide what they need and buy one based on that.

Oh and its not white !

angrynorth

++ Exactly. At the end of the day its a personal preference. Try them both and you will find out which one you want.

I emphasise try because many shop assistants will just try to sell you their own preference so to really be sure which is best for you you need to play with both.

class_A

Small correction

You can use an iPod as a portable hard disk, but you can't see the Music folder without a little hacking and you can't drag-and-drop audio files to it for playback. Oh and the standard earbuds are poo. Apart from that I love mine.

King Eric

Selling mine here:- £150.00 (cheap as you like, latest model)

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthrea...72#post4530572

Iain Young

I've recently swapped from a 60Gb zen to a 60gb ipod photo. So far impressions are...

• iPod is much nicer to look at, and lighter in your pocket
• iPod has better sound quality
• Album art displayed on the ipod photo
• iPod is easier to use when on the move (menus etc easier to navigate)
• Zen was slightly easier to use as a hard disc and the file / music transfers were a bit more controllable (with notmad installed) than on the iPod.
• Zen seemed to have a more efficient file system, (didn't waste as much space as the iPod).

Overall, I'd say the iPod is a better machine, but there's really not a great deal in it.

Iain

crush her

I think my main priority is sound quality really, I listened to an early gen ipod and was not impressed at all. Looks nice but all style over content for me, the new ones maybe better however. Has a creative zen got better sound quality then?

SJ_Skyline

Sony NW Walkman?

Iain Young

The latest iPod photo 60gb (can't comment on the others) has better sound quality than the 60gb zen xtra...

pbee

the amps are known to be pants in all ipods. but most people dont realise this as they keep the original buds.

stick a pair of grado's on and the ipod falls apart sound wise.

iriver on the other hand is better, but a lot depens on the encoding if only they supported ogg.

KiwiGTI

Why do every Hi-Fi or Audiophile magazine rate the ipods as having the best sound quality? I know who I'd believe. Itunes is also a great product, not buggy at all, and it receives great reviews throughout the industry.

Stereophile
Itunes on CNet

People who buy iRivers and similar music players are just plain weird, then think they are special because they aren't following the crowd. Usually they haven't got any friends so aren't worried at all about their cosmetic appearance or that of any accessories they may have. They also try to justify their embarassing purchase by saying it is better than the widely accepted market leader in a similar fashion to someone who had just bought a "Rover Streetwise" or Daewoo might do.

crush her

Or perhaps you have fallen into Apples marketing ploy of making geeks believe they are "cool" because they have an ipod, as if it’s some sort of lifestyle choice, a bit like a mini cooper or TT perhaps?

Iain Young

Well, I used to be fairly anti-ipod, and owned a 60gb creative Zen. As many people will tell you, (angrynorth ) I had no special love for the ipod at all.

A while ago, the zen went wrong, and so I replaced it with the ipod 60gb photo. The difference is amazing. Better sound quality, better interface, better software, better battery life etc...

I'm probably the least trendy person on the planet and never buy anything because it'll make me look cool. I just buy stuff that does the job I want it to do, and does it well. The iPod photo is that gadget at the moment.

p.s. nothing wrong with the amp on my ipod. At work I run it on a large pair of senheiser headphones, and when out and about I use some smaller senheiser noise reduction headphones. On both, I only have to have the volume half way up and the sound quality is superb...

Iain

GaryK

Yep am looking for an iPod at the moment (King Eric I'll buy yours just respond!) dont know how people call iTunes buggy, it is a great piece of software and I havent found anything quirky about, smart playlists are well cool it just works!

Gary

stevencotton

I've never had a single issue with iTunes in over two years, it's got to be the best bit of music-type software I've ever used. I guess those that think it's bloated and horrible use it under Windows, which is itself bloated and, well, horrible, so no real surprise.

Iain Young

The initial versions of iTunes were buggy (crashed all the time on my computers). They seems to have fixed all those problems now though, and the latest version is great

Daryl

Care to expand on that?

Markus

Try them both, decide which one you like.

I went for an iPod. Partly as I'm a mac type chap, partly because I wanted it to double up as a hard drive, which it does. If you format it as NTFS then you can use it cross platform.

iTunes is a rather nifty bit of software. OK, having to use software to put music onto a player might seem odd, but don't forget that iTunes will allow you to create playlists, so no messing around with folder structures on the drive, plus there is the iTunes Music Store, which I have fell in love with. I used to download the odd tune from "other sources" but now tend to purchase way more tracks on iTMS.

I'd also like to second the query into the response in saying the iPod's amp's are pants. Maybe if you're some serious audiophile they are, in which case, would you really be using a portable player, as opposed to sitting in your nice reclining chair with a pair of ultra expensive headphones on, or some stupidly expensive speakers, listening to music? I'm sure there are superior devices out there for those who are **** about music quality, but I think for the majority, the amp in the iPod will do just fine.

I've not actually heard anyone else complain about this before. I recall reading a review of some very high end, custom in-ear phones, on iPodLounge, and the chap didn't make any reference to these then making the iPod sound crappy.