Portable music notes

Posted on June 9, 2005 by acb

People with lives can skip this post.


When I was in Boston I bought a Creative Zen Micro1 and a pair of expensive, but not “outrageously expensive(

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9 Responses to Portable music notes

  1. Ian Hobson says:
    June 9, 2005 at 2:34 pm

    Andrew
    >Cheaper than an iPod; plays mp3s without translation; said to have better sound quality

    1. Can’t comment on cheaper
    2. What on earth does plays mp3’s without translation mean? All iPods since the first play mp3’s. They also play lots of other formats including AAC which is considered much better than mp3. So perphaps your piano would sound better (or use lossless!). I think you may be confusing the iPod with Sony models which until recently could not play mp3s.
    3.said to have better sound quality? By whom – the odd fan. I think if you read up on this you’ll find the iPod’s come out very well on sound quality – just try the bible called Stereophile. Strangely perhaps the iPod shuffle comes out the best in recent test reports.
    4. 99p a track. When did you visit the UK store? It’s always been 79p a track for EVERY track. No one beats that for a legal purchase of a wide selection.

    You can justify your decision on 1 perhaps, but 2 and 4 are just false and 3 is subjective at best. I’m disappointed in you.

    I can confirm though that you’ll like your Etymotics and probably won’t object to the filter replacements.

    Ian

  2. acb says:
    June 9, 2005 at 4:04 pm

    Cheaper — you’ll just have to trust me. I paid $200 for 5MB of music. I’d have paid more for less at the Apple store and over here the difference seems to be about

  3. Ian Hobson says:
    June 10, 2005 at 7:26 am

    >I paid $200 for 5MB of music. I’d have paid more for less at the Apple store and over here the difference seems to be about

  4. Charles says:
    June 10, 2005 at 11:51 am

    I think you’re going to have to go back and re-rip all those CDs as AIFF – that is, take them as nice clean uncompressed files off the CD.

    And then find a nice quiet room to listen to them in…

  5. Rupert says:
    June 10, 2005 at 1:08 pm

    I didn’t know that the Etymotics had got that cheap.

    There’s not to choose between MP3 players, I think. Love my 40GB iPod, even though it’s not nearly big enough…

    And talking of cheap’n’interesting, what to make of this?

    http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/sonicimpact/t.html

    R

  6. acb says:
    June 10, 2005 at 1:25 pm

    The Etymotics are that cheap from “here”:http://www.discountheadphones.com/ and the company claims to ship without fuss abroad. Certainly, they posted mine to Boston without charging exorbitantly.

    That hi-fi review you pointed me at was priceless. Better than wine writing. I will revisit this. And, if the amp presently off with a gnome on the Little Walden Road turns out to be impossible to fix, I shall buy one of those and try to work out how to connect these fancy four-wire speakers into it. Actually, how could you connect three speakers into a normal amp?

  7. Ian Hobson says:
    June 20, 2005 at 10:45 am

    >The Etymotics are that cheap from

    I got mine from Earphone Solutions in the US. shipped to the UK for $19.95. I paid $116.95 for the earphones and got a further 10% discount for a coupon from iPodlounge (probably no longer valid). They arrived in less than a week, nothing else to pay.

    I find many of the US internet stores are just great at service (I received some laptop/camera bags to my London home less than 48 hours after I’d ordered them in San Francisco!).

    The ER6i’s are great but maybe not to everyone’s taste, and take a little getting used to.

    Ian

  8. qB says:
    June 20, 2005 at 3:52 pm

    I got a pair of those from an internet site somewhere or other. The headphones, I mean.

    Great sound quality etc but… agonisingly painful to wear and very embarassing to re-insert in public if once removed (licking them, pulling the ear in all sorts of peculiar directions and generally looking like a demented yoga freak).

  9. acb says:
    June 20, 2005 at 4:13 pm

    You must have smaller ears. I find they get more comfortable as I wear them more; in any case, the foam inserts should fit into very small ears if they are rolled up tight enough.

    Yes. One does look a prat putting them in in public. At least you don’t have to spit on the foam inserts.

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