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Mr_J_
November 3rd, 2005, 06:02 PM
I am wondering which is THE portable music player of choice for the linux world.
Even tho I know about the existence of the iPod series, they seem to have little more than a good look to offer.

I'd like that the Music player can play Ogg Vorbis format.
I care very little about Wma, but a little more about mp3.

So just post what you believe is the P.M.P. of choice for the Linux world.
Preferably with reasons about why that is your choice.

Brunellus
November 3rd, 2005, 06:05 PM
iRiver H340.

.ogg and .mp3 capability, plus voice recorder and FM radio.

bionnaki
November 3rd, 2005, 07:03 PM
I also have/recommend an iriver h320/340.
excellent player, excellent forums: http://www.misticriver.net

you can also play .avi if you switch to the korean firmware (1.28k is the latest).

just plug in via usb & ubuntu automounts it.
drag/drop your music files onto it.
no applications needed - it's basically an external harddrive.
great battery life.

I am also checking out the iaudio x5...seems similiar to the h3xx, but it plays .flac

Malphas
November 3rd, 2005, 07:05 PM
iAudio X5

xequence
November 3rd, 2005, 09:40 PM
I have a sony player, but they are propriatory idiots. MP3 and ATRAC3 only. (WHo would EVER use atrac3 anyway? Horrible quality). Windows Only.

majikstreet
November 3rd, 2005, 09:57 PM
I personally use the iPod... I wish I had known more about the other ones that can play ogg when I requested the iPod- they are probably similar in price (around 200-300USD).. I have a 4th gen black and white screen 20gig.

funkydan2
November 3rd, 2005, 11:22 PM
Another vote for the iRiver H3X0. Not only is it simple to use with Linux, but it comes with heaps of features that cost more money to get on an iPod.

The only annoyance with it is that it doesn't do gapless playback - which AFAIK Sony does (if you encode with ATRAC3plus) as do Creative players. However, there is a possibility that when rockbox (http://rockbox.sf.net) is ported to the H3X0 series that we'll get gapless playback.

erikpiper
November 4th, 2005, 12:32 AM
Ok Iaudio is new to me- Which one is better?? iriver? Iaudio?

(I use a CD player at the mo.....)

sethmahoney
November 4th, 2005, 12:50 AM
Has anybody tried the iPod with this: http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page

?

tehwa
November 4th, 2005, 01:07 AM
I'm another happy iRiver H340 user. No tweaking required, acts as any old external HDD so to refresh music on it I just:
rsync -uvr --ignore-existing --progress --exclude='.Trash*' /home/tehwa/music/ /media/H300
In fact, since there are some H340 users here, anyone got a good script for stripping characters such as "?" from the filenames before transferring?

Collin
November 4th, 2005, 05:41 AM
If the ipod can't read .ogg is that due to firmware or hardware limitation, I would tend to say firmware, so why not develop an open source OS that can play .ogg for the ipod.

After all on the hardware/style aspect the ipod beats down any mp3 player out there. imo

Brunellus
November 4th, 2005, 05:43 AM
according to the guys over at the ipod linux project, the ipod simply doesn't have the oomph to decode ogg in real-time.

Collin
November 4th, 2005, 05:48 AM
according to the guys over at the ipod linux project, the ipod simply doesn't have the oomph to decode ogg in real-time.

then can we say that the .ogg is not a good format for portable players ?, but I don't really get it, if the new ipod can decode video files in real-time it sure should be able to do so with .ogg audio files

Brunellus
November 4th, 2005, 05:52 AM
then can we say that the .ogg is not a good format for portable players ?, but I don't really get it, if the new ipod can decode video files in real-time it sure should be able to do so with .ogg audio files
all portable players are not ipods. There are other portable players that deal with ogg and mp3 equally well.

The more logically accurate statement is probably that the ipod was simply not designed to decode ogg. The designers were obviously prioritizing things other than ogg playback when they were designing the ipod.

Collin
November 4th, 2005, 05:56 AM
The more logically accurate statement is probably that the ipod was simply not designed to decode ogg. The designers were obviously prioritizing things other than ogg playback when they were designing the ipod.

Yeah that makes sense, well I guess I'll keep on with the good ol' mp3, the iriver is just waayyy too ugly plus the ipod is the only thing going for apple these days

bionnaki
November 4th, 2005, 08:51 AM
rsync -uvr --ignore-existing --progress --exclude='.Trash*' /home/tehwa/music/ /media/H300

does that sync music with local music to the h3xx?
sweet! never thought about doing that...

benplaut
November 4th, 2005, 09:22 AM
h340 is really hard to find, so i'm going with the iAudio... my sis is getting one, after all my research :)

meldroc
November 5th, 2005, 12:40 AM
PSA: Avoid Sony's music players. They are not Linux compatible, they force you to use their bloated, Windows-only feature-sparse software to transfer songs onto the player, and they have all sorts of nasty DRM. That and we shouldn't be rewarding with money a company that puts rootkits on their music CDs.

Master Shake
November 5th, 2005, 12:43 AM
Sony Walkman Cassette, boy-ee!

bionnaki
November 5th, 2005, 01:17 AM
h340 is really hard to find, so i'm going with the iAudio... my sis is getting one, after all my research :)

they were discontinued this past winter.
kinda sad - one of the best players at the time.

the iaudio x5 is pretty cool.
I like that it plays flac.