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General discussion

I'm off travelling, I NEED mp3, please help

Sep 8, 2005 6:24PM PDT

Hello all,

Well the tickets are booked and I'm off travelling through SE Asia (again). This is what I need advice on as a few years ago when I last went, i was forced to take minidisc (took way to much space in my rucsack)

1) 5 - 10 gig mp3 player with 'decent battery life and good sound output (needs to be loud enough to cope with noisy buses etc)

2) I may be away from electricity for a few days at atime, what are my options

3) A good pair of in ear phones that are reasonably priced

Thanks for reading

Dingo

Discussion is locked

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try these 1n's....
Sep 10, 2005 9:50AM PDT

iRiver H10, Creative Zen MuVo Micro or Olympus m:robe. Both the H10 and Zen have some time-killng feats. to help u pass time; a FM radio w/tuner, and voice recording. (oh, and they both have a touch-sensitive scroll wheel that looks great!)Good products interms of quality and reliability, but yur out of luck with the electricity problem: no dock charger (or so i bleave). The m:robe however- by the way one of the best lookin' mp3 players out there- has a docking charger station, but again obviously u need electricity for that. It doesn't have any voice rec. or FM, but it has a kareoke feat. if yur interested in 'remixing' your songs, so it should be worth-wild. All have good line-in encodings and all of these products are in 5GB- plenty of space- and more i believe, (except for the Zen not too aware about a 10 GB or even 20GB one)

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sorry , fergut to add.......
Sep 10, 2005 9:55AM PDT

if yur not to famous on the stadard in-the-box headphones that come with eletronics, i reccomend any SONY fonotopia pair or most PANASONIC pairs- both brand tend to have good quality. (well, they are to of the line). price shouldn't b a problem (considering yur interested in a 5Gb or more mp3 player!!)I got my 'fontopia' earbuds for about 15$ cndn. post back if you chose anything.

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my thoughts
Sep 10, 2005 12:40PM PDT

if you want a small player, you can get a Creative Zen Micro or iRiver h10. both are 4-6GB players, and got outstanding reviews. the real advantages is the battery, since its replaceable. just buy an extra battery, charge them both, so when one runs out, just switch the other. i believe creative is giving on away with the purchase of a micro.

the problem with the h10 is it only can be charged with a USB cable. a wall adapter needs to be purchased.

if you want to go a little higher, the Sony NW-HD5 walkman has 20GB of memory, a replaceable battery as well which can last up to a reported 40 hours.


hope this helps

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Now Im at a loss
Sep 12, 2005 12:27AM PDT

Thanks for your idea's so far. Went and listented to a few devices at the weekend. The sony HD5 sounded good and has a great battery life but you HAVE to sort out the codes as the output wasnt nearly loud enough.

The Ipod mini sounded quite good but had poor battery life.

THEN I read today that next month ipod are supposedly bringing out a 6gig flash mp3 player which would dramatically improve the battery life?!?!

Anyone know anything,

Cheers, D

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My thoughts
Sep 12, 2005 1:21AM PDT

If you don't need too many features (FM tuner, recording, etc) then a very good choice would be the Creative Zen Touch. It has plenty of space for you because it is 20GB and it has a 24 hour battery life. I have found I can go more than a week without charging it at times. The software it comes with is easy to use and transfers are simple. I had the thing playing (my music) within thirty minutes of opening the box. The volume is a little softer than I would like, but noise isolations earphones make up for it by blocking out all outside noise.

As for headphones, I would go with "Koss The Plug" earphones. They have excellent noise isolation, which makes up for the Zen Touch's somewhat quiet volume levels. Even with just the plugs in it will sound as if you put in earplugs and then when you play your music, you won't hear anything at all. They are also incredibly cheap and they sound great with amazing bass. I have not tried it yet, but I have heard that you can combine the etymotic er4 replacement eartips on the Plugs to make them sound even better. I plan on trying that as soon as I can get a pair of the replacements.

Hope this helps!

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a minefield . . . .
Sep 12, 2005 2:06AM PDT

Thanks for your thoughts! I was looking at the Creative but the volume problem seems to be something that loads of people have documented so I cant go for it. I will be travelling through places like cambodia on ancient creaky, noisy buses along roads that are dust tracks. I already have seniheiser mx500's and would probably look at getting the Koss but . . . .

. . . .I need some serious volume to start with!!!

Maybe I should just hold fire for a month or so and see what else gets released! Might just encode all my albums for now.

Cheers, D

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if you wanted
Sep 12, 2005 6:35AM PDT

you could go old school and get a mini-disc player?

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grrrr. . . minidisc
Sep 12, 2005 7:33PM PDT

Hi,

I actually already have a minidisc which I took travelling last time which plays for 20 hours of 1 AA battery!, however, at MDLP2, you only get 2 albums on a minidisc, 120 albums = 60 minidiscs and thats a lot in my rucksack which is purposly tiny.

I Could buy a new hi capacity 1 gig minidsic for