Road To Recovery
Been a while. Summer and the lure of the outdoors is part of it. I’ve also been spending some time trying to work through my list of broken and unserviceable possessions. First, I mail-ordered a new mp3 player to replace my dead Archos Jukebox. I ended up with a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 40 gigabyte. The price point on the unit seemed to be the sweet spot of the category, $240 from ecost.com. I had been eyeballing the HP iRiver, but it cost $160 more, and I ultimately decided the FM radio and ability to record with a microphone wasn’t worth the extra money.
Another thing that gave me pause about the Nomad was the fact that you can only move data on and off it using the Creative software. Windows won’t recognize it as a drive. This is a disadvantage only if you want to plug it into someone else’s computer and copy files. However, with the money I saved I bought a 500 mb usb memory stick which Windows DOES recognize as a drive, so if I want data from any other computer, I can copy it to the memory stick and then, if it’s stuff I want on the Nomad, I’ll use my own pc and the Creative software to move it there.
The Apple iPod was completely off my radar, despite being the leader of the technology. They want nearly a $200 premium over similar-sized players from other manufacturers (and are apparently getting it), but the only advantages I see are 1) they’re about 1oz lighter and 2) they play Apple’s propretary AAC music format, which they use to distribute music from their iTunes online music store. In order to use music from iTunes on another player, you have to burn a WAV format cd, then rip the cd to mp3 format. I’ve done this with a number of purchases from iTunes, but I read recently that the music from iTunes (and the other RIAA sanctioned online music stores) is recorded at no better than 128 kbs. I’ve experimented with various sampling rates when ripping regular cds, and even with my 54-year old ears, I can hear the difference between 128 and 192, even on uncomplicated tunes. (I can’t, however, detect any difference between 192 constant-rate and VBR) Though I would cheerfully pay for downloaded music, this (the 128 kbs limitation) angers me a little, and tempts me to turn to Kazaa or some other illegal system as a punishment to the RIAA. They STILL can’t get it right, despite several years of market research they didn’t have to pay for.
