Originally Posted by slawecki
I just want to dump a bunch of albums on a machine for the Transatlantic trips, and have them play in shuffle mode. Will a Creative or a Rio or some such do this? Is the fidelity that much better on a Apple or a Archos than on a Creative or a Rio?
I recommend Sony's
NW-E99.
- Price: $170
- Weight: 1.75 ounces with battery
(the weight of 9 US quarters)
- Size: 2.25 x 1.5 x 0.5 inches
(the size of a pack of gum, i.e. a Wrigley's Plen-T Pack)
- Capacity: 1 gigabyte
(16 hours of music for 128 kbps MP3 files / 34+ hours for ATRAC)
- Battery life: 50 hours for MP3 or 70 hours for ATRAC
- Battery: standard AAA
- Software: drag-and-drop MP3 files (software is transparent),
or run Sony's clunky but functional SonicStage program for ATRAC
With the level of background noise on a jet, you would not notice differences in sound quality, even if there were any.
Paul Marcelin-Sampson
Santa Cruz, California, USA
Details, if you are curious:
1. The NW-E99 is now in clearance. The new NW-E100 line has the same features, but in bulkier (round) and less rugged (has more plastic) package.
2. In general, the industry is moving away from players with standard batteries to players with proprietary, built-in, hard-to-replace rechargeable batteries (cf. Apple's entire iPod line and Sony's new NW-E400/500 line). This has major drawbacks for the consumer.
3. ATRAC3, Sony's own file format, is completely optional: the NW-E99 plays standard MP3 files. However, Sony designed ATRAC with decoding efficiency in mind, so you do get better battery life with ATRAC files.
4. In the kinds of places where we use portable music players (plane, gym, bus, train, etc.), differences in sound quality between the various file formats (MP3, AAC, ATRAC, etc.) would not be noticeable.
5. As with MP3, you can select different sound quality levels ("bit rates") with ATRAC. The higher the quality, the bigger the files, and hence, the fewer songs you can store.