So I bought another MP3 player. I’m a little bit ashamed, I admit. It’s a Sansa E270 and it’s got a proprietary connector. I caved. But only because it was so damn cheap.

buy.com had refurbished E270s for $40. I figured that $40 was cheap enough that it doesn’t matter too much if it sucks terribly. It’s got 6GB of memory and a microSD expansion slot. Within 10 minutes of turning it on I installed rockbox on it.

Blah.

The life of a tech-snob is tough I guess. I’ve got a player, it’s not what I wanted but it’s cheap enough that I won’t feel horrible when I replace it. Or if it breaks. Or if I lose the stupid proprietary cable. Please though, don’t let my whining bring you down, obviously there are good things to say.

I can once again fit “all” of my music on a single device. Also rockbox does makes things better. On top of that it’s a beautiful day outside, it’s Saturday, and the blonde girl working at this restaurant is making me hee-hee inside. What that has to do with the MP3 player, I’m not sure… but life could definitely be worse.

Well it seems that my three-part series is more than 3 parts. The MP3 player saga continues. If you read my previous post, you heard me say that I don’t hate my iAudio U5. Well things have changed.

Hate

I ordered two additional micro USB cables for the U5 so that I could have one at work and keep one in my bag. Early last week I got the cables in the mail. As soon as I opened up the package and looked at the cables I knew something was amiss. My worries were confirmed when I compared the micro USB connector on the cable to the connector on the U5. Sure enough, they did not fit.

Grrr.

I hit up the internet and hunted down the official specification for USB 2.0 to get things figured out once & for all. I learned two things. First, apparently micro USB connectors do indeed have two different types (this is inconsistent with what I originally said in an earlier post), both A & B. Second, my U5 sports neither of those two connectors! My first instinct was to smash the U5 with a hammer and then urinate on it with all the fury of a lover scorned. But I couldn’t find my hammer and I didn’t really have to pee at the time. By the time I finally did have to pee I had calmed down.

Further research was fruitless. I have no clue what the mystery connector is on the bottom of the U5. This means that any loss of or damage to the cable renders the U5 worthless as I can’t replace the cable. At this point I wanted to return it, but that too was a problem. I purchased the player from newegg and newegg’s return policy for MP3 players is exchange only, no refunds. poop.

Love

I knew of this return policy before I bought the player, so I couldn’t get upset over it now…. or could I? One of the things I really like about newegg is their search features, specifically their “Advanced Search” dropdowns. Cowon says on their website that U5 has a USB connector. Newegg, through their search, agreed as well . So technically what they said I was getting isn’t what I got. So I sent them an email. I told them exactly what I just said and sent the link to the USB 2.0 specification as well. I explained that I knew they had a “no refund” policy but hoped they’d make an exception due to the incorrect information on their site. I sent the email fully expecting a cut & paste reply thanking me for being a customer, promising me they’d pass on my comments, and that I could get fucked before they gave me a refund.

Two days later newegg replied, with an RMA # to send the player back for a full refund! Then they sent a second email with a prepaid shipping label to ship the player back with!! So big kudos to newegg for stepping up in the name of customer service! Newegg isn’t perfect, but this week they’re my hero.

Music

I’ve erased all the files on the the U5 and it’s getting shipped back this Monday. Which means my MP3 player saga is not yet finished. I’ve reloaded my 1GB U2 with the latest songs and will continue hunting. I’m looking at three possible routes at this point. I can either 1) keep looking for an acceptable player, 2) buy a smaller player that’s nowhere near perfect but cheap enough that I don’t feel bad about using it as a temorary stop-gap or 3) look for something else that isn’t primarily an MP3 player but will play MP3s as well like a PDA, netbook or maybe a smartphone.

I don’t know, we’ll see. So I guess: To be continued…

So after all of my railing against the MP3 players that sucked, I finally settled on one: the iAudio U5.

My previous MP3 player was the iAudio U2 and I was pretty happy with it. There were some limitations, but over all it was a good player for the time. I expected the U5 to use the U2 for the foundation and build upon it to form a modern player. I may as well have expected a rainbow-colored pony named Stan, as I would have been equally disappointed either way.

Before I go into a typical Kane-esque rant let me give Cowon credit for the things they did right. The U5, like the U2, is MSC based so taking files on & off is relatively easy (until you get to my rant below). Cowon MP3 players are known for superior sound quality and the U5 fits in with rest of their line. The U5 also sports a nice, color OLED screen as well as the all-important tactile buttons.

So I did my research and the U5 seemed like a pretty safe bet. I was excited when I bought and tracked it’s progress with the expectation befitting my geekiness. I was pretty happy when I unboxed it. That happiness lasted a good 2 minutes and 15 seconds. And then: (here comes the rant…)

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I’ve been interested in getting a new MP3 player for 6 months or more now. Time & again I would go online and go through the specs of player after player always to end up being disappointed. This post is dedicated to all the players I didn’t buy. Before I tell you why, here’s a list of the features I was looking for in a player:

• Must haves

• 8GB+ memory
  My current MP3 player has 1GB of memory. After having it for several years I finally decided that I wanted something that would fit my entire collection. 8GB would do that and give me some room to grow.
• Standard connector
  My hatred for proprietary connectors is a deep, deep hatred. One day I’ll have an entire post dedicated to the evils of proprietary connectors. For now I’ll just say this: I want to be able to hook my MP3 player anywhere I go without the need of some obscure proprietary connector that costs $50 for a spare.
• MSC
  This goes along with the standard connector above. I want to be able to plug my MP3 player to any computer made in the last 10 years and have it just work. I don’t want to deal with any bullshit media manager or poorly-made, manufacturer-specific sync software.
• Shuffle
  I don’t understand how this isn’t standard in every single MP3 player ever made.
• Tactile buttons
  I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate touch interfaces. I don’t want to take my player out of my pocket to change songs or adjust volume. Period.
• A nice screen
  My current MP3 player has a small, monochrome screen that is poorly back lit. I don’t care about viewing pictures or watching videos on my player, but there were two important things I was looking for. Easy readability, even in sunlight and enough screen space that I don’t have to wait 10 minutes for the filename to scroll across the screen to see which file I had selected.

• Expansion slot
  The ability to add memory to an MP3 player is awesome. However in order for it to actually be useful it has to integrate with the player’s internal memory. The only reason that expansion slot is a “bonus” and not a “must have” is because I knew going in that there just weren’t that many players who’ve got this capability (yet?).
• Bluetooth
  There is a standard within bluetooth known as A2DP. This is for streaming stereo music to headphones. Bluetooth headphones are a total luxury however, assuming a reasonable price for the headphones, I totally think it’s worth it.
• Wi-Fi
  This is pretty muych a pipe dream. There have been a few MP3 players that have incorporated Wi-Fi. But never as a fully open connection, such as your laptop sports. Ideally my player would be able to seamlessly connect to my home network and I could browse to it just like I do anyh other PC on my network. So I could then just drag & drop songs on or off of it. If I could do that, then I could have my player sync up with podcasts and such every night as I slept. This would give me a boner, really.

So that’s the list. Now let’s talk about the losers:
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This is the first of a three-post series. This first installment will be to define & describe some of the things you may want to look at if you were interested in buying an MP3 player. Posts 2 & 3 will talk about my experience with my recent purchase of an MP3 player. The intention of this post is to serve as a primer for MP3 players and give you a general understanding of the terms and technologies associated with bringing music into your life on the go.

Connecting to the Player

First thing to look at it how you physically connect your MP3 player to your computer. There are two categories, proprietary connectors or standardized connectors.

Standardized connectors are connectors that are available for general usage. A perfect (and approriate) example would be a USB connector. USB is a standard connector that comes in 4 different varieties, A, B, mini-B (aka mini USB), and micro A/B. I have receieved mini USB cables from each of 1 PDA, 2 different MP3 players, 2 different cameras, and 3 portable hard drives I’ve purchased over the years. There’s a very likely at least 1 or 2 mini USB cables in your house right now. In other words, mini USB is everywhere. If that’s not enough, a replacement cable is stupid-cheap. It’s important to note that of the 4 USB varieties I would say that USB A and mini-B are, by far, the most prevalent connecters out there.

Proprietary connectors are just that, proprietary. This means the manufacturer of the player owns the connector and licenses it’s use out to other companies for a fee. The fine folks at Apple are the perfect example of of how this is done. They sell you an iPod for a premium fee, and then they make more money off of your purchase by selling the rights to use their connector to companies who then make iPod docks, iPod remotes, and iPod-enabled toasters. In exchange for this the end user is limited in how, when & where he/she connects to their player. While others may disagree with me, I see no real reason for a proprietary connector other than to make the manufacturer more money and to increase the difficulty for the end user.

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