Lost in a Sea of Portable Audio
 

See I have a predicament and that is; what portable audio solution to choose. I have been eagerly awaiting Sony's Hi-MD NH900 but after extensive research I'm not so sure....

I've written off iPods because they are gaudy and cost too much for what you get. The same story goes for iRivers I think. The other two solutions that have caught my eye are Creative's Zen Touch and MuVo Slim. Another option is Rio Karma.

Here are links to the three I'm looking at:
http://us.creative.com/products/pro...1&product=10274

http://us.creative.com/products/pro...0&product=10052

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-NH900.html

http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/sho...del=220&cat=53

If you guys could help me decide, give tips, ideas(other devices), personal experiences. I would really appreciate it!

Thanks a lot,
Jthm

check out the Zen Xtra

My friend has a Rio Karma. That thing's LOADED with features. He loves it. You can get it for $250 at New Egg.

what audio codecs are you currently or will be possibly using later?
- AAC or with containers MP4/M4a
- WMA :ugh:
- MP3 :ugh:
- Ogg-Vorbis (my fave for lossy)
- FLAC (my personal favourite for lossless)
edit:
- and of course there is the minidisc option as your post seems to indicate a possible interest

that makes a signifcant impact when looking for what the prospective unit will support. My choice now would be the Rio Karma, as it supports Ogg-Vorbis, Flac, MP3, and WMA (I think)

Check out this newbie, supports Audio, video and Pictures 20GB & pretty damn cool:

http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/productview.jhtml?pid=675560473&pcatid=22&catid=22

Wow. I want that sharper image one!
Amazing. I was worried about battery life, but 4 hours with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery I could live with. I like how you can record directly from A/V sources. Coolness.
Now all I need is $400...

My first MP3 player was a Nomad Jukebox with a 6GB hard drive. It had tons of quality issues and kept hanging. After 2.5 years it finally died. Being a Mac user, I decided to spring for an iPod last fall. I love it! I'm a music junkie - and the 40gb of storage enables me to store all of my mp3s. I don't consider it gaudy - it has a clean simple design and is a joy to use.

I have a 128 megs mp3 player, which is nice because it's small. I never really use it anymore because I've also got a mp3 discman. Luckily, I've got a LOT of discs with mp3s.

I would not spend loads of cash to be able to put my entire music collection on one device (130-odd gigs!), because I simply don't see the point. I can choose which cd to bring in the morning, and at the end of the day it's still not done playing...

I can see your point, but I still love having all of my playlists available on the go. I also like not having to mess with discs.

I have a Rio Karma and haven't had a problem in the past 9 months. I use it all the time and with a FM transmittor, it rocks in the car too. Presently got 3500 songs on it and that's almost too many. But it's great to have the selection definately. Downloading is easy and it has a great docking station.

i'm the same boat... i have a 128MB Rio S50 and I just got a 512MB MMC for it and for my daily I don't ever hear that much music at all....

i did quite an amount of research, and the rio karma was the second choice down from the ipod (i ended up with an ipod because i was able to get it at a huge discount).

i was glancing by the front page of the technology section in the paper the other day and it had a top five music device listing. the ipods were at the top followed by the rio karma and nitrus.

Were IRiver's even mentioned on there?

i don't believe i saw any iRiver things on there. top two were ipods, and then i remember the two rio devices and a creative. don't remember which creative

it was only a short list at top 5, the article was on how hugely popular the ipods were talked about how it's come to define their new business ventures (music vs. computer products)

i don't know where they got the information, but if you were really interested i don't suppose it would be that hard to find an objective sales list online