What will replace ipod for quality portable music. ?

[Beef Oven!]

Joint temptation then - not for the first time we are allies in the tech stakes - I too have a much loved 160GB, possibly since then; plus a second since last year permanently plugged into the car.

Likewise wondering what to do when they pack up. And likewise many thanks for post #28 Dave!

And thanks to Bryn for getting the ball rolling!

The 2nd generation X3 is due for release April 6th, £159.99. This explains why the first X3 is no longer available.

I want to be clear about the difference between the three models. As I said, I expect to use it purely for listening to music on the go.

I am very interested in an improvement in sound quality over the iPod Classic, and I wonder how much better the sound quality is on the more expensive models.

[teamsaint]

And thanks to Bryn for getting the ball rolling!

The 2nd generation X3 is due for release April 6th, £159.99. This explains why the first X3 is no longer available.

I want to be clear about the difference between the three models. As I said, I expect to use it purely for listening to music on the go.

I am very interested in an improvement in sound quality over the iPod Classic, and I wonder how much better the sound quality is on the more expensive models.

the X1 doesn't have a DAC for PC facility.

This is actually a true technical thing, and may be important, but not if you only want music on the go?

I quite fancy the new X3 , if it is even better than the old one.

Built in batteries worry me a bit, especially on relatively expensive kit. A 5 year battery warranty would be good !

Edit. Nice looking leather wallet available for the X3 , but £45 ?

[Dave2002]

I see that one cannot link these devices straight into one's iTunes library. Dragging and dropping into an SD card is fine, and will cause me to be selective, rather than dumping all 400+ gigabytes from my library!

I did look to see if the X5 had a higher transfer rate, but it doesn't have a significantly higher rate. Not sure if that's really an issue, but it could be if there's a need to download a lot of high resolution audio files.

Might be a good thing to have a high speed card reader/writer. This one has some very good reviews, and some variable ones. One reviewer has measured the I/O rates, and his certainly seemed OK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Speed-U.../dp/B004VF7NC8.

[Beef Oven!]

I did look to see if the X5 had a higher transfer rate, but it doesn't have a significantly higher rate. Not sure if that's really an issue, but it could be if there's a need to download a lot of high resolution audio files.

Might be a good thing to have a high speed card reader/writer. This one has some very good reviews, and some variable ones. One reviewer has measured the I/O rates, and his certainly seemed OK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Speed-U.../dp/B004VF7NC8.

Thanks Dave, that card reader/writer looks like a good idea.

[Flay]

Gamba, you said earlier that your ipod is playing up. Have you tried resetting it ?

http://techchannel.radioshack.com/reset-ipod-classic-2772.html

[Beef Oven!]

the X1 doesn't have a DAC for PC facility.

This is actually a true technical thing, and may be important, but not if you only want music on the go?

I quite fancy the new X3 , if it is even better than the old one.

Built in batteries worry me a bit, especially on relatively expensive kit. A 5 year battery warranty would be good !

Edit. Nice looking leather wallet available for the X3 , but £45 ?

Thanks teamsaint, a DAC isn't important to me, I'll only be playing music on the go. Therefore, I have tentatively pencilled out the X5.

It might be the X1 is all I will need. Much cheaper, but 180gb of SD storage (comparable to my iPod Classic) will cost another £69, it seems. Actually, I dob't think I'm really going to need 180gb. And in any case, it's a good idea to refresh your playlist every so often, rather than having 1500 CDs on your iPod. I'm thinking 64gb will suffice.

[Dave2002]

If anyone only wants a DAC FiiO has a couple - http://www.ea-audio.co.uk/products.html

D03K (Taishan) - £29.99 goes up to 192/24

FiiO D07 - £39.99 goes up to 96/24

At these prices they surely represent good value - but it depends how fussy you are.

[johnb]

Built in batteries worry me a bit, especially on relatively expensive kit. A 5 year battery warranty would be good !

This trend of producing devices with non-replaceable batteries worries me too. All batteries lose capacity over time and that will determine the effective useful life of the device.

[gamba]

Thank you all. Will do my best to accept & act upon much of this advice.

Good wishes to you for divulging so much knowledge on the subject.

[Beef Oven!]

When I was in the supermarket a couple of hours ago, I had a little read of an Apple Magazine (£5.99!! The price of mags, these days!) and by an extraordinary coincidence there was a short nostalgic piece on the iPod Classic 180gb!

Basically the article said that feeble attempts to add photographs etc failed, and the Classic remained doggedly the go to, on the go music player. Largely because of its Goliath capacity. It was also said that it's discontinuation, last year was the end of an era and there was no longer a stand alone player of its kind in the market.

The really surprising thing is that second hand iPod Classics had been changing hands on eBay for silly money, soon after the news of its discontinuation.

The prices have calmed down now and the going rate has settled at £400!!!!!

£400 pound for a second hand iPod 180gb Classic!!! A gap in the market, or what?

[Dave2002]

£400 pound for a second hand iPod 180gb Classic!!! A gap in the market, or what?

However, as we are noting here, there are other possibilities, such as the FiiO X1, X3 or X5, and there may still be models from Sony, plus of course various phone options. Apple's own iPod Touch models can presumably be easily increased in size as the price of solid state memory of various types drops, so it won't be long before the storage capacity could be back up to that of the largest capacity Classic iPods. Currently the 128 Gbyte iPad is around £600, but applying Moore's Law we could expect a 256 Gbyte model for a comparable price in a year or two. Similarly the iPods and iPhones could get more storage, so the apparent gap in the market could be filled very quickly.

I wouldn't bet against Android devices though. Having now tried a couple I think they are considerably inferior to Apple's products, but they will improve in capacity over the next few years, and they may still represent what many users will come to think of as good value for money. At the moment I think they're too clunky - e.g Sony phones with insufficient main memory and a system architecture which relies on main memory, so that it's impossible to run all the apps and store all the data users might want - but this will surely change, which will give Apple a hard job to compete. Apple may have to decide whether to keep selling all of its products at relatively high prices, or alternatively to reduce the prices of some of the current models, and pitch new models in at lower price points. They have an edge at the present time, but that could easily disappear in a year or two.

[teamsaint]

Picked up a card reader in poundland today.

£1.50

Works fine with micro SD. Dont know if it writes though.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

poundland

£1.50

???

[teamsaint]

???

well at least SOMEBODY was paying attention !!



£1, of course.

and it writes well enough to copy the Schnittke Piano Quintet, I have just discovered, so that'll do for me.

choice of colours. cool white for me. I'll paint the red stripes on later.

[Richard Barrett]

I ordered myself an iBasso DX50, which I'll be picking up at the weekend. I don't think this one has been mentioned here. There seems to have been quite a proliferation of new digital audio players of late, so I did some hunting around for opinions and this was my decision, though there didn't seem to be very much to choose between it and the (somewhat more expensive) Fiio X5. I'll be back in a few days with some initial reactions.