06-29-2010, 01:33 PM

I am looking to buy an mp3 player right now. To be honest I have never owned one, i'm not a music nut. I Like listening to the radio and and audio books and podcasts, and a few tunes now and then. I recently bought the 21.5" imac, and I kind of wanted to get an ipod just to see how well they played together, (I've heard that that's one of the great things about mac. The 8 gig nano is on sale refurbished for $100. Here's the thing, I can get a 4 gig Sansa Fuze and a 16 gig MicroSDHC card for close to $50 other places online. I've heard about the sansa not playing nice with a mac, but i'm comfortable enough to tinker around to make it work. My budget does play a part here also, I would have to save up for a bit to get the ipod, but I can get the sansa now. Is the ipod really worth the extra cash? They both seem to have the same features except that the fuze has expandable memory.

07-03-2010, 04:43 AM

I ask me the same question some years before. And I think I have done the right. I bought an iPod Nano 4GB. Of course that little thing is very expansive in contrary to other mp3 players but it is genial. You can handle it is easily. You need 10 seconds and you know how the iPod works. This is which apple stand for. Of course iPod and mac is a fantastic combination but windows and iPod have make no problems for me in two years.
But I can’t tell you something about the other products, unfortunately. Because I don’t know anything about them.

07-03-2010, 08:24 AM

Looked at another way:

iPod -- 90% of the market
Sansa -- less than 4%

Why?

Bottom line: the iPod has been a HUGE success even with people who don't have any intention of owning any other Apple product. There must be a reason for that. Try a 4GB shuffle or that 8GB Nano and I suspect you'll figure it out really quickly.

07-07-2010, 12:14 AM

I went ahead and ordered an ipod nano. I'm actually pretty excited for it to get here on friday

07-07-2010, 05:00 AM

Ah well.. I have both (I actually have many DAP's) and much prefer the Fuze for a couple of very simple reasons. First and foremost, the sound quality. Hands down the Sansa absolutely kills the nano in that respect. Secondly, I don't need iTunes to put any music on it. Just drag and drop. Third, it covers Ogg and even FLAC if I want them on there. And though some might say why bother because of how big the FLAC file sizes are... that's where sound quality and good headphones comes in to play.

Hooking up the Fuze and the Nano up to my 2 channel receiver, it's clear that the Fuze's DAC is more capable of a cleaner and more neutral output. In fact, this is true of most other brand DAP's I own vs any of my iPods. Not to say that my iPods sound like rubbish, but they're certainly not my cup of tea.

That said, I'm sure you'll be more than happy with the nano. It's a fine mp3 player so long as you're not using headphones which are capable of showing off its flaws.

Oh:

Originally Posted by chas

Looked at another way:

iPod -- 90% of the market
Sansa -- less than 4%

Why?

Marketing, sir. Nothing more. Apple has a name that people are already familiar with and trust. The small guys whom actually do make better products have never stood a chance. Good example ? Rio, iRiver etc.. Those companies made products (which I do own) that really put any iPod to shame where it counts for those whom love music and not just a pretty design. I'll take my iRiver IHP (ROCKBOX'd or not) over any iPod, ANY day. And yes, I know I'm in the minority. But that's mostly because I'm not swayed by marketing hype and pure style.

My favorite Mp3 players are not very pretty to look at, but tout things such as an optical SPDIF I/O, and 24bit DAC's which make a huge difference when they're used with equally good headphones or amps etc.. Guess it doesn't matter though for the actual market which most of the people (like the OP) here fall into.

Doug

07-07-2010, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by Doug b

Marketing, sir. Nothing more.

BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Congrats, that's the funniest thing I've ever read on this forum.

So the iPods suck, but Apple's sold 100+ million of them -- most of them to repeat buyers -- through clever marketing. Uh huh.

So what you're telling me is that Sansa, iRiver -- almost every other company that makes MP3 players really -- have clearly superior hardware -- but nobody buys them because they're just too stupid to market their ingenious players properly. I see.

Darn that evil Apple for sucking up all the good marketers, leaving all these other companies unable to convince the ignorant public of their OBVIOUS SUPERIORITY.

I'm sure that's what stopped Microsoft too -- poor slobs just couldn't afford to hire any decent marketers. Oh, and Sony with their Betamax! MARKETING was what killed that.

HAHAHAHAHAHA oh dear, that was a good one. Thanks.

07-07-2010, 01:42 PM

Wow Chas, you really hit the nail on the head with that one... (sorry, there's no sarcastic emoticon available)

Normally I think your posts are very logical and on track with the reality of things in general, but you've definitely crossed a line on this one, taking you into plain ol' silly land my friend..

First off, you really need to retract part of what you've said. Please find anything in my post which states me saying that iPods suck. I beg of you. Right, and now that you've combed the thread thoroughly, you can apologize.

What you don't understand here is that these smaller Korean or Chinese companies don't have the same market power in the States as they do in their home lands. They also don't care nearly as much about the US market as they do their own Asian market. I used to admin a forum for DAP's and was in touch with suppliers and manufacturer's for some of these companies, and know first hand that their bottom line is much different than what you want to think.

People buying DAP's and other assorted tech in Asia are a lot more interested in small, feature packed and integrated tech which also includes TV amongst other things. They like the ability to customize and they also don't like proprietary formats. But getting back to the States:

Apple is a financial monster. They're also a marketing beast. No company with the same interests as Apple may have (I'm excluding MS for now) has nearly the same amount of marketing resources. I'm not saying that Apple doesn't produce fine products, else I'd not even be typing this, but you're failing to understand that there is more to an Mp3 player than what the mass public might be interested in.

As there are people whom invest a lot of time and money into things like cars, or boats or even guns... there's a group of people whom more than anything, love the tech we're talking about, and in that smaller world, it's the audio quality which matters most. We're ultimately talking about an very small percentage of people here, so it's also understandable that you don't care about this topic and only know that the iPod plays music and sounds pretty good to your ears.

I've put in many an hour with multiple Mp3 players using different sources like amps *tubes.. Mmmm* and headphones, which cost some pretty serious cheddar... And you can believe me or not (you've clearly already chosen not to), but... most iterations of the iPod are not even close to sounding as good as my scrubby iRiver IHP 140 or Rio Karma or even my cheap ol Sansa Fuze.

So go ahead and poke fun at my expense, I really don't mind. I wasn't trying to convince YOU of anything. And even if I tried, it seems as though you're not very open minded and think that every Apple product trumps every direct competitor, based on nothing but sales figures. Sales numbers are great and all, but they do not absolutely define the quality of an product. Don't think so ? Fine, then why not go and use Windows ? Its sales numbers greatly out number those of OS X, so obviously it's a better product, right ?

Anyway, I'm going to bow out of this while I still have the chance. I'd love to give you the benefit of the doubt and would like to think that you could actually see the truth in what I've said, but somehow I doubt it's going to happen. So, that's it for me.

Move along.. nothing to see here !

Doug

07-08-2010, 03:13 PM

Well this is getting exciting . I have actually heard that the other mp3 players have better sound quality than the ipod, and if I was a music junkie that might have swayed me a lot more. To be honest, I don't think that I would notice a big difference, as i'll mostly be listening to audio books and podcasts. In my pre mac days I would have instantly gone with the sansa player. I'm still a fairly new mac user, and i've heard that one area where they shine is with their technology ecosystem, they play well together. So I went with the ipod just to see if that is as awesome as i've heard people say it is. I was very much a misinformed anti-apple guy before, so now I guess I am testing the waters more.