New FLAC player?

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I'm after a new player, I'm currently using my iPhone and it's becoming a hassle to convert my FLAC to MP3 just to listen to, throw in the sunken jack port (thus requiring an extension for headphones) and weak bass and I'm about ready to cough up the cash for something more music oriented ;)

I want something that can be Rockboxed, small and at least 8GB of space, cheap and sound ok. I've got my eye on the Clip+ or Fuze however they are few and far between on the bay and I'm loathe to buy new when I have a player already (albeit an annoying one). If there are any alternatives out there then I'd love to hear of them.
 
I'm after a new player, I'm currently using my iPhone and it's becoming a hassle to convert my FLAC to MP3 just to listen to, throw in the sunken jack port (thus requiring an extension for headphones) and weak bass and I'm about ready to cough up the cash for something more music oriented ;)

I want something that can be Rockboxed, small and at least 8GB of space, cheap and sound ok. I've got my eye on the Clip+ or Fuze however they are few and far between on the bay and I'm loathe to buy new when I have a player already (albeit an annoying one). If there are any alternatives out there then I'd love to hear of them.

The Clip+ 8GB new is under £45 delivered elsewhere (£44.70 to be exact!!) It's superb with FLAC. Not sure how much cheaper they would be second hand. The site selling at the above price pretty much has a 'no quibbles' return policy if there's any fault and IMO that's worth paying the few quid extra over a used one.
 
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I saw said site and have been pretty tempted, but it's a tad bit more saved than a few quid, by the looks of things £15-20 saved, almost half the price.

One thing that does concern me with the Clip+ is I've read that it has issues with gapless playback, it's pretty important to me that there are no artificial gaps when listening to albums, I don't know if this was a one off issue, a firmware issue, or a hardware issue across the board.
 
get a clip+ and flash it with rockbox. perfect gapless playback sorted.

but using flac on a portable device... what a waste of space. :/ transcoding hardly takes any time. and if you have a decent converter setup with your own presets it's as simple as clicking one button.
 
get a clip+ and flash it with rockbox. perfect gapless playback sorted.

but using flac on a portable device... what a waste of space. :/ transcoding hardly takes any time. and if you have a decent converter setup with your own presets it's as simple as clicking one button.

I agree with these sentiments. There's not much improvement from mp3 at 320kbps to FLAC at all, in fact, it's barely percieveable, especially on a portable player. The Sansa Clip+ will do what you're asking admirably, and it's so cheap you may as well get a new one.
 
get a clip+ and flash it with rockbox. perfect gapless playback sorted.

but using flac on a portable device... what a waste of space. :/ transcoding hardly takes any time. and if you have a decent converter setup with your own presets it's as simple as clicking one button.

I agree with these sentiments. There's not much improvement from mp3 at 320kbps to FLAC at all, in fact, it's barely percieveable, especially on a portable player. The Sansa Clip+ will do what you're asking admirably, and it's so cheap you may as well get a new one.

I disagree with these sentiments.

I notice a difference between FLAC and MP3 @320kbps, it's the same difference as that between 320 MP3 and a CD track imo.

I have the Clip+ and use FLACs on it whenever I have the track in question in FLAC format. Why have a player capable of playing the highest possible quality yet only play MP3s on it? The only reasons I can think of are:

- You want a very high number of tracks on your player, because you are going on holiday or something.

- You don't have FLAC tracks for whatever reason.
 
I notice a difference between FLAC and MP3 @320kbps, it's the same difference as that between 320 MP3 and a CD track imo.

absolute bollards. very few people can successfully ABX the difference on uber high end hifi. people sat in a dark room with 1000 quid headphones would be hard pushed to tell the difference so you saying you can on a portable device is laughable. oh and i assume you actually use your player outside where listening test conditions are slightly less than ideal?
 
i agree about MP3 being fine for portable players!! however flac sounds more open more transparent whereas MP3 seems solid like your sat outside lookin in!
I liken it to the difference btw CD and vinyl, vinyl being much more open and engauging.
Trying ripping a track to MP3 then burn MP3 to CD then play CD, take the original CD and play that, there is a difference!!
 
absolute bollards. very few people can successfully ABX the difference on uber high end hifi. people sat in a dark room with 1000 quid headphones would be hard pushed to tell the difference so you saying you can on a portable device is laughable. oh and i assume you actually use your player outside where listening test conditions are slightly less than ideal?

I can also hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC. Just because you cant hear it, doesn't mean no one can. :)
 
absolute bollards. very few people can successfully ABX the difference on uber high end hifi. people sat in a dark room with 1000 quid headphones would be hard pushed to tell the difference so you saying you can on a portable device is laughable. oh and i assume you actually use your player outside where listening test conditions are slightly less than ideal?

Link to this research please. Either you have terrible ears or terrible FLAC files.

Your second assumption is also wrong...I frequently listen to my player on the sofa reading a book or a paper so I don't disturb others with my Hi-Fi.
 
Last time I checked the MP3 specification didn't support gapless playback which means it's not suitable to me, throw in the fact I'm lazy and don't really want to convert and FLAC becomes the winner for me.
 
absolute bollards. very few people can successfully ABX the difference on uber high end hifi. people sat in a dark room with 1000 quid headphones would be hard pushed to tell the difference so you saying you can on a portable device is laughable. oh and i assume you actually use your player outside where listening test conditions are slightly less than ideal?

I have to agree with this. I can percieve a difference between mp3 and FLAC, but the difference between 320kbps and FLAC is extremely small, especially on a handheld player.
 
Last time I checked the MP3 specification didn't support gapless playback which means it's not suitable to me, throw in the fact I'm lazy and don't really want to convert and FLAC becomes the winner for me.

you've not heard of the lame encoder then? although mp3 doesn't support gapless natively, lame writes gapless info into the headers which rockbox supports. (and other decent mp3 players such as newer cowons etc).

but being lazy is a reasonable enough excuse i guess. i can't argue with that. :D

I can also hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC. Just because you cant hear it, doesn't mean no one can. :)

evidence please. using your pc you can do a double blind test to rule out placebo. you can use foobar2000 and the extra foo_abx component available here.....

http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx

you can read about it here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test

make sure the mp3 is encoded from the same flac source file using the latest lame encoder.

the same goes for you robbie. it's not up to me to prove you can't hear the difference. it's up to you to prove you can. :)
 
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I found support for LAME thin on the ground when I used primarily MP3s, but it's good to hear Rockbox supports it... when the 32gb sticks come out it might be slightly tempting to try and fit my collection on it in MP3 (thus only having to do it once) :p
 
you've not heard of the lame encoder then? although mp3 doesn't support gapless natively, lame writes gapless info into the headers which rockbox supports. (and other decent mp3 players such as newer cowons etc).

but being lazy is a reasonable enough excuse i guess. i can't argue with that. :D



evidence please. using your pc you can do a double blind test to rule out placebo. you can use foobar2000 and the extra foo_abx component available here.....

http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx

you can read about it here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test

make sure the mp3 is encoded from the same flac source file using the latest lame encoder.

the same goes for you robbie. it's not up to me to prove you can't hear the difference. it's up to you to prove you can. :)

Thanks for the links, I'll check it out when I get a sec.

Maybe I'm tricking myself because mentally I'm thinking 'but it's a FLAC, it must be better', but every time I move from my MP3 collection to my FLAC collection, it seems more detailed and dynamic.

Just out of interest, can you tell a difference between a CD and a 320kbps MP3?
 
I used to think I could tell the difference, but I was kidding myself :D saved so much hassle when I finally gave up trying to convince myself ;)
 
I used to think I could tell the difference, but I was kidding myself :D saved so much hassle when I finally gave up trying to convince myself ;)

For truth IMHO.

But for those that say they can I guess its a perceived difference but as with all these things your own ears and eyes are the only things you should judge with :)
 
Just out of interest, can you tell a difference between a CD and a 320kbps MP3?

me? absolutely not. i just laugh at people who say they can because 320kbps mp3s are totally transparent (using lame obviously. i wouldn't trust itunes/windows media player). some times there are extreme cases where lossy encoders struggle on certain passages of music but when this happens, you should head on over to hydrogenaudio.org and upload a sample of the track so other people (including various developers) can verify your findings. when people say they can tell the difference without giving specific examples, it's immediately dismissed as codswallop.

i think most people's main problems with lossy codecs are that they download/acquire music online where you have no idea what the source is and quite often they do sound bad. if people actually listened to mp3s properly encoded from their own flac/CD sources, they really can't tell. if you really do have golden ears then performing a double blind test is a great way to show off. but to be honest, i don't think i've ever seen a single example in my life where someone has spouted the generic "i can easily tell the difference between mp3 and flac" and then backed it up with evidence. some people will do the test and admit it was all placebo and they really haven't a clue. but most simply disappear without trace.

just for the record, i've never done a double blind test in my life. i'm far too lazy and don't care enough. at home i buy cds and rip them to flac because disk space is a non issue. it's nice to know i'll never have to touch the CD again. but on my sansa clip i use vorbis @ q5 (which averages out around 160kbps). that's around 50mb per album, sounds great to my ears and means i can get loads more music on my sansa clip.
 
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