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Pre-recorded MP3 players for sale... Seen this on TV?


rasputin1963

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I was watching THE HISTORY CHANNEL the other day, and a commercial came on that was different:

 

For years, Bobby Vee has been hawking, for TIME-LIFE, a set of CD's called MALT SHOPPE MEMORIES, a huge many-disk anthology of Oldie pop/R&B hits from the 1950's and 60's.

 

But now the commercial is different: this gorgeous young broad comes out and sez, forget about CD's-- now you can order MALT SHOPPE MEMORIES already pre-recorded as a bunch of MP3's onto a (cheap-looking) handheld MP3 player.

 

"All the songs from your youth are here... Just put on your earbuds.... and you're back at the malt shop!" She chirps.

 

So now-- correct me if I'm wrong--- TIME-LIFE is selling you MP3-compressed versions of the material they used to sell in full WAV form on CD's? For the same price? [Granted, many of these tunes were in tinny mono to begin with.... but then, many of them were in a quite decent stereo...]

 

Is this the wave of the future? :lem::lem::lem::lem:

 

Are there still Americans who are so technology-laggard they don't know how to rip CD's? :eek: And who don't "get" that MP3's are inherently worse recordings than CD WAV's? :deadhorse:

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is selling you MP3-compressed versions of the material they used to sell in full WAV form on CD's? For the same price?


Is this the wave of the future?


Are there still Americans who are so technology-laggard they don't know how to rip CD's?

I think that some are getting so on-line oriented that they don't know how or where to shop. They don't buy CDs, they download music. And, yes, as easy as Apple tries to make the iPod integrate with a computer, some people are not technically literate enough to connect the two and load up their iPods. Or they simply don't want to go through the trouble of finding an old CD in their collection, load it into the computer, find the one song they used to like that they heard on the radio all the time (they don't remember the title, of course, and they may not even remember the artist) and copy just that one song to the player.

 

This sounds like what you get is a collection of all top hits from a particular era, the songs that you're most likely to remember, and that you may even have in your collection that you no longer access.

 

Where there's a TV set, there's a sucker.

 

By the way, I bought a refurbished Sandisk MP3 player at MicroCenter at a closeout price (returned it after a couple of days - it was too small to operate without looking at it too hard, not good for use while driving) and it was preloaded with a commercial for a talking book download service and several samples. The documentation dated back to 2003, so the idea of pre-loading an audio player (though these were fragments, not whole books or chapters) isn't new. It's just another place to put an advertisement.

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I'm not big on MP3's either...

Most people of my age simply never had a chance to experience great audio quality... They're stuck with their Ipods and all that stuff. I have an MP3 player that I only use as a storage device since I don't listen to MP3's anymore (except when I'm at the computer because I don't have anything else). All the music I own is either on tapes or vinyl nom :D. From the moment you taste analog sound reproduction, you don't want to go back ! :cool:

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I'm not big on MP3's either...

Most people of my age simply never had a chance to experience great audio quality... They're stuck with their Ipods and all that stuff.

I don't have anything against MP3 compression if it's not too drastic. While I wouldn't use it for a master recording, I use it to record radio programs to listen to on the computer or while traveling, and occasionally make an MP3 of a CD for listening under the same circumstances. It's at least as good as a cassette, without the flutter, and I've certainly listened to plenty of cassettes on the road.

 

I can operate my Nomad Jukebox 3 with one hand and the screen is large enough so that I can see what I'm doing at a glance. I also use the Jukebox for recording 16/44 WAV files and sometimes even get paid for that. I picked up this little bitty SanDisk MP3 player thinking that it would be easier to carry on a trip than the Jukebox. On a plane, It would work for me on a plane because I don't have anything else to pay attention to when starting it up and selecting a program, but it was just too attention-demanding and slow to operate to use while I'm driving. It's far less safe than driving while using a cell phone (which is illegal here).

 

As I've said about many things today, it's all about the user interface.

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Just the other day I was talking to a couple of friends about new ways

to market music....and I came up with a very similar concept.

Music pre burnt on a USB Flash stick or SD memory card.

It is the wave of the future and it doesn't have to be poor quality.

Flac is the way to go.

1/2 the size of wav files with no loss in quality.

With innovations like the Zoom H2 recorder (no moving parts...

records to SD card) and Cakewalk SONAR now recognising flac files

it's not hard to see where the future lies....

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Just the other day I was talking to a couple of friends about new ways

to market music....and I came up with a very similar concept.

Music pre burnt on a USB Flash stick or SD memory card.

It is the wave of the future and it doesn't have to be poor quality.

Flac is the way to go.

1/2 the size of wav files with no loss in quality.

With innovations like the Zoom H2 recorder (no moving parts...

records to SD card) and Cakewalk SONAR now recognising flac files

it's not hard to see where the future lies....

 

 

Considering that FLASH memory is almost as cheap as CD's this could be very plausible. 1gig SD cards are under $20 and an entire CD and more can be recorded in 16 bit UNCOMPRESSED format on a single SD card like this.

 

 

Dan

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.


By the way, I bought a refurbished Sandisk MP3 player at MicroCenter at a closeout price (returned it after a couple of days - it was too small to operate without looking at it too hard, not good for use while driving) and it was preloaded with a commercial for a talking book download service and several samples. The documentation dated back to 2003, so the idea of pre-loading an audio player (though these were fragments, not whole books or chapters) isn't new. It's just another place to put an advertisement.

 

 

Audible probably (it's a cool service...listening to "this is your brain on music" right now) - they've ben around for - wow - 10 years now

 

here's the funny part -- the Sandisk players don't fully support the audible system (Sandisk had a terrible position pointer-reset problem they've never cleared up -- I noticed the new Sansas dont support audible)

 

I've got a refurb Sandisk(probably the same one -- they've been dumping em on the market for the past year or so).

Can't say it's a great player

 

I'm just using it as a stopgap/basher...still waiting for the next gen shakeout (I've got my own criteria, just like everyone else

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Just the other day I was talking to a couple of friends about new ways

to market music....and I came up with a very similar concept.

Music pre burnt on a USB Flash stick or SD memory card.

It is the wave of the future and it doesn't have to be poor quality.

Flac is the way to go.

1/2 the size of wav files with no loss in quality.

With innovations like the Zoom H2 recorder (no moving parts...

records to SD card) and Cakewalk SONAR now recognising flac files

it's not hard to see where the future lies....

 

 

 

I don't think an iPOD can parse a FLAC at this point, can it?

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that nothing new, they've had the "sing" karaoeke microphone for years, and that's just a natural step upwards to "more power to lesser quality more quantity" music storage. That is the way consumers are going and there's no turning them back, its up to the technologists to make the quality better at the smaller file sizes.

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