[GLLUG] linux friendly audio player

[Karl Schuttler]

I highly suggest getting the iriver h120 or h140. You can find them on
ebay, but they aren't retail anymore. They natively work with linux,
and you can also put rockbox on them (which I highly suggest). Very
easy navigation, built in radio tuner and microphone (good quality),
native ogg support, headphone in and aux out (optical and analog), aux
in (optical and analog). Battery lasts a long time. I've had mine for
quite a while with very few troubles. I think you will find it at a
comparable price to the other players. If you buy a refurb'd model,
often they come with a year warranty.

On Dec 9, 2007 1:32 AM, Richard Houser <rick at divinesymphony.net> wrote:
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> The first generation nano was fairly decent, but you would probably want
> to put Rockbox on it.  I had used one for some time previously
> (installed it for someone, then played around with it for several days
> at a time) and it worked great.  When I went to buy a player, I looked
> at a nano since I like the form factor and the click-wheel was better
> than the controls on the sansa players.
>
> I actually ended up with an 8GB Nano (second gen).  That was a HUGE
> mistake.  Apple still marketed it as a nano, but swapped out all the
> guts from the earlier version and changed around the case (so most of
> the accessories for the original nano don't fit properly).
> Unfortunately, I didn't even notice that the hardware had changed until
> I'd broken the seal (at that time, all the previous nano were
> supported).  At that point, I was stuck.
>
> The 2nd-gen version won't run rockbox, and the Apple software is crap.
> That does not support either flac or vorbis formats, and requires
> special software on the machine used to add or remove songs.  On the
> bright side, Amarok and a few other Linux applications can read and
> write this database; the downside is that the database can get corrupted
> from time to time and require a reload.  I've only seen the corruption
> happen at runtime when using the device as a player (happened twice in
> about 14 months), not when modifying songs.  By comparison, Rockbox and
> other players will allow you to delete or modify songs from either the
> filesystem or on the device itself.
>
> I also periodically have issues with the player freezing (although this
> happens slightly less since I got the latest software updates).  When
> this happens, you have to hard reset the machine and settings such as
> the current playlist (not the main archive itself) and play history are
> lost.  The lockups might be manageable for you though.  I average a
> lockup maybe once every four hours of play-time.  To be fair, though,
> when I play it, I tend to get an interruption that requires a pause
> about once every half-hour or so.  The lockups seem to be more frequent
> if the controls are actually in use versus the device just playing back
> a list.
>
> Michael George wrote:
> > I'm looking for a relatively inexpensive portable media player for my
> > kids.  It needs to play nicely with linux, of course, and I'd like it to
> > play ogg format audio.
> >
> > I don't need a fancy color touchscreen or anything, just a way to
> > navigate to the audio tracks.
> >
> > What players to you members of the gllug list have?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
>
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