I've been considering the purchase of one of these (in a home stereo component format) but there are very few available. One of the few I've found is the TDK DA9000. Seems most MP3 players are of the portable variety. Anyone using one? Thanks.
I love my mp3 player! There are two peices of equipment that call themselves mp3 players. The first is a CD player that can play CD's with mp3 files. A good option because you can fit a bunch of albums on 1 CD depending on how much you compress them. More compression, means the sound quality suffers. 128 kb/s is a nice compromise. The second is some form of computer memory that you can use to store mp3 files. The little ones are flash memory, they can store an hour or two of music at very low quality. The more expensive units have a computer hard drive in them and range from 6 gigabytes up to 80 gig. You can store an average music collection on 20 gig. Every CD you own, all in one portable package. This is the type I have. I connect mine to my stereo through the AUX INPUT and the sound quality is amazing. I think you should get one of the harddrive variety (the apple Ipod gets great reviews) and use it with your stereo. It has the added benefit of being portable. The dirty little secret of MP3 players is the batteries. They are rechargeable but they die after a year and a half of use and must be replaced. This usually costs between $50 and $100 for their proprietary battery and must be professionally installed. My player can play movies, it can be used to store pictures from a digital camera or it has it's own camera attachment that can take pictures or movies. It can play the movies (or show your pictures) on it's own color screen or over a TV. You can record memo's on it's microphone, or you can record directly into MP3 from any audio source (including it's own FM receiver). The FM recording has a nice feature, when you press record it starts 30 seconds ago so you don't miss the beginning of a song. It's amazing what these little devices can do.
I am using a Awai DVD player that has MP3 and video cd capabilities. It's very nice! Stick in a cd full of MP3's (about 175) and it displays a file list on the TV. You can make a play list, etc. Mike
i have a neo car jukebox. it works as a portable usb drive, a home stereo mp3 player and a car mp3 player... http://www.ssiamerica.com/ i bought 4 (20 gig neo car jukeboxes) at a local salvage store for $189 each sold 2 on ebay for $320 each and one to my cousin... also bought my maxtor 160 gig drive at the salvage store for $109. i put a 160 gig drive in mine and it will hold about 35,000 songs saved at 320kbps. playing it in the house, it works pretty good so far. it will be installed in my vert i a couple months. i installed my cousins in his 96 monte carlo and it is ran from a pioneer 5500 mp3 head unit.... it is sweet. the head unit operates it just like a changer.
I built a small (in a full tower case)beater computer (dual pIII 850's) 512mb ram. ATI radion dual head vid card (dual vid outputs) cd burner, dvd drive (seperate) and about 120gb worth of harddrives (its a raid board and i have it for the extra ide ports) and a creative labs soundblaster Live sound card. running window 2000. I can leave the machine on for months w/o rebooting and I use winamp for playing songs. have about 6000+ mp3s including many 8hr continous mix mp3 tracks. i use it for audio and for video with its TV out. its a nice setup. I also use a wireless keyboard and mouse along with an infrared remote. Nate
with the neo, you can hook it to your pc and make playlists and stick them in a folder. then choose one of them once you hook it up to the home stereo. OR you can play folders of tunes, OR you can hit random... there is a tiny IR wireless remote that works in the car OR at home. if you choose to play a folder of mp3 files that were made from a live cd. the transition from one track to the next is the best i have heard from any mp3 player yet.
For home stereo I have a DVD changer that plays MP3 discs. I also have my computer's SoundBlaster audio card output going to my receiver, and use WinAmp to play my MP3z & OGG files. Currently I have over 800 audio CDs, and 18,000 (~33 gigs) worth of MP3/Ogg files.
