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Truth is, the original iPod was not a good music player. I remember the varied competitors it had at the time. I ended up purchasing an iRiver iHP-120. That was
by Daishiman 15y ago
Truth is, the original iPod was not a good music player. I remember the varied competitors it had at the time. I ended up purchasing an iRiver iHP-120. That was a device that still holds its own to this day: a 20GB hard drive, MP3, WAV and Vorbis support (and it can play FLAC nowadays), USB mass storage, LCD remote control, dedicated line-out and digital line out, which, to this day, I know of no other player that has this.
- seunghomattyang 15y agoAre you kidding? If anything, what you said reinforces the fact that iPod is a great music player. It had the best way to browse music library (wheel), syncing experience (playlists, play counts, etc), best interface and best industrial design, all suited for one purpose: listening to music.
- dextorious 15y agoYes, but did it have useless (for a portable player) FLAC and vorbis support?
- Daishiman 15y agoFor some of us, audio quality is actually important, even in portable audio players.
- dextorious 15y agoYes --to the same people that think Monster cables are better than an ordinary cable, and the same people that just don't get blind A/B tests and their results...
- Daishiman 15y agoIt's funny you mention in. Back then I participated in multiple A/B tests for LAME and other encoders and did several blind tests with all my audio playback equipment. Needless to say, the iRiver was far and away superior to the iPod in practically every metric. I used to own a pair of Sennheiser HD-280s back then, and the difference was pretty damned clear. The AKG K-540s I own now are basically unlistenable with iPods of the time.
- Daishiman 15y agoIt required the (still) shitty iTunes software, locked you into proprietary hardware, and had limited audio playback features in comparison to its competitors (lack of on-the-fly play queues). A music player it was, but I could (and still can't) take advantage of its storage for whatever else I wanted not could I take it other people's homes and use it to share stuff. None of those are trivial points.
- philwelch 15y agoI haven't heard of anyone actually caring about Ogg Vorbis support since...well, since 2001, when the iPod came out and everyone on Slashdot was up in arms about Ogg Vorbis.