The MP3 player

[frabjous]

All right... I've been searching this forum a bit about reactions to the MP3 player on the 505, and almost all I can find are cautionary tales of how horrible it is, how it'll suck out your battery life, ruin your battery permanently, freeze your reader, kill your neighbor's cat, make the dinosaurs extinct (again) and, generally, ruin your life.

OK, I know that if I want a good MP3 player, I should buy an MP3 player instead. I'm buying a reader and that is its primary purpose. It's just a nice convenience if I don't have to carry another device with me everywhere all the time.

I understand that using the MP3 player on my eBook reader will drain the battery at least twice as fast and probably more than twice as fast. I don't mind recharging the darn thing every day.

But still, the question remains... does anyone routinely listen to music on their 505 without catastrophic results?

[HarryT]

Honestly, it's not just "if you want a good MP3 player, buy a separate one", but more "if you want an even marginally usable one, look elsewhere". It really was a case of "marketing says we need an MP3 player, so let's do the minimum we can get away with".

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by frabjous

But still, the question remains... does anyone routinely listen to music on their 505 without catastrophic results?

I don't think the biggest let down is the listening part but the management and selection of songs.

BOb

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I don't think the biggest let down is the listening part but the management and selection of songs.

BOb

Exactly that, yes; it orders (and plays) by track title ID3 tag, and there's no way to change that - no sorting by artist or album, for example. The "library management" (if it justifies so grand a name) is so primitive as to be virtually unusable, unless you re-tag all your MP3s specifically to cope with its strange ordering.

[HistoryWes]

I really WANT to be able to use mine and listen to music while I read, but it always seems to crash if I try to do both at the same time.

[DixieGal]

I think maybe it was taped onto the 505 just in case anyone had audio books on MP3 that they wanted to listen to. The sound on mine as a music player sounds like - you young'uns won't get this reference - an old AM transistor radio. But it is very handy as an audio book player.

[frabjous]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Exactly that, yes; it orders (and plays) by track title ID3 tag, and there's no way to change that - no sorting by artist or album, for example. The "library management" (if it justifies so grand a name) is so primitive as to be virtually unusable, unless you re-tag all your MP3s specifically to cope with its strange ordering.

Interesting. Can you even put it on "shuffle" to randomize it -- or are you just stuck with its haphazard order?

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I think maybe it was taped onto the 505 just in case anyone had audio books on MP3 that they wanted to listen to. The sound on mine as a music player sounds like - you young'uns won't get this reference - an old AM transistor radio. But it is very handy as an audio book player.

So I gather the sound quality is very poor? I'm not all that picky -- I'd probably just be using it to play background-type music as a way of filtering out outside sounds while I read in noisy places, not really for the purpose of music enjoyment on its own. But if it's going to be more distracting than useful even for that...

Anyone, I'd still like to hear from anyone who does use it, even if not in a die hard way.

[dieterpops]

I've used the MP3 player just as you describe to shut out some background noise and I've found it to work just fine. If you have expectations of managing collections and the like, it won't do that. It simply plays the songs in the order in which they're listed.

[Yarrow]

I have both audio poetry readings that I can listen to as I read the poem on screen and also audio books that I can follow with the real book on screen - word for word. I find this helps in both case in the understanding of complex poems and more difficult books (e..g George Eliot's Middlemarch). I also retitle my MP3 music files to put in the order I want to play them i.e. 01 ........, 02 ........, etc.

[Elsi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Exactly that, yes; it orders (and plays) by track title ID3 tag, and there's no way to change that - no sorting by artist or album, for example. The "library management" (if it justifies so grand a name) is so primitive as to be virtually unusable, unless you re-tag all your MP3s specifically to cope with its strange ordering.

At least the Sony plays in *some* kind of order. The Kindle plays in random/shuffle order. Can you imagine trying to make sense of an audio book by listening to the tracks in random order?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Elsi

At least the Sony plays in *some* kind of order. The Kindle plays in random/shuffle order. Can you imagine trying to make sense of an audio book by listening to the tracks in random order?

You would have to merge it into one file.

BOb

[Elsi]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

You would have to merge it into one file.

Errr ... I just learned how to rip CDs to MP3. Merging sounds complex.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Elsi

Errr ... I just learned how to rip CDs to MP3. Merging sounds complex.

Yep... Well, it's easy but not simple You basically need to rip to WAV and then merge... then you can encode to MP3. Also, you need alot of diskspace to rip to WAV since it is not compressed.

At least, that is they only way I have seen how to do it.

You are at least joining all the tracks on one CD and riping as one MP3 file? That you can do easily at least with iTunes. This web site has the steps to make it all into one big file, if you are adventurous.

http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunsabk.htm

BOb

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Yep... Well, it's easy but not simple You basically need to rip to WAV and then merge... then you can encode to MP3. Also, you need alot of diskspace to rip to WAV since it is not compressed.

At least, that is they only way I have seen how to do it.

Audacity can easily merge MP3 files. Then again, you could just concat the files--an ugly hack, but it should work.