vakkotaur | Entries tagged with mp3

I recently had a birthday (well, the anniversary thereof) and one present was a 4 GB Sansa Clip+ which happens to be the device Yakko mentioned in reply to my last entry. It works as he said and as I expect: It's a USB drive that plays music.

Actually it's a bit more than that. It's also a voice recorder and an FM receiver. It's also expandable by microSD card and I have an 8 GB card for it. Supposedly the device can take a 32 GB card.

I've loaded the thing with something less than 4GB so far and that's still quite a bit. I haven't loaded my entire collection onto the thing and probably never will since that includes the less desirable (unwanted) tracks from variousCDs. I've been listening to stuff that I might not have heard for a few years. I'm enjoying it, though it's a bit weird as I have to remember that I can get up and move around and I'm not tethered to a computer or other large device. It's also something to think that some of what I am listening to on this tiny purely electronic device was originally recorded purely mechanically on phonograph cylinder.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: In Our Village A.R.P. -- Norman Long

I've been wanting a portable (wearable) music player of a modern type (that is, an mp3 player rather than a Walkman) for a while. jmaynard had suggested I use his iPod. This falls under the "Great idea, almost" category as evidently one needs to use iTunes (and therefore Not Linux) to get it do things like load up files from a computer, which is rather the point of the thing.

My searches have shown that some folks can get the iPod to work with Linux, but it involves wiping the thing clean and since Jay has a bunch of stuff on it, I don't consider that a real option. Also, I don't know if it can then deal with silly Apple-specific encodings after that. I did install banshee and gtkpod which together are supposed to allow one to use an iPod with Linux. It half-way works. I can plug the thing in and it shows up. I can read the music of it. Put anything on it? Nope. Despite the claims, it refuses to do that.

So I have a couple questions and I will preemptively eliminate three unacceptable answers:

1. Use a Mac! If I wanted to do that, I would be doing that. Not a realistic option.
2. Use Windows and iTunes. See #1, add profanity for emphasis.
3. Use Windows iTunes under WINE. I'm reluctant, at best, to deal with WINE and iTunes is right out. I don't need that ill-mannered headache.

What I do need is one of these:

1. A means of using, including getting mp3 file TO it, the iPod from Linux.
-or-
2. A recommendation of a Linux-friendly mp3 player.

While option 1 is certainly less expensive monetarily, I like option 2 as then the device will be mine and I can do what I like without having to be careful to preserve someone else's music and such - and random playing won't be likely to drop me into stuff I'd delete or never have loaded up in the first place.

My idea of an mp3 player that works is one that I plug in via USB and it's simply a USB drive and I can do drag & drop copying to files to (and from) it without having to muck about with silly translations. Inexpensive is always a plus. I've seen a few fairly inexpensive portable mp3 players, but they give no indication that they work with anything but Windows. Maybe they work fine with Linux, but I'm not about to blow money in this so-called economy on something might be, for me, utterly useless. High capacity is good, but not essential. 4, 2, or even 1 GB might not be much nowadays, but even 1 GB that works will easily beat out 60 GB that doesn't work.

Current Mood: curious

Last night after work I did a bit of shopping, getting things I'd find useful at MFF and on the way there and back. I also got gas for the snowblower since snow was predicted, and not a trivial amount. It's snowing now but hasn't started accumulating just yet.

I'd planned on doing a bit of pre-packing for MFF as well, but got distracted and annoyed by getting mp3 encoding going on Fedora Core 4. I found an audacity rpm that had mp3 decode support compiled in, so that went well enough. Then I installed lame. Or tried to. Eventually, with some guidance from yakko I got that taken care of.

I still don't have Audacity exporting mp3 though. Audacity tries to use one of the lame libraries and evidently this package doesn't quite manage it. I kept getting tiny files with nothing or almost nothing in them rather than the proper result. Audacity will export wav and ogg just fine. I can use the command line: lame input_file.wav output_file.mp3 and get a proper mp3.

I did at least get Grip going, or it looks like it. I ripped a CD this morning and it looks like xmms isn't registering the track length. I'll listen to the results tonight and see if entire tracks really encoded right. I hope so. It's a bunch of tunes sung by Fred Astaire and it'd be nice to get those onto a USB stick for the drive on Thursday.

Current Mood: annoyed (with audacity)

( After the install. )

Current Mood: calm

( Further mp3 gadget adventures. )

Current Mood: good

The mp3 gadget I went on about a couple days ago is working out rather well. I have yet to give it the real workout of a proper cross-country trip, but that's coming this weekend when I make my roughly monthly trip to Sioux Falls. I have worked out how best to use the thing, I think.

Since it only plays from the beginning when it starts (unless I want to press the forward or reverse buttons several times) the thing to do seems to be to start it going just after the engine is started, whether I intend to listen to it or not. Since the transmitter is on whenever the gadget has power, it may as well play too. Then I can use tape or listen to broadcast radio stations and when I'm tired of that I can switch to the FM channel with the mp3 player going. Since it's been going (and it does loop), I won't always come in on the same tune. It's no iPod Shuffle, but it works for me.

Current Mood: pleased

Slashdot has had a couple recent articles about digital music/media players. There's quite a selection, however none manage to have the set features I'd like all in the same package. Somehow they all seem to manage to miss one thing - and I don't think I'm asking for that much when everything I do desire is in multiple players, just never all in the same player.

I desire a digital music player that plays .ogg as well as .mp3 files. If it can also play other formats, that's a bonus. If not, it's not a deal-breaker.

I desire a digital music player that does not demand I use Windows™ to use it or set it up.

I desire a digital music player that has its own FM transmitter since I'd be using it in the car and don't care to mess with annoying tape adapters or fiddle with the wiring. And while an FM transmission might not be ideal for fidelity, remember this would be in a car where there's wind, road, and engine noise. Any loss of fidelity from FM wouldn't be noticed.

I don't need an FM receiver. I don't need a huge amount of space on the thing - four hours of music capacity would suffice, eight would be nice. More than twelve is almost certainly overkill. I certainly don't need it gold plated. I don't need a fancy display - I merely need to know that's on or off and if its transmitting, on what frequency. I don't need to record voice or radio. I don't even need much in the way to choose what it plays, really. It'd be nice, but while driving? Three main controls are all I really ask: ON/OFF, PREVIOUS and NEXT. Anything else is bonus.

It's easy to find stuff with many of the things I don't really care that much about. Nothing wrong with that, I could always choose simply not to use the "extras" or might eventually find them useful. But for now, I have yet to find anything with the three things I desire all in the same package.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Orange Barrels - Bob and Tom