iPod vs. Zune

[kannazuki]

iPod for me since my iPod actually doubles as a fairly useful portable hard drive with all that extra space, otherwise the Zune has a pretty good interface and good functionality around.

[Ztype]

Originally Posted by [!] CAUTION [!]

Great, so how many flac files can you fit on 12GB?

Maybe one or two, right? (THIS IS CLEARLY A HYPERBOLE I AM JUST ILLUSTRATING THE FALLACY IN HAVING A RELATIVELY LOW CAPACITY PLAYER THAT OFFERS FLAC PLAYBACK OUT OF THE BOX)

One or two more than my Zune can

[Ætheros]

I tend to prefer the zunes. The only problem I have is some syncing issues with the new zune software. There's alot of music it wont let me rename, and doesn't fix even when I do rename it. Also, someone mentioned this earlier. FLAC support would be brilliant but I don't see that happening on either of the two for a while.

zune still has quite a few things on ipod though. Wireless music transferring and syncing for one. I tend to like the layout on the zune better. The screen is larger and a little brighter. I tend to like the old 30GB zune better than the 80GB one though :P.

[Baroque Obama]

Originally Posted by [!] CAUTION [!]

You're not going to find any commercial MP3 player with FLAC support out of the box, and the same with gapless playback.

I mean Rockbox will help in some of that regard but what do you expect, the majority of the market to actually know what FLAC and Ogg and that shit is?

the cowon players can hold flac. they have plenty of hard drive space for flac. not talking about the cowon d2 if thats what you're going to use to argue against this.

lossless for any portable player is an absolutely stupid thing to do imo as it decreases battery life and with a dac like that, you wouldn't be able to hear any difference between a well encoded mp3 and lossless. (i would be surprised if you could actually hear a difference between 320kbps mp3 and lossless on anything)

also, if you really want some lossless, just use alac for the ipod.

the zune 80 is quite possibly one of the best mp3 players ever. the squircle alone is awesome. gui is absolutely wonderful. it's sq is also considered top-notch as well. (this all said, i still would rather have an ipod touch 32 gig)

[Mangojoyride]

i was thinking of upgrading from my 30 gig to that one, since its smaller and has a touchpad.

would it be worth it?

[Baroque Obama]

if i had the money, i would probably replace my zune 30 with a zune 80. im pretty sure you're familiar with the gui of the zune 80 as it was included with the firmware updates of the zune 30.

like i said before, the squircle is hella nice and others should be implementing tactile+touch interfaces. if you can, sell the 30. i believe you can get about 80-130 dollars for it.

[tsugaru7reveng]

The iPod doesn't make my thumb sore from too much pressing when browsing through the songs, so, iPod for me.

[Irob]

Originally Posted by Baroque Obama

lossless for any portable player is an absolutely stupid thing to do imo as it decreases battery life and with a dac like that, you wouldn't be able to hear any difference between a well encoded mp3 and lossless. (i would be surprised if you could actually hear a difference between 320kbps mp3 and lossless on anything)

I personally do not care about lossless support, I was simply stating a fundamental flaw in that mp3 player. I agree with you that it's stupid because lossless is absolutely unnecessary. Honestly, I cannot hear much of a difference between bitrates of 192 kbps and higher.

My one qualm with the Zune is that there are no well-publicized efforts to create hacked firmware, or anything of that sort. I would enjoy something that gave more diverse video file support. (That being said, I'd choose it over an iPod any day)

[Mangojoyride]

Originally Posted by tsugaru7reveng

thumb sore from too much pressing when browsing through the songs

that is just ridiculous

go get some outdoor exercise

[Baroque Obama]

Originally Posted by [!] CAUTION [!]

I personally do not care about lossless support, I was simply stating a fundamental flaw in that mp3 player. I agree with you that it's stupid because lossless is absolutely unnecessary. Honestly, I cannot hear much of a difference between bitrates of 192 kbps and higher.

My one qualm with the Zune is that there are no well-publicized efforts to create hacked firmware, or anything of that sort. I would enjoy something that gave more diverse video file support. (That being said, I'd choose it over an iPod any day)

lossless is best for archiving. when you have a perfect reproduction of the original cd, you can keep transcoding from that reproduction without having to worry about any loss of information. i rip my discs to lossless to my computer but i don't ever put lossless on a portable player.