Well, after realizing that my phone can only hold a maximum of 1.5 full-length song, I realize I need a mp3 player. What type do you people have/recommend?

Get an iPod touch.

What's your intended usage? Something that'll hold a handful of tracks for when you're doing sports, something that'll hold your entire music collection, or something that can run small pieces of software with music as a secondary function?

Edit: I'm also looking to upgrade my ageing 60GB Zen Xtra. Creative seem to have finally started making music players with a decent capacity again with their X-Fi2 but have rather soured the deal by putting a blasted touch screen on it.

I have to agree with benryves, creative is the way to go. I'm still using my creative zen v2 that i've had for ages now.

I've been very happy with my Samsung YP-P2, which I got free and broken from a friend and subsequently repaired with TLC and eye-breakingly-tiny soldering.


My girlfriend has the successor to this device, the YP-P3, and it seems like an equally solid piece of engineering.

THIS. My brother has one and it does everything you'd want a media player to do and has lasted years. My only complaint is how small the screen is on his model, but they've probably improved that by now.

Or you could just run Midi files on your TI-83+ with Doors CS[/plug]

Hehe, thanks DShiznit. The one thing you should not do is be an Appletard and get an iDevice.

iPods are actually really nice if you jailbreak them. Hell, my aunt has quake 3 and Wolfenstein 3D on hers. Otherwise yeah, apple products suck.

ah, let me answer ben's question. I would like something that has enough memory to hold, hmm, let's say 50 or so songs? I do not care for software, just music

(no iDevices ) I am thinking of getting a Zune....

If you allow 10MB per song (which would be rather generous) that would only require 500MB storage. You can get inexpensive USB flash drives that have integrated music players - I bought a 2GB one for my sister a few years ago, and though she acquired an iPod shortly afterwards it was surprising how much better the audio quality was (in addition to other advantages such as playing WMA, not requiring iTunes and running off regular AA batteries).

I can't say much about the Zune though do know it requires special software to send files to it, which is something I try to avoid in a music player.

Alternatively, you could just bung a 2GB memory card in your phone, if you're happy with the way that sounds.

Actually, it DOES have a slot for a microSD card, it is completely possible to just buy one and use that `-` thanks benr..

It may be worth checking the specs for your phone to determine the types of memory card it supports (older handsets can be limited to 2GB cards, for example).

Half-decent earphones also help, if you're currently using the stock ones included with the device. I'm currently using a pair of Sennheiser CX300-IIs, which are very good for a budget set, though they do have very strong treble response which can accentuate noise (hiss etc) from lower-quality audio output devices. Prior to that I used a pair of Genius HP-02 Live earphones, which are very cheap but have surprisingly good sound quality. They are rather bass-heavy and muffle the treble, which masks noise issues quite well.

Ah, I am not using the headphones that it came with, I bought a very good pair from staples, I am just needing something so that it can hold more than 2 songs a 2, perhaps ever 4, gig memory card will be fine

Ah, an excellent point, Ben. With a 1GB MicroSD card I can store a decent amount of music on my phone as an emergency backup for when I forget to charge my MP3 player.

I have a 60GB Creative Zen Vision:M that I use for bulk storage when I'm going to meed more songs. But most of the time I'm actually using a Sandisk Fuze that I got off Woot and run Rockbox on it. Stick a 16GB MicroSD card on there full of ogg files and you're good to go. Cheap and open source. What's not to like?

(In response to Ben's observation, my walkabout MDR-7506's don't sound pristine when using a portable player, but that's more of an artifact that they simply don't push out enough power.)

Rockbox is pretty solid; if you get a player and don't like the OS on it, check out their website and see if they have a build for your device. I had it on my iRiver, and it was quite nice. I now just use my phone, though (Android device, it's got good enough sound quality).

Come to think of it, my first MP3 player was a 256MB device from Woot that could also play XM satellite radio when docked. Good call on Woot, nikky.

The SanDisk devices + rockbox are pretty nice from what I've seen, and while the Zune is rather locked down to MS mine Zune 30GB has served me well and it gives you a nice platform to play around with XNA if your looking to learn .NET and such. I personally don't use mine often as I usually listen to music while coding or in the car and the latter is the only place a portable music player is needed.

Like Nikky, I've been using the Sansa Fuze as well. For the last several years, I used to use those bulky Sony MP3/CD players, which served me well, but when they started aging, the Fuze has allowed me to finally begin making the transition to Ogg Vorbis, after all these years. Only thing I don't like about the Ogg support is that mono Ogg files don't play correctly with the equalizer on (they sound horribly choppy). Sound quality is pretty decent also, and it has plenty of volume gain without clipping.

(Haven't looked into Rockbox, though; I've just been using the stock firmware.)

Aaahhh crap, turns out that I cannot use the MicroSD card idea because my phone is horrible at organizing songs and has other quirks that make it a not-so-good choice (although I should probably still use it for perhaps a backup, like Kerm)

Soo, I need the following requirements from said MP3 player

~Can hold about 50-100 songs that are 1-20MB
~Has a decent song organizing system
~Uses 3.5 Jack headphones
~Errr, decent quality sound
~Easy to send files from a windows computer, NO INSTALLING ITUNES
-Can be programmed in C# ()