I'm thinking of getting a portable music file player and I'm most concerned with two things:

It must be less than an ounce (the ipod shuffle is .78 of an ounce) because I want to shorten my Sony large headphones and attach it right on them so it's a one-piece, no-cords affair with good fitting headphones taht sound good and NEVER come off. I hate earbuds; I haven't found any yet that stay in adn even if thjey did, I'd worry that they wouldn't.

Also, I want to be able to access unusual music, prog mostly, but i'm concerned that some of these with proprietary encoding like Sony and Apple,might make it harder to get to unusual music.

Storage cap isn't important. Nice thing about intelligent music; you don't needmuch of it.I have been listening to only about 9albums for over a year--mostly Gentle Giant. NOt tired of it yet,still figuring it out even.

ANy ideas or advice?  Thanks in advance.

There's a lot of mp3 players out there.  Personally, I would avoid the ipod and get something cheaper that does the same thing.  I've seen some portable mp3 players for about $100 that hold 1gb of music, which is a lot of music.  I have an IRiver 256mb mp3 player.  It doesn't hold that much songs..which really depends on the song length and the bit rate which you encode the mp3s.  I like high quality mp3s, so I always encode mine at 192.  Anywho, I refill my mp3 player every couple of weeks, so I always have something new to listen to.  If you get an mp3 player that's a gig or more, you'll be set for at least a month or longer. 

Are you looking to download your mp3s, or make your own?

If you're going to download, there's a lot of sites you can get mp3s from, besides itunes, which is kind of a rip off..99 cents a song :/  I downloaded from http://www.allofmp3.com - www.allofmp3.com and got like 10 albums for about 10 dollars.  The mp3s range from about 5 cents - 25 cents an mp3..I guess it depends on the length of the song.  It's cheper if you get a 128 bit rate versus a 192 bit rate.  You can also get up to 320, which is basically cd quality.  The only downside to http://www.allofmp3.com - www.allofmp3.com is that you have to prepay at least 10 dollars to start downloading.  Also, they have a pretty good selection of prog there.  I downloaded a PFM album, locanda delle fate, and a bunch of camel albums.  So yeah, check em out.

I have a 20GB Creative Zen on which I have over 4500 prog songs.

It sounds fine to me (I auditioned many including IPod but this sounds better) and although audiophiles will be disgusted,I find it the perfect solution to Prog On The Move!

I have the smallest mp3 player:

with a 256MB SD card which has room for 3 albums in my favorite encoding (mp3 VBR 64bbps-192vbps).

Wow. Thanks for all the info.

I'll add one thing: It must have a removeable battery, preferrably AA or AAA since I already have tons of very high mah rechargeables for this. I don't care how long they last; it's easy to change and keep an extra one.

I'm thinking of going really cheap the first time since i'ts impossible to make the best choice first time, and buying the Creative Nomad Mu Vo with no screen and 128mg. It's only 24 bucks new at Amazon.

I like the look of that Panasonic above. I'd guess it has a built-in battery right?

Tony R wrote: I have a 20GB Creative Zen on which I have over 4500 prog songs. It sounds fine to me (I auditioned many including IPod but this sounds better) and although audiophiles will be disgusted,I find it the perfect solution to Prog On The Move!

I have a 60GB Zen (about 2/3 full), and did a lot of research before I made a purchase. And the general consensus I got was that it had the best sound of all the mp3 player's on the market.

Jay Klmnop wrote: Wow. Thanks for all the info. I'll add one thing: It must have a removeable battery, preferrably AA or AAA since I already have tons of very high mah rechargeables for this. I don't care how long they last; it's easy to change and keep an extra one. I'm thinking of going really cheap the first time since i'ts impossible to make the best choice first time, and buying the Creative Nomad Mu Vo with no screen and 128mg. It's only 24 bucks new at Amazon. I like the look of that Panasonic above. I'd guess it has a built-in battery right?

Yes, a built in battery which lasts approx. 10 hours. It also came with a case which protects the player against water and has room for one standard battery, which adds another 40 hours.

I don't know if they still make this player though - I bought it 3 years ago!

Jay Klmnop wrote: Storage cap isn't important. Nice thing about intelligent music; you don't needmuch of it.I have been listening to only about 9albums for over a year--mostly Gentle Giant. NOt tired of it yet,still figuring it out even.

I can only agree with that. On my 256MB card there's room for three albums - and each morning I can change the songs in no time.

oliverstoned wrote: The matter is that you loose all the music, emotion and eventually pleasure... But of course it's convenient, like CD. But it's a too heavy price to pay. I prefer to have only one album in good quality in my portable player, than 100 in low quality...

 Here we go again ... digital vs. analog.

IMO the quality of mobile headphones (even good ones) and the surrounding noises limits the audio quality in such a way that it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to tell whether the source is an analog cassette or a 192kbps mp3.

oliverstoned wrote: There you are again, with you measures and bandwidth! That would be too simple, my little friend!

Why do you French people always come across so arrogant?

BTW: My mobile player is MOBILE. It is small, and my headphones are small:

Before we continue this any further ... remember that one can enjoy music on crappy, medium or hifi systems.

oliverstoned wrote: Before we continue this any further ... remember that one can enjoy music on crappy, medium or hifi systems. that's true, as long as you only know a crappy, medium or hifi system. But you don't know what you miss. And sorry, i didn't want to be arrogant. Just that it makes me laugh that you think like a computer...You have a processor instead of the brain! Do you feel emotions?

That's exactly my point. Even 100 years ago with REALLY crappy radios people enjoyed listening to the MUSIC. The emotions are in the music, not in the technology.

Hu humm ive got a discman AND a mp3 player and i use the same headphones and stuf....but even at 192kbps i had to stop listen to the mp3 player because of the sound quailty being THAT awfulll  Sorry if you first have heard how good music can sound it is painful to listen to the crappy sound quailty of a mp3 player.

I mean if you are used to listen to mp3 files in 64kbps and then hears 128kbps ones then you would hate to get back to the old ones...

 Ok, then let's make a listening test! I'm willing to bet that you won't hear the difference (on standard headphones). And don't tell me that there's no way to enjoy music without the proper system ... that's the biggest lie (sorry - myth) about hifi.

BTW: I know good systems - I've listened to systems that even oliver would approve of. But that doesn't mean that I cannot listen to mp3 anymore - I'm aware of its shortcomings, and I can live with them.

In just about every hardware test I've read (and I read loads of hardware tests because I'm a sad techno-nerd), Creative products have the best sound quality - and small wonder, since they've been creating digital music technology since the early 1990s.

I still remember buying my first "Sound Blaster" PC card in 1991, when almost no PCs had sound, and being bowled over backwards at having not only real sound, but the ability to record myself playing and manipulate the sound with no quality loss!

But I digress...

I much prefer the sound of my Discman to any other portable music solution, but Creative mp3 players sound the best of all the solid state ones, IMO.

Certif1ed wrote: In just about every hardware test I've read (and I read loads of hardware tests because I'm a sad techno-nerd), Creative products have the best sound quality - and small wonder, since they've been creating digital music technology since the early 1990s. I still remember buying my first "Sound Blaster" PC card in 1991, when almost no PCs had sound, and being bowled over backwards at having not only real sound, but the ability to record myself playing and manipulate the sound with no quality loss! But I digress... I much prefer the sound of my Discman to any other portable music solution, but Creative mp3 players sound the best of all the solid state ones, IMO.

Sound Blaster 16 is the most awesome sound card EVER!

I was more impressed with the AWE 32, which had Wavetable synthesis and the ability to process the innovative idea of Soundfonts, stored in memory on the card itself - a fully-fledged sampler on a soundcard!

This was brilliant, because it meant I didn't have to splash out £1,000 on a sampler, but I could use Vienna soundfont studio to create my own samples of sounds and incorporate them in mixes, so my budget PC could do most of the things a professional studio could do.

Using MIDI, you could sync the sampled waveforms easily and get such a degree of accurracy in the notes that you could write "impossible" music that sounded like it was half being played by humans and half as processed digital music - very fashionable in the early 1990s.

I've got recordings somewhere...

Certif1ed wrote: I was more impressed with the AWE 32, which had Wavetable synthesis and the ability to process the innovative idea of Soundfonts, stored in memory on the card itself - a fully-fledged sampler on a soundcard! This was brilliant, because it meant I didn't have to splash out £1,000 on a sampler, but I could use Vienna soundfont studio to create my own samples of sounds and incorporate them in mixes, so my budget PC could do most of the things a professional studio could do. Using MIDI, you could sync the sampled waveforms easily and get such a degree of accurracy in the notes that you could write "impossible" music that sounded like it was half being played by humans and half as processed digital music - very fashionable in the early 1990s. I've got recordings somewhere...

Ah i have never heard the AWE32 hu humm but i got one pc with a SB16 and that is what MIDI should sound like! Todays soundcards sound awfull when they playback MIDI sequences

goose wrote: In terms of computer based soundcards, Creative all had the major flaw of not natively supporting 44.1kHz sample rate right up until the very newest one!

The newest ones are X-fi and they support 192khz

The old ones where the audigy series and they also supported 192khz

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ goose is right ... the Audigy cards don't support 44.1khz - they upsample it to 96khz. Which is nota bad thing - most "audiophile" CD players do the same.

What i was pretty sure those cards had an sampling frequencey from 8 to 192khz...thats atleast what it says on this page anyways

^ doesn't matter anyway, because the topic is "what's the best mp3 player for prog".

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ doesn't matter anyway, because the topic is "what's the best mp3 player for prog".

Well but you got to agree that SB16 is the best soundcard ever

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ sure ... in terms of difference to the other soundcards at the time.

Yes it has a very unique...sound to it...to get back to topic i would recommend a discman that can playback mp3 files...so that you can choose between FULL cd quailty sound and mp3 sound...when i use headphones it is ESPECIALLY important for me to have FULL quality because of all the details in the music gets so intimate...when i listen to my pc speakers i can just as fine listen to MP3 quality at 192kbps as some of the details go pass me anyway then...

Lindsay Lohan wrote: Ah i have never heard the AWE32 hu humm but i got one pc with a SB16 and that is what MIDI should sound like! Todays soundcards sound awfull when they playback MIDI sequences

The AWE uses the same Roland MPU401 MIDI processor as the SB16 does, but it was the first soundcard to incorporate the newly acquired EMU 8000 hardware for sound synthesis. The 32, confusingly, referred to the number of simultaneous voices that it could process in hardware. The AWE64 added 32 more, but in software.

MIDI playback with an AWE32 is in a new dimension, compared with the SB16, as you can map Soundfonts to the MIDI tables, thus replacing the dodgy MIDI piano sounds with, e.g. a high resolution Steinway.

...but if you're looking for a cheap mp3 player, then the CnMemory A-MP3 MusicBox looks a good option, as you can carry a supply of SD cards around, so that you don't run out of music.

It's really cheap, so it probably sounds horrible - but it looks like a good portable solution.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=159413 - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID= 159413

Thanks for all the advice. I think I'll wait till we get back to Canada and see what's out there; I might get a cell phone with a player built in.

To me, records and digital are the best ways to go--a turntable at home and a music file (MP3) player for on the road.

For me, a removeable battery, some kind of card memory system, power to run ear-covering full-size headphones and at least 512meg memory are my main criteria. I think a cell-phone might have all these.

Jay Klmnop wrote: Thanks for all the advice. I think I'll wait till we get back to Canada and see what's out there; I might get a cell phone with a player built in. To me, records and digital are the best ways to go--a turntable at home and a music file (MP3) player for on the road. For me, a removeable battery, some kind of card memory system, power to run ear-covering full-size headphones and at least 512meg memory are my main criteria. I think a cell-phone might have all these.

Well be sure to check that the Cell phone can tackle "regular" headphones...most these days use special ones...

One of the best Cell phones with mp3 function i would have to say is Sony Ericsson W800i or the cheaper model W550i

I found out today that the Creative Muvo TX SE is THE mp3 player to have - but prices have DOUBLED in the last couple of weeks in the run-up to Christmas.

If you're interested in buying one, wait for a few weeks after Christmas

[/QUOTE]

Well be sure to check that the Cell phone can tackle "regular" headphones...most these days use special ones...

[/QUOTE]

Actually, my phones have adapters for both small sizes of plugs (standard, mini, and cell phone tiny ones).

Last month I bought a 256mb mpio (korean) mp3 player and I'm very happy with it. ONe of the really nice things about prog is that you can listen to the same stuff much longer so I find 256 k takes me about a month to get sick of the music on it...easy to change too. I put the phone cable through the lanyard ring on the player and looped it around my neck and attached it to itself again with some shrink wrap and the wires are the right length and I don't need a lanyard--makes it a bit lighter too. (sounds like self-strangulation)

Just my two cents worth on the quality of sound debate: I might have not too developed ears hi-fi wise but it seems that some people are more into equipment than music. If you locked me in a room for a year with nothing but a 20-year old cheapo mono cassette player and a few prog cassettes, I sure wouldn't leave it alone saying it didn't sound good enough.

It's great to push the envelope but for me (just for me) the point of diminishing returns--or indeed even noticing any returns--seems to be at about 192mbps or so. There's nothing like live though. I've never heard any prog live...so deprived.

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

Prog is great.

Jay

ha^ i take it you dont like mp3/mp3 players

i have an Ipod, it keeps me satisifed, i have a lot of good prog on it so im good.

oliverstoned wrote: I prefer real CD or better, analog. The convenience is compensated by the poor quality.

*imagines travelling by bus/subway/train with a huge hifi system, record player and cabinets balanced on the backpack*

oliverstoned wrote: A Discman is better than a MP3 player... A little more big, i admit!

It IS better, CD quality audio will always be superior to any mp3 format. But 192kbps mp3/WMA is not as bad as you suggest IMO. If you made a poll, I bet that the vast majority would say that the difference in quality is negligible, especially in a subway/train situation with non-hifi headphones. Honestly, you don't want to walk around with hifi headphones ... 

MikeEnRegalia wrote: It IS better, CD quality audio will always be superior to any mp3 format. But 192kbps mp3/WMA is not as bad as you suggest IMO. If you made a poll, I bet that the vast majority would say that the difference in quality is negligible, especially in a subway/train situation with non-hifi headphones. Honestly, you don't want to walk around with hifi headphones ...

I encode at 128kbps and play the MP3 player (Creative MuVo 512MB) through big speakers and it sounds great. The only trouble is that the MP3 player just broke.  I am back on my Walkman cassette player for the time being. Well at least I'm getting the chance to listen to some classic old albums.  I'll have to get my MP3 player fixed soon or get a new one (maybe a cheap 256MB one would be OK as storage capacity is not that important because I keep loading new albums on there anyway). I can't live without my MP3 player.

oliverstoned wrote: I prefer real CD or better, analog. The convenience is compensated by the poor quality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

oliverstoned wrote: I'm not opposed to technological progress, but to technological regression... MP3 is the WORST sound format ever created, so it means a regression, as CD was already a regression compared to vynil. Remember how marketers said CD was absolutely perfect, and now they admit that the performances are not that good and that 24 bits will solve that (which is not true).

Here you go again, oliver:

http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf - http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf

oliverstoned wrote: I'm not opposed to technological progress, but to technological regression...

Maybe you're also opposed to facts.

oliverstoned wrote: MP3 is the WORST sound format ever created, so it means a regression, as CD was already a regression compared to vynil.

MP3 is neither good nor bad ... it was never meant to sound as good as CD or vinyl. It was designed to offer compact storage of audio data. Of course the quality suffers, but I'm willing to make that tradeoff if it allows me to listen to music using compact, robust mobile devices.

oliverstoned wrote: Remember how marketers said CD was absolutely perfect, and now they admit that the performances are not good and that 24 bits will solve that (which is not true).

wow, three different opinions in one sentence. I never believed that CD was absolutely perfect ... neither is vinyl or any other method of storing audio. But I believe that CD quality is absolutely sufficient for most audio sources and the little advantage that 24 bit bring is only minor. The biggest advantage of post-CD digital storage formats is that they offer multi-channel audio (surround sound) in decent quality.

oliverstoned wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: oliverstoned wrote: A Discman is better than a MP3 player... A little more big, i admit! It IS better, CD quality audio will always be superior to any mp3 format. But 192kbps mp3/WMA is not as bad as you suggest IMO. If you made a poll, I bet that the vast majority would say that the difference in quality is negligible, especially in a subway/train situation with non-hifi headphones. Honestly, you don't want to walk around with hifi headphones ... You're right. But if you can stand this one...it's fantastic (with a no-MP3 source )

Yeah ... the girls love guys who are wearing these gargantuous headphones on their way to work. Groovy!

Tony R wrote: I have a 20GB Creative Zen on which I have over 4500 prog songs. It sounds fine to me (I auditioned many including IPod but this sounds better) and although audiophiles will be disgusted,I find it the perfect solution to Prog On The Move!

Progressive Rock is not about the songs, its about the albums. 

No offense, considering your rank at this website, you, like me, have been acquainted with an array of progressive music. 

More to the point, a true progger listens to an entire album, no a handful of songs withdrawn from an Lp.  Thats what compiliations are for.  Moreover, compilations [cds encompassing a bands studio out (I do realize live albums are compilations, but they are are placed into a different realm)] do not do justic to a band.  Imagine buying a Camel Greatest Hits? Its unheard of?

Persoanlly to appreciate the virtues of an album, one must listen to an album in its entirety. 

However, unless you have 4500 prog songs that come from studio albums, that impressive. 

Prog on!

goose wrote: I don't know if I think that article's actually very useful. It contains things that I don't agree with (mainly the implication that all those disagreeing with Science are gullible, and all those agreeing are not ),

I know what you mean ... but the article is not meant to prove anything it says. It's just a summary of what they've been publishing in their magazine (where there's more detailed information and evidence.

BTW: I agree with the article on that those disagreeing with science are wrong. You can't ignore facts!

goose wrote: claims that aren't sufficiently explored (analogue to digital conversion makes no audible difference because of the Nyquist theorem, yet making no reference to bit depth; burn ins are irrelevant despite the possibility of changing temperatures affecting the electrical performance of components (I'm not saying this does make a difference, but there's nothing to say it doesn't!)),

It's not a scientific paper.

goose wrote: as well as a downright untruth ("digital data pits' background silence", as if CD had an infinite noise floor ,

Not infinite, surely. But if there is "0" on the disc, there is absolutely no noise at all. Any noise will be added by the amplifier, not the source.

goose wrote: "your audio circuts... don't know what's on the ac side of the power transformer" - if we assume no capacitance whatsoever along anything touching the circuit, that is).

I think that what he meant was that nothing that's on the ac side could possible affect your listening experience. Of course there can be power surges or dropouts, and depending on the quality of your power transformer they might affect your circuitry, but this is really no issue for modern "middle-class" hifi components. You don't need any other equipment than that, that's the basic message.

goose wrote: Well that's a turnup for the books eh? I'm agreeing with oliver for the... third time? (although only in places of course )

Don't give him your little finger! (a proverb in Germany ... if you give someone your little finger he might take the whole hand).

Asyte2c00 wrote: Progressive Rock is not about the songs, its about the albums.  More to the point, a true progger listens to an entire album, no a handful of songs withdrawn from an Lp.  Thats what compiliations are for.  Moreover, compilations [cds encompassing a bands studio out (I do realize live albums are compilations, but they are are placed into a different realm)] do not do justic to a band.  Imagine buying a Camel Greatest Hits? Its unheard of? Persoanlly to appreciate the virtues of an album, one must listen to an album in its entirety.

I disagree here. I can quite happily listen to one song from one album and then one song from another album. In fact I prefer it that way. It's more interesting when I don't know what's coming next. That's one of the great advantages of MP3 players. Of course, MP3 players also give you the option to listen to whole albums in order - it's up to you. That's the great thing about new technology - it gives you more options.

MP3 players have the advantage that they are small, which means that you can take them anywhere. They also have the advantage of storage capacity, which means that you can take a lot of music around with you.

My MP3 player has really improved my listening experience. I now listen to music all over the place. I also manage to listen to songs from ALL of my old CDs. That's something that was very difficult in the past unless you have the CDs in a pile and always take out the one from the bottom, a lot of of good albums will become forgotten and neglected.

Another advantage of MP3 is that you can delete songs you don't like. So if you have an album with just one or two good songs, you can still listen to them easily. In the past, I wouldn't want to root out a CD with just one or two good songs but those songs may be great ones.

goose wrote: Have you never turned on (e.g.) a microwave and seen the TV picture flicker? I don't know how much it really costs to isolate the power supply, and I'm sure it's less than hifi manufacturers charge, but despite how it seems, even through a transformer interference can affect things on the other side, if it's high enough level.

Someone I know did have a separate power source for the Hi-Fi system. The electricians thought he was mad. I just put batteries in my MP3 player.

^ I know what you mean re the TV and microwave oven. But I never heard any of those effects on my hifi system, which is cheap and mediocre by purist standards (Harman-Kardon).

I'm really sure that why there's room for small improvements in that area, they're barely audible and really don't justify the unreal cost factor of these "devices".

ulver982 wrote: How bout encoding the mp3s to a 320 bit rate?  Isn't that considered CD quality?

Not exactly. Theoretically anything >=128kbps has been labeled "CD-quality". The only true CD-quality formats are WMA Lossless, Apple Lossless and FLAC, as far as I know. The average bitrate of these formats is 1000kbps.

Having said that: I think that anything >=192kbps is close enough to the CD for the use in mobile players.

Since Christmas, I've found that the Creative MuVo TX SE has a superb, rich sound, for an mp3 player - especially considering it's only £40-odd worth of kit...

Works VERY well with Sennheisers too...

Windows XP SP2 systems on recent motherboards recognise it instantly, with no software, and file copying happens at 480Mb/sec.

Allegedly.

oliverstoned wrote: To sum up: -Separate electric lines give a strong upgrade on dynamic, image (at least 30% more!!!) -Power filtering removes A LOT OF harshness (it's very useful on CD and you can double and even triple filter, each time it's softer )and you upgrade also on dynamic, detail, transparency. These are huge upgrade on a musical system (not necessary expensive). A good system CAN'T works without that. A big system without power optimization is a joke. And, yes when i plug the washing machines or the computer while i listen, it degrades sound wheras i've got separated lines...strange isn't it? it's actually because the different electric lines/devices disturb itselves at the level of the home counter. Top power filter by Transparent audio:

I've not done A/B tests on power filtration and the like so I can't comment one way or the other, but there is a heck of a lot of debate out there refering to double blind tests and the fact that rarely if ever can people tell when such devices are used. These sceptics point to the fact that people only "hear" these differences when they are aware visually what equipment is being used.

oliverstoned wrote: The-Bullet wrote: oliverstoned wrote: To sum up: -Separate electric lines give a strong upgrade on dynamic, image (at least 30% more!!!) -Power filtering removes A LOT OF harshness (it's very useful on CD and you can double and even triple filter, each time it's softer )and you upgrade also on dynamic, detail, transparency. These are huge upgrade on a musical system (not necessary expensive). A good system CAN'T works without that. A big system without power optimization is a joke. And, yes when i plug the washing machines or the computer while i listen, it degrades sound wheras i've got separated lines...strange isn't it? it's actually because the different electric lines/devices disturb itselves at the level of the home counter. Top power filter by Transparent audio: I've not done A/B tests on power filtration and the like so I can't comment one way or the other, but there is a heck of a lot of debate out there refering to double blind tests and the fact that rarely if ever can people tell when such devices are used. These sceptics point to the fact that people only "hear" these differences when they are aware visually what equipment is being used. The problem is you have to have a good system to perform valid tests. So, what was the set up?

It is all described in the pdf that I linked to above:

"The ABX methodology requires device A and device B to be levelmatched within ±0.1 dB, after which you can listen to fully identified A and fully identified B for as long as you like. If you then think they sound different, you are asked to identify X, which may be either A or B (as determined by a double-blind randomization process). You are allowed to make an A/X or B/X comparison at any time, as many times as you like, to decide whether X=A or X=B. Since sheer guessing will yield the correct answer 50% of the time, a minimum of 12 trials is needed for statistical validity (16 is better, 20 better yet). There is no better way to determine scientifically whether you are just claiming to hear a difference or can actually hear one."

oliverstoned wrote: Without a minimum of neutrality and transparency on the system, these tests means nothing

That's a typical example for audiophile logic. They refuse ANY listening test anywhere else but at their home, which is not practical.

The whole discussion is laughable anyway. Why should anyone invest ridiculous amounts of money in systems which even audiophiles cannot tell apart from standard hifi components under neutral conditions? Even if these systems really had a better sound quality, the difference is so small that it cannot possible be worth that money.

Remember that one can enjoy music even with the crappiest equipment. Listening to music on a 100,000 $ system will give you more joy than listening to music on a 1,000 $ system.

192kbps mp3 file on headphones is PAINFUL to listen to...i can't get it why ye dont see the TREMENDOUS difference.

Ive played the same Music file ripped from cd at 192kbps on a mp3 player that costs TWICE as much as my discman with the same headphones(Or just standard earplugs) and the general loss is so big i will never listen to a mp3 file ever again using HEADPHONES.

On my pc speakers i however dont mind playing back mp3 files at 192kbps...but with headphones where you can really hear all the details it is just a PAINFUL listening experience...

If not anyone hears a BIG difference from cd to mp3 192 they have to be deaf

oliverstoned wrote: True if systems are good and musical for the price. I have never said that you can't enjoy music at all without good equipment.

So you would agree that I can enjoy music with my Harman Kardon system? 

Lindsay Lohan wrote: 192kbps mp3 file on headphones is PAINFUL to listen to...i can't get it why ye dont see the TREMENDOUS difference. Ive played the same Music file ripped from cd at 192kbps on a mp3 player that costs TWICE as much as my discman with the same headphones(Or just standard earplugs) and the general loss is so big i will never listen to a mp3 file ever again using HEADPHONES. On my pc speakers i however dont mind playing back mp3 files at 192kbps...but with headphones where you can really hear all the details it is just a PAINFUL listening experience... If not anyone hears a BIG difference from cd to mp3 192 they have to be deaf

Maybe your headphones are too good.

oliverstoned wrote: You should asked me this question before! Yes, you have half of the music, but you enjoy it. And your brain works to reconstitute the informations missing. It may involve a headache, although.

aha - we seem to agree, but we don't. I have all of what's important of the music with mp3, although it sounds slightly worse. Of course I know how mp3 works - parts of the signal which the human ear can't hear are left out. The result varies from signal to signal - some songs may sound really ok, others may sound harsh or "bland". But the higher the bitrate, the less are those effects on the signal, and in my humble opinion at 192kbps it's barely audible in a mobile situation (bus, train, cycling, jogging).

That's my opinion, and it's different from yours. Nothing wrong with that!

it amazes me that anybody that are used to be listening to cd's and then turns to mp3's are not annoyed by the tremendous loss of quality?

Its like being used to driving a ferrari and then start to drive a fiat instead...