MP3 players. Hard Drive vs. discrete memory

[CoarsegoldKid]

My wife wants to have digital audio books on an MP3 player. One book on the player at a time is fine. I currently have a 4GB discrete memory player. With music also on it I don't think there is enough memory for a book. Especially a large book. So that brings me to either buy a 8-16GB discrete memory player or a much larger storage player with a hard drive for her.

My question is: Have any members of the board experienced skipping or other issues with the hard drive variety MP3 players while on your motorcycle?

[bmwscoot]

My hard drive base iPod did not like the vibration when mounted up on the bars in a holder. It would lock up many times.

If I kept it in the tank bag (cushioned on a pair of gloves) it was fine. If I kept it in the glove box on something cushy it was fine.

Hard drives don't like to be bouncing around.

[greglepore]

I've used Creative Zen hardrive mp3 players on my bikes for years. I did have a hardrive on one fail recently while riding aggressively on my Ducati-luckily I back it up regularly, swapped the drive and reload 70gb of live shows. Up until then, no skipping or failures other than another time when I seriously dropped the player.

 

I love the Creative players b/c they're cheap on ebay and they take a standard ATA laptop drive, so when/if they do fail they are easily replaced.

[stubble!]

A couple of thoughts: Do you know how big the book file(s) are? It may be smaller than you think, if the bitrate is lower.

 

Second: If you do look for a new player, make sure it will resume where you left off when playing a file. It's really annoying not to have this feature.

[CoarsegoldKid]

A quick look at the site my wife showed me has no information on file size. They do say the book files have bookmarks that return to your place where you turned it off. I can't see how that works but they say it does. My Sansa MP3 does not have a resume feature. Looking at MP3s on the net I have not seen "resume" as a feature. Having it would be good even for music files as my Sansa always returns to the first song.

[greglepore]

Your sansa doens't resume if you pause rather than shut down, then let it auto-off? I think my cheapy Sansa does...

[sgendler]

Generally, hard mounting a hard drive to a vibrating surface is going to give you trouble. Putting even a little damping on the mount is enough to keep things trouble free. Using 3M dual lock to a shelf on an RT will cause problems, but using velcro will be fine, in my experience. That said, it is easy enough to find 8 and 16GB solid-state players, so there is little reason to buy a hard-drive based player unless you really think you need the massive storage.

 

Many audio players treat "spoken word" content differently than normal audio content. An ipod would be one such. They just remember where you were last listening so that you aren't constantly fast forwarding through old content. Also, spoken word content is usually compressed far more than music, as our ears aren't nearly as sensitive to quality loss on spoken content. The net result is that an hour of audiobook content is far smaller than an hour of music.

 

 

 

[DavidEBSmith]

My wife regularly does audio books on her 2 GB Sansa player. She usually a couple on there at a time. Looking at her audio directory (which we really need to clean up), it looks like audio books rip to anywhere from 400 MB to 1.3 GB in MP3 format, probably at a bit rate of 128, which is more than you need for spoken word on a motorcycle.

 

Her Sansa (an e250) resumes from the same spot if you pause it and power down, so long as you don't try to play anything else.

 

I would not mess with a hard-drive based player on a motorcycle. It's not a matter of if it will fail, but when.

[velomoto]

+1 on all the comments about hard disk drives - they do NOT like to be vibrated! For those with HDD iPods who have not had your drive die - count your blessings!

 

Regarding compression rates - here are some approximate numbers...

1,200 K bits/sec - the approx. data rate of uncompressed music/audio on a CD.

 

192 K bits/sec - My preferred bit rate for quality and file size. For songs where I'm not so concerned about audio quality I'll use 160 or 128 Kbps.

 

128 K bits/sec - The most common compression rate for purchased music (iTunes, others). Songs compressed to this level will be approx. 1/10th the size of the original file. This bit rate is frequently compared to "FM quality".

 

40 K bits/sec - Quality I compress audio books to. IMO, music at this bit rate is horrible, but Harry Potter and Mark Twain books sound nearly identical to the original. The key reason books can be compressed so much for the original is that there is very little "information". Dynamic music will have frequency content ranging from 30 Hz to 12 KHz and harmonics will go much higher and the volume will change rapidly. Audio books OTOH have a very narrow frequency range and little dynamic range (change in volume). Thus mpeg compression works quite well.

 

700 MB - the amount of storage on a CD

15 - the approximate number of songs one can fit onto an audio CD.

110 - the approximate number of songs I'll fit onto a CD when they are compressed to varying qualities (128 to 192 kbps)

 

[smiller]

As was noted audiobooks don't take up that much space and even the smallest capacity players can hold a few at a time, the real issue is how much music you want to hold in addition. The decision as to HD or flash simply comes down to whether you need the space or not. A flash device is certainly better for motorcycle use although most HD models will work fine if you make some effort to isolate them from vibration (hard mounts are out though.) There's simply no way I could get by with the paltry 16 gb available in most flash players so I (or anyone in the same situation) doesn't have much of a choice, but that does seem to be enough for many/most people and if so then a flash-based player would indeed be a much lower-hassle choice if it will see much use on a bike.

[CoarsegoldKid]

Thanks all. Good things to think about. Looks like a 16GB "flash memory" Sansa is in my wifes future(pre-Torrey). I checked on the resume by pause first then off seems to work fine. I guess I should read the manual.

[bmwscoot]

+1 on all the comments about hard disk drives - they do NOT like to be vibrated! For those with HDD iPods who have not had your drive die - count your blessings!

 

Yup, I forgot to mention that my first HDD iPod is in the bottom of lake Michigan...off the Door County Peninsula.....a bad day with a locked up iPod.

Did I say it was a bad day?

[Bullett]

My HDD Zen will stop even when it has battery life left. On long rides, I put it in my coat pocket instead of stuffed in the tailpiece. I have also begun to carry it in an old leather blackberry case so I can clip it to the sunvisor in the Miata and to protect it some from the bouncing around in the tailpiece. I stuffed a piece of high density foam from a backpacking pad in the tailpiece to cushion it a bit, as well. I have never tried hard mounting it. I have had the device about 10 months. I have about 5000 songs on it and it is half full. I like to put it on random play and listen to Charlie Parker, Talking Heads, Carole King, Willie Nelson, Cowboy Junkies, John Coltrane, Dolly Parton, Devo . . . It makes for interesting listening.

[Twisties]

I think the Creative Zen 60 gB HDD unit is downright criminal. I've never dealt with a worse poc. The list of problems, design flaws, and annoyances is far too long to list. Suffice it to say that it barely works at best.

 

 

[velomoto]

Yup, I forgot to mention that my first HDD iPod is in the bottom of lake Michigan...off the Door County Peninsula.....a bad day with a locked up iPod.

Did I say it was a bad day?

Hmmmm... I always wondered how many times one could get an iPod to skip across a lake!

[smiller]

I think the Creative Zen 60 gB HDD unit is downright criminal. I've never dealt with a worse poc. The list of problems, design flaws, and annoyances is far too long to list. Suffice it to say that it barely works at best.

The dual-platter 60gb drive in the 60gb Zen does seem to be more sensitive than vibration than most and I've had problems with mine as well on the bike. Prior to that I had the 30gb model which is identical in every way (except for having a smaller, single platter drive) and that worked well, so the only difference there seems to be the hard drive. I am currently using a Zen Sleek with a 20gb drive and no problems there either.

 

BTW other than the HD not liking motorcycle vibration the 60gb model has performed flawlessly.

[sgendler]

I like to put it on random play and listen to Charlie Parker, Talking Heads, Carole King, Willie Nelson, Cowboy Junkies, John Coltrane, Dolly Parton, Devo . . . It makes for interesting listening.

 

This is why I hate satellite radio. My taste in music is very broad across genres, but may be quite narrow within each genre and there is no station on the satellite services that reall meets my needs. It is one genre at a time, and usually way too much that I don't like within that genre over the course of an hour.

 

What sucks is that radio has such potential for discovering new music, whereas listening to your own ipod has exactly none. I'm waiting for the day when wireless broadband is ubiquitous enough that I can get a music recommendation service to stream music on -demand to my portable audio device. That's going to result in a revolution in the way we consume music, I think.

 

--sam

 

 

[SeanC]

Yup, I forgot to mention that my first HDD iPod is in the bottom of lake Michigan...off the Door County Peninsula.....a bad day with a locked up iPod.

If my iPod touch 16gb didn't cost so iPhocking much, it too would be at the bottom of the Pacific somewhere.

 

I have an old 10gb 2nd generation FireWire iPod that has performed flawlessly lo these many years. It's logged thousands of hours on the bike and in the car, withstood temperature extremes from the desert to skiing in Montana, and the only parts I ever replaced were the battery and the mini-plug connector sleeve.

[smiller]

This is why I hate satellite radio. My taste in music is very broad across genres, but may be quite narrow within each genre and there is no station on the satellite services that reall meets my needs. It is one genre at a time, and usually way too much that I don't like within that genre over the course of an hour.

 

What sucks is that radio has such potential for discovering new music, whereas listening to your own ipod has exactly none. I'm waiting for the day when wireless broadband is ubiquitous enough that I can get a music recommendation service to stream music on -demand to my portable audio device. That's going to result in a revolution in the way we consume music, I think.

Yes, exactly. Just now the ouput of my player segued from Hayden's Trumpet Concerto to Blue Oyster Cult's 'Burnin for You'... try to find that on satellite radio (assuming that you would want to.) In any event sat radio sucks (for me anyway) in terms of both content and audio quality.

 

I use Yahoo Music's streaming service while at home/work to discover new music as the service is very configurable in terms of genre selection and you can be as eclectic as you like. When I find something I like I download it for use in my player.

[BULLman]

Yup, I forgot to mention that my first HDD iPod is in the bottom of lake Michigan...off the Door County Peninsula.....a bad day with a locked up iPod.

If my iPod touch 16gb didn't cost so iPhocking much, it too would be at the bottom of the Pacific somewhere.

 

Besides the $$$, what is the problem with the itouch [curious itouch owner]. Used it once on the bike, needed something to contol volume.

 

I also have an m250 Sansa 2gb player that I put it on shuffle and enjoy the tunes, but hearing it can be a problem.

 

[SeanC]

Besides the $$$, what is the problem with the itouch [curious itouch owner].

What I don't like:

1. It takes forever to power up.

2. If you run the battery way down, it can take as long as several minutes after plugging it into a power source before it will power on, leaving me to think the unit's dead.

3. Battery life is nowhere near what's advertised. 22 hours of playback time? I don't get half that (and I'm not using it to play videos either... just music).

4. Why include a physical "Home" button, but no "Previous" and "Next" buttons? It annoys me that I constantly have to touch the screen to do this (which is difficult while driving, impossible while riding).

5. The WiFi cuts out on me all the time. This isn't that big a deal since I really don't use it as a WiFi device very often.

6. The "Power" button is in a really stupid place on the unit, designed without a recess, i.e., it sticks out further than anything else on the unit, meaning that it's really easy to put it to sleep/wake from sleep accidentally, like bouncing around in a tank bag or just putting it in your pocket.

7. The display of album art is great, but the font used for Artist/Title/Album is, what, maybe 6 points? I can't read it at arm's length.

8. CoverFlow just plain pisses me off. I can't find a way to turn this "feature" off, and my unit goes into CoverFlow mode if it rotates from vertical by so much as one degree or so. But does it rotate so easily out of CoverFlow? Never. I have to apply maximum Gs to that accelerometer to get it back to normal display of album art. It's almost like it senses how pissed off I am and then assumes I want to be pissed off even more.

9. Copying music from iTunes takes longer for the Touch than it does my old hard drive-based iPod. What's up with that?

10. It's not as customizable as it could be.

 

What I like:

1. The music navigation features are really slick.

2. Display of album art and photos is superb.

3. The accelerometer is really cool when viewing photos.

 

If I hadn't received it as a gift from my wife, I never would have bought one.

[Silver Surfer/AKAButters]

Lots of great comments on the hard mount, hard drives do not like to be vibrated. I solved this by keeping mine in the map pocket on my tank bag.

 

 

[sgendler]

Just to be clear, I solved my hard mount problems by simply switching from 3m dual lock to velcro. The velcro has enough play in it to eliminate any issues from vibration. Alternatively, I've since moved to using dual lock, but sticking it to the top of a tank bag, so the tank bag provides the vibration damping. Both systems have worked for me for many years (about 4 years each).

[Todd_Z1]

I have used several hard drive based MP3 players from Apple and Dell and every one of them has failed, frozen up or skipped. My Sansa Sandisk flash based 8GB player has never frozen or skipped. It has been dropped several times and has survived thousands of miles of dust, rain, heat and severe vibration mounted on the handle bars with no problems. Sandisk makes a 32GB flash player that takes up to 8GB MicroSD cards. That should be more than enough storage for all of your music and ebook media. The battery lasts for 10 to 12 hours of continuous play but you need to set back lighting to last no more than 30 seconds. The back lighting is inadequate for direct daylight and the text size is hard to read under way. These are the only issues I have had with it. You can manage your media using MediaMonkey or Windows Media Player.

 

Cheers!

 

Todd

[velomoto]

Lots of great comments on the hard mount, hard drives do not like to be vibrated. I solved this by keeping mine in the map pocket on my tank bag.

Another simple solution to isolate the HDD from vibration - keep the MP3 player in an inside jacket pocket. My Olympia jacket has a waterproof pocket that not only keeps the MP3 player from vibrations, but also provides water protection.