I finally have decided to take the plunge and buy a hard-drive based digital music player. I've been using my PDA as a music player for quite a while now, but I finally have reached the point where the appeal of being able to have essentially my entire music collection available on a portable device is high enough to justify the purchase.

After doing a fair amount of research, I have placed an order for a Creative Labs NOMAD Zen Xtra (http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=9288) in the 60GB version. The combination of price, features, and storage space seemed to best fit my needs.

Although I already placed the order, I still figured I'd post here to see what thoughts anyone has on this or other models as well as to get any general feedback/advice on how to manage this sized player. If I decide that I'm not happy with this device, certainly I would still have an option to return/exchange it as well, so I'm still interested to read experiences with a variety of devices.

With regards to my own exploration of various options, I'll get the obvious out of the way right away and say that I very quickly dismissed the iPod. While they are attractive devices with an elegant user interface, I also feel that they are overpriced for the feature set. More importantly, I have a really major problem with the tight coupling of the iPod with the iTunes Music Store, which basically means that you can't play copyright-protected music from any other online stores without burning and re-ripping the tracks (with the inherent loss of quality). I quickly decided that I wanted a device that supported protected WMA and the pretty wide range of online stores that use that format.

After comparing the various models out there, I basically narrowed it down to the Creative Labs model that I ordered and the iRiver H340 (http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/hd/h340.aspx). Ultimately, I ended up going for the one I did due to the larger hard-drive, somewhat better price, and the fact that it supported audio books from Audible.com and the iRiver model didn't. The main thing that I liked about the iRiver model was its somewhat wider range of supported formats, particularly Ogg Vorbis, which was the format I've used with my PDA.

Of course, the next step is going to be to figure out how best to manage my music collection. Currently, I have my whole collection ripped to 128Kbps MP3 files and to 64Kbps OGG files. While I think I could barely fit pretty much all of the MP3s onto the 60GB device, I think I'm probably going to want to switch to WMA in order to use less space. Initially, my thought is to go ahead and convert the existing MP3 files to 96Kbps WMAs for short term use prior to starting the process of re-ripping my CD collection.

As a next step, I think I'll pick up a new hard drive (disk space is cheap now) and re-rip everything to a lossless format, although I haven't yet decided which one. That would give me a solid baseline for my music collection, ideal quality for playback directly from the PC, and allow for future conversions without the loss of quality you get by going from one lossy compressed format to another. From there, I can then do some experimenting and downconvert to whatever WMA or MP3 settings seem to work best.

Anyone else have any experience with this and advice on what formats and settings tend to work best?

-Jeff

I probably would not have bought one, but I'm very happy with my free iPod (see link in sig).

I think ipod is best just because it's so tiny!
Click on my sig link, PLEASE!

Ironically, in world of HD players, Apple holds the advantage that PCs do in the computer world; they own the market!
The list of iPod accessories is endless.

Ironically, in world of HD players, Apple holds the advantage that PCs do in the computer world; they own the market!


Apple owned the home PC market at one time as well, but ultimately lost that dominance largely due to their decision to try and maintain closed standards. I think history is already starting to repeat itself with the audio players and I suspect it isn't going to be long before the iPod is pretty far down on the sales charts, unless Apple gives in and adds WMA support and/or opens up availability of their DRM solution to stores other than just iTunes.

The iPods are nice from a design standpoint, but I simply couldn't see myself buying a unit that limited flexibility to that degree.

-Jeff

After doing a fair amount of research, I have placed an order for a Creative Labs NOMAD Zen Xtra (http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=9288) in the 60GB version. The combination of price, features, and storage space seemed to best fit my needs.
-Jeff

I have basically the same player. I bought it two years ago and it has a 30GB hard drive and is just called the Jukebox Zen, but based on the way yours looks, it's the same model. It was cheaper than the ipod and my minimal experience with the ipod interface indicated to me that it was just as easy to use. My experience is that it is really, really user friendly. My only recommendation is that if you happen to want to delete things or make playlists, it's infinitely easier to do it within the software rather than on the player itself.

I have most of my files copied as 128 mp3's. The rest of what you are saying is total Greek to me, but having them as mp3s has been fine. The headphones they give you (well, the headphones they gave me, two years ago) are so-so, you may want to replace them.

Other than that, it's been a good durable player. A little bigger than I'd like, but the size of the harddrive makes up for it.

heheh I don't think I'd ever be able to fill one of those things. I've got about 1700 tracks - a little over 5GB of space, and about 90 hours of music.

i'm very loyal to iRiver myself. i bought an iHP-140 several months ago and for the same price as the ipod (about $400), i have a 40GB HD (which I can just plug into the USB as an external HD), plays OGG/MP3/WMA, text viewer (which I don't use), remote control, FM radio with up to 20 (i think) presets, built-in microphone for recording, FM recording, digital input/outputs, built-in equalizer with many presets including SRS.

We love our Dell's. I have the small one (5gb) and my husband just order the new big boy. They work great and easy to operate (something I really need).