Suggestions for MP3 / portable media player

I can't comment on the 8000 tracks as I don't have that many.

Crashes - never had a problem in this respect, neither on my Vaio with Vista nor on my old laptop with XP.

Copyright - I don't see a problem with copyrights on SonicStage.

 

I have to agree with vogelbung on this one, Sonicstage was some horrible stuff. But Sony has been sonicstage free for a while now. Although the old NWE505 you could get around using sonicstage, and that was a GREAT dap. I tested 65 hours battery life out of one of mine.

 

This is a total novelty I have to say. I haven't met one person who defends SonicStage beyond the rabid Sonyholic - and the only people I met who liked it hadn't used anything else in depth.

I'm curious - What do you like about it, based on the fact that it's the *ONLY* software you can use to load the pre-MTP players from Sony, in comparison to drag & drop, iTunes, MediaMonkey, j.River Media Jukebox and the like?

 

I liked the organization - that was the key thing.

Simple by album and artist.

I'm not such a fan of playlists... (apart from on my MP3 player to play 2 CDs in successon)

 

since it was introduced. and your player should do a lot more than that, check the manual.

 

itunes isn't any better, the windows version is ridiculously bloated.

 

Yes, I think Wave too...
But it doesn't support Atrac...

MP3s it now is for me - again from CDs

 

Most (if not all) music marketplace/management tools suck. Can we agree on that? I'd much rather be able to use my player like an external storage device and drag and drop content through Windows. I personally use Rhapsody, but that's a necissary evil because I like using music subscription services over purchase-based systems.

 

You can drag and drop on the Sony X series - I'm not sure about older models.

 

Sorry for cutting in, but can drag & drop be used for Sony A, S, or E series? I'm speaking of the current models.
What about playlist management? Can they be organized using the player? How about deleting files, is it possible? How's the SensMe feature, if still available in the new models?

 

Playlists in the X series have to be added via Windows Media Player - I beleive there is an add on for other clients on a CD.
As far as I am aware you cannot drag and drop playlists via explorer.

This same technology was used in one of the previous models.

But I'm not sure since when exactly.
The number may be impurtant too, not just the series.

It should be implemented in all current models - see Sony site for details.

 

i just use my cellphone as my mp3 player

 

Playlist management on the player is not possible. The X-series for example uses WMP11 playlists.

The latest Sony players are MTP first, UMS next. That is, if your platform supports MTP (Windows), then that's how it behaves. If your platform doesn't support MTP (OS X, Linux) then it defaults to UMS mode. Both allow drag & drop. On-player song deletion is not possible.

 

hope i'm not late. TS should take a look at the zen xfi2. i just got mine & was really pleased with the audio that's the best i have heard. comes with good earpiece & a memory slot (microsd) which allows me to play files off my microsd card use on my phone easily. i would consider this a good buy.

 

The Xfi 2 looks good. I have tried Itouch 2G and seems like a good music player to me, video quality is also good plus it has a lot of applications.
I'm reading a lot of suggestions for Zune HD... specification-wise it's better than itouch although if you like downloading/updating applications itouch is better.