Episode: 1656
Title: HPR1656: My audio player collection
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1656/hpr1656.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 06:28:07

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It's Monday 8th of December 2014.
This is HPR Episode 1656 entitled My Audio Player Collection.
It is hosted by Dave Morris' and is about 21 minutes long.
Feedback can be sent to Dave. Morris' at gmail.com or by leaving a comment on this episode.
The summary is, I describe the collection of audio players I use for listening to podcasts.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15 that's HPR15.
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Hello Hacker Public Radio, this is Dave Morris.
I've got a show for you today.
I'm doing it in a bit of a rush because we're so low on shows.
So if you have anything planned, partly done, please hurry and get it ready because the
Q is going to be empty soon.
My talk today is about my audio player collection.
Now I mentioned this when I did a show a while back about the podcasts I listened to.
And I got an email from Mike Ray saying, fancy talking about the players that you've got.
So you go, Mike, here's the show.
I got broadband installed in my house fairly late on, I guess, about 2005.
I just bought my first PC, seems a bit odd, but I don't own a lot of PCs before that.
But I worked at a university and there was a regular cycle of every few years refurbishing
all the student PCs and chucking out effectively all the old ones.
So I used to grab these.
They were available to staff in the university for nothing or very small amounts.
And I used to use several of them actually at home getting to the dial up at work around
that time.
So I got fairly cheap internet that way because it was amazingly slow.
Anyway, broadband came in.
I'd got sick of listening to the radio.
I used to be a quite keen radio listener most of the time that I could, but I was getting
fed up with the program content and timing issues and so on.
And then I discovered podcasts.
So I decided I want a portable audio player.
I think we called them MP3 players then, but obviously things have moved on a fair bit.
So since that point I've been listening to podcasts pretty much all the time as you might
have gathered if you heard my other shows and I've bought a number of players.
So I thought it might be interesting if I listed these, sorry about the list structure
of this thing, but you know I'm a geek, I have to do lists.
So the first player, and there's show notes in parallel with this by the way, and it's
got pictures, if you like, pictures of players.
First one was an iRiver IFP 899 in 2005.
Very neat little device, you can see in the picture if you've got that.
Then with a monochrome screen and a joystick, it had a little inbuilt microphone which
is remarkably good actually, and played MP3 and WMA.
Just took a single AA battery which I thought was rather nice actually, and looked when
you plugged it into PC looked just like a simple USB storage device so it's easy to access.
Had a dedicated lock switch on the side, and easy to operate and disabled all the buttons.
And it also came with a cover which is quite nice, not a bad one either.
Pretty expensive, 120 pounds, but it was highly recommended.
I think this was the model that was discussed on TLLTS which I'd started listening to
around that time.
I was listening to it on PC, but they were talking about a device and how much I liked it,
and I'm pretty certain it was this one.
And Adam Curry was also very much into this machine and carried it around everywhere
with a microphone plugged into I think, but sadly it didn't last all that long.
The main problem was that that joystick let dust and crud from my pocket in, and the
protective cover didn't protect it, and that gummed up the works, and I've never been
able to fix it.
One day I might feel bold enough, rip it apart, and give it a shot.
But so far I've been too cowardly to attack it.
So once that had died, I'm so really sad about that because that's why I still preserve
it.
It's such a pretty looking thing to my reckoning anyway.
The next one after this was Samsung YPZ5A.
Got this in 2006.
It's a four gig machine, and it's therefore a much larger capacity, and it's somewhat
neat to shape being a flat rectangular thing, and it was a play dog.
The other one didn't.
Didn't have a radio or a microphone like the other one, but plenty of space.
The controls on this device, I really liked.
A lot of people said they didn't like this in the reviews, but I thought it was good,
and it also had a nice metal felt, I think it was all metal case actually, a nice metal
switch on the top that you could lock the controls, which I really liked.
It developed a few problems.
I think the switches in the front panel control have gone a bit dicey, but it still works,
and is still used occasionally.
There has been talk of somebody implementing a rock box version for this, but I don't
think anything's coming, but I've not found anything anyway.
So as this one was going, I thought, well, it's still going strong, or fairly strong anyway.
I wanted another one, really, so that I could be listening to stuff when the battery
gone flat on the one that I've been using before.
I wanted to be able to alternate between two, so I thought I'll go on by another one.
And I liked the Samsung and saw the YPQ1 model, and that's a 16 gig device.
So I went and bought that.
It had some really good reviews, it looks pretty, and it's got lovely colour screen, but
it proved to be a pretty bad buy.
The controls are amazingly sensitive.
You just almost hover your finger over them, and they do something.
Maybe I'm clumsy, you've got two big fingers, but I just could not drive this thing probably.
I found it incredibly difficult to use.
And the second problem, which I hadn't worked out before I bought it, was that you need
windows, a bit of software that runs on windows to interface to it, or do anything significant,
let's say.
If you wanted to access it through USB on a Linux box, which I did work out how to do,
you need to run MTP to do it.
The radio is excellent.
The sound quality of the thing is great, and it can also play MP3, organ, and flak, but
just wasn't the right machine.
They seemed to have taken their eye off the ball when they were designing this.
I'm not quite sure when I bought this round 2008, just as an aside, this is a case I think
where Amazon Database broke, because when I try and look at details of this one up in
my purchase history, there used to be anywhere a report from Amazon saying, we can't seem
to access the database, as I think the database crashed and they lost this bit, which as a geek
that bothers me enormously, it shouldn't be, it's disgusting.
Anyway, that was a joke, by the way.
Next had to get something better than this one, so I went hunting and saw the Sandisk Sansa
Fuse, bought this in 2009, again, of Amazon.
This is the one I bought with a 4G device, price well down, 66 pounds, 75, according to
my very, very detailed records, brilliant, wonderful player, love it, bought a hard case
for it, which has protected very well, unfortunately the case has started to fall apart, it's been
going well for a number of years.
It's had a great colour display, and the controls are just so brilliant to use, I love it.
The only downside of it for me is the little switch on the side, the power switch, where
the, in the native software where the locking function is, you're supposed to slide it
in reverse, and I find it really hard to get my fingers to, especially with a case on,
you need a long fingernail to poke in there, and it's quite small and fragile, I'd like
to be able to glue something on it to make it better, I might do that at one point.
It didn't like the native software very much, so this was the point I looked at rockbox
and decided to start using it, and I installed it on here, and it makes it an even better
device, brilliant, it loads and loads of formats, loads of features, if you have a play,
if you're into players, you probably aren't, because it's only a few of us that I don't
imagine these days, then using the rockbox is absolutely vital, I would suggest.
You can extend the size with an SDHC card, I think up to 32 gigs, might be more, I'm
not sure, 32 I believe, and it's got really good playlists capabilities, an all manner
of sorting and that type of thing, and it's enormously customisable.
There is a later version of the fuse, you can't buy the standard fuse, the original
fuse anymore, apart from second hand, the fused plus reports are that it's not as usable
as this one, I don't have any direct experience, I think they made a, made control
of buttons on the front, which are nowhere near as usable.
Interestingly, this particular fuse model can sell for almost the same price as the original
one, eBay, you know how eBay is, it can go really insane with bidding sometimes.
You can spend a lot, you can spend 60 odd quid on it, if you want to, I don't know why
you would, but there you go.
So boyed up with the delight of the fuse, I went out and bought a Sansa Clip Plus, wanted
to use this in the gym, I just fancy it having somebody to listen to, allows him the gym
in, you know, on stair climber or something, boring like that.
So I got that and it's a small device, really, really small and neat.
It has a clip on the back, not too surprisingly, and the screen is without any colour, but
who cares?
At least you can see stuff on it, you can see what's playing on it and so on.
The controls are just great, I love the way they've been put together and it's pretty
robust.
Apart from the Clip, the Clip's a little bit fragile, I managed to break it off, trying
to clip it on a T-shirt in the gym, it just snapped off at one day, might just be me being
clumsy, I don't know.
Again you can extend it, this one was 8GB, it cost £13, £9 and you can extend it with
an SDHC card up to £32GB, I believe.
And of course it will take rockbox and putting that on there made it much, much better,
it doesn't have a dedicated locking switch.
In the native software it's supposed to hold down the home button for a long press, but
under rockbox you do home plus select, which is fiddly.
If I'm listening to stuff on one of these and the phone goes and I want to stop, then
too many button presses, I find many cases, it's a bit of a nuisance, but there you go,
what can you expect?
This one's quite good for recording stuff and I've used mine, one of mine anyway, for
recording stuff for part of an HBR show, the one on my coffee thingies, and I know Ken
Fallon uses a Clip Plus, it's a backup recording device, a lot.
So as I realised that audio players were coming less popular and more scarce, people using
smartphones, I thought I better start looking to see if I can have a reserve of players.
So my thought was go and look at the rockbox site, see what players are compatible and
see if I can find any of them on eBay.
So I went off doing this and the first one I came by was the I River H10, this is the
5GIG model, it's an interesting machine, it's really solidly made, a bit heavy and moderately
large, it's got a hard disk in it, and it's got a removable battery, so I guess you
could get replacements.
In fact I know you can, you can see them on eBay, it's got a colour screen, locking switch,
it seems to have all of the features you'd want really.
The only thing is the model I have, which I put rockbox on by the way, is there's a
very faint high-pitched noise when running, I'm not sure if it's the disk drive or something,
but it's, I don't find it comfortable to listen to, it might just be this one that's been
around the block a bit.
I know it's the pictures got cat hairs on it, you can tell I've got a cat that sheds hair
a bit, sorry about that, I should have dusted it first.
So my hunting for second-hand players continued on with buying another sense of clip from
eBay, and that's been great, no problem, these are rock solid, brilliant things, I saw
iPod Mini, second generation iPod Mini as well on eBay and bought one of those, very
similar sort of price, 17 pounds or so, four gig this one was, it's not, it's a neat
looking little machine, it's quite pretty, but I don't know why people like this, I just
find it ugly and unpleasant in its function, rockbox runs on it, I think it's the last
one in the range that will take rockbox for which a rockbox version has been produced
I imagine, but I just find that the hardware seems really clunky and weird, and that scroll
wheel doesn't, it doesn't actually turn, and it just doesn't appeal to me, I think I've
probably been spoiled by non iPod stuff, non Apple stuff, but anyway, I wouldn't recommend
it, but if you like these things you might find it's quite good, the one I have seems
a little bit weird, but I suppose if you get these of eBay, you never know quite what
you're getting, quite a chunky thing made of largely of aluminium I think, so it should
last a long time as far as the external case is concerned, can't switch it off, hasn't
it got us an off button, that's a thing I find very odd, well the only other device worthy
of particular note in my collection and bought from eBay is another iRiver H10, this is
the six gigabyte version, strangely with just five and six at some particular point in
time, I bought this one because I quite liked the look of the first one I thought, you
know these were good things to invest in, but from its look it looks pretty much identical
to the five gig version, but I had terrible trouble trying to install Rockbox on it, I got
it on but I couldn't get it to run, so I did various bits of research on this model, didn't
find anything on the Rockbox side as I recall, a while ago I sent that I did this, but I did
find people reporting that it also had issues getting Rockbox to run on it, so I think there
must be some issue with the processor or the firmware or something in this particular
device, it just doesn't seem to go, so you might have different experience with this, if
you have it be interesting to know, if you were thinking of buying one of these and they
do seem to be pretty cheap on eBay, at least in the UK, then you might want to think twice
about buying one for Fuse with Rockbox, might be good with the native operating system,
I don't know, I did carry on buying things on eBay, I bought some more Sansa Fusus and
another clip, there were three Fusus, but they proved to be a bit of a mixed experience,
the clip was no problem, I bought this, I didn't buy it on eBay, in fact I bought it from
Play.com where they were offering a refurbished, manufacturer refurbished model, and it seems
as good as new, it's been absolutely great, I'm hoping that it'll last well and it'll
be available to me way into the future.
Two of the three Fusus machines I bought gave me problems, they were, I think they were
version one hardware, if you look in the history of these things, you see there were two versions
of it, the version one hardware is quite hard to identify, but if they're running native
firmware then it's a version which begins with the 0.1, these particular devices seem
to randomly dismount themselves when plugged into a PC when you're trying to upload media
to them, and there's just been a whole bunch of erratic behaviour with them.
The third Fusus had seemed to be much better, it's a version two device, I think anyway
because it had a firmware with no two version number on it, and that one is behaved as well
as the original one that I bought, even though it's second hand, so if you're thinking
of a sensor fuse you need to be really careful, ask the vendor what firmware version is
on it before you jump, anyway I've been really pleased to have these players, they've been
amazingly good, I put various things on the different set of players, and so when one
runs out of power I can switch to another one, or if I'm fed up with listening to podcasts
of a particular genre then I can switch to another one, or indeed I've got one with
music on, I do have an Android smartphone which I bought about a year ago, it's a Motorola
Moto G because it's cheap, there's no way I was paying big money for a smartphone, but
I don't want to use that as a music player, it's too big and too heavy to go in a shirt
pocket, and I've got sure that it won't even fit in, and if I bend over it falls out of
my pocket, it's a lot less convenient than a sensor fuse or a clip plus, you may well
have entirely different experience, but that's mine anyway, so I hope that was interesting,
there's a few links in the show notes that you might find useful, so don't forget to
get yourself to a microphone, to a recorder, even a sensor clip if you got one, and record
a show as soon as you can, we really need them at HPR, okay, thanks, bye.
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