Samsungs Clear-Screen MP3 Player

[Lordbob75]

Ok, this looks cool:

Samsung's MP3 players still play second fiddle to Apple's, so the Korean giant is churning out inventive new designs to turn the tide. The latest in its lineup of portable media devices is the IceTouch, which stands out thanks to its transparent touchscreen display.

Source: Samsung IceTouch: MP3 player with a transparent AMOLED screen - Crave at CNET UK

~Lordbob

 

[jfar]

Very nice, it's like Samsung with Aero.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all

I like FLAC format -- with a decent pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones this will blow any MP3 compressed sound away.

However these days 16 GB isn't really large enough - if you are using FLAC you'll only get the equivalent of around 45 CD's on it.

Either a removable card or a larger internal storage capacity is really necessary IMO -- but the ability to play FLAC makes this potentially a WINNER.

This could be the sort of device to make me consider retiring my old Minidisc recorders - although the RECORD function on those is incredibly useful.

Ok MD - MiniDisc only has 1GB max removable MD's but the ATRAC3+ proprietary compression is incredibly good for a compressed format and the Hi-SP ATRAC 3+ is almost as good as native CD sound. But ATRAC3+ will never be released into the public domain so considering alternatives players that can handle FLAC format which is an OPEN format and also LOSSLESS are what I'm considering now.

If you keep your music in FLAC (lossless) you can always re-transcode losslessly to WAV or any other popular format rendering your music collection future proof.

That's a real bugbear with Ichoones - proprietary formats and / or compressed music so any transcoding degrades quality even further.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Lordbob75]

Jimbo, I have to ask.
Whats with the obsession with the FLAC and lossless formats? MP3s may not be the greatest, but they usually sound just fine, especially through the crappy headphones most people use.

~Lordbob

EDIT: It would be great to get my music in a FLAC format to listen to from my computer, do you know how to convert MP3s to that? Would it be worth it?

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

I use music also through High quality Sound systems - agreed on a Train / other public place etc with crappy headphones it doesn't make a huge amount of difference -- but do you EVER want to hear a song in better surroundings -- then the limitations of MP3 with hideous artifacts become all too obvious.

Also by storing the music in a LOSSLESS format you can copy it to whatever sort of newer device (with possibly better compression algorithms) appears.

There's no reason to suppose that a newer and better compression algorithm to replace mp3 won't appear in due course -- physics / maths always evolves.

If you start with a lossy format further transcoding will degrade the music even more (especially if the original you started with is at a low bit rate to start with).

Suggest you try a Sample track from HERE at STUDIO quality (24 Bit @192 kHZ) -- beats even CD sound which is a miserly 16 bit @ 44.1 / 48 kHZ

Of course you need some sort of player and sound card -- VLC will actually handle 24 bit 96 FLAC tracks directly if your sound card can handle it.

Otherwise just route the digital output directly into your amp as a passthru and let the amp do the D/A conversion for you.

Linn Records - The best recordings in Studio Master Download, Vinyl and SACD

Download the sample and if you've got high end audio you'll be BLOWN AWAY.

Cheers
jimbo


Added -- getting MP3 into flac is easy -- just google for flac transcoding -- I'm not sure this would be worth it as any transcoding of Lossy formats introduces MORE degradation and artifacts.

It's best to start with a LOSSLESS source and copy those to mp3 for players such as ipods etc.

Standard MP3 tags work just fine (I think it conforms to ID3).

Tja

-J