Is it this hard to Make Decent MP3 Players Anymore?

Posted by knorby on November 15, 2008 under Apple, archos, gadgets, media, mp3, personal, rants |

Recently, my 20gb archos bit the dust (not from a hard drive issue; actually a cracked LCD screen), and all I have wanted since is a decent MP3 player. As far as I can tell, what I consider good is no longer produced. I have a few simple requirements:

• must use a USB mass storage interface. I mean that the thing is just an external hard drive that can play music, no oddities, and no needed software. This is the simplist way on both the manufacturer’s end and the user’s (at least for people like me).
• Let me view and play by folder. ID3 tags get messed up, don’t follow standards across a library, etc… I prefer to sort by file, rather than metadata, for no other reason than it is an easier way to sort, and I can add in structure that one could not extract from ID3 anyway. I spent time to sort my library this way.
• use a hard drive. I want something substantial. In the past, that was 20gb, now it is 30gb; the trend now seems to be towards small things. If I ran (or really exercised at all), I would get one for just that use. Really, I think many of the problems with hard drives is blown out of proportion. I don’t think I have ever actually seen a hard drive failure on any computer of device I have ever had any control over. That is on well over 100 machines. I have seen plenty of power supply failures, liquid cooling failures (it is always sad to see a Mac cry coolant…), memory errors, etc… but never a hard drive failure. I believe the statistics, but my personal experience differs.
• Not an iPod. iPod’s have and always fail the first two requirements (they loath their users–seriously), the price is high, etc…. There are only two arguments that I have ever heard that have been at all convincing to me for why an iPod is worthwhile: 1) you can return broken one’s easily, 2) stuff is made for them. I don’t care about 1) because I don’t break shit that much (the MP3 player’s I have used for normal walking around/traveling/etc use both lasted around 4-5 years), and as far as 2), those devices are nice, but headphones still work fine. Really, you should use a computer to power anything else. Style isn’t worth $200+ extra and reduced functionality; that is just stupid. I respect anyone a bit less for buying an iPod. Plus, I can’t even use it on my computer without installing rockbox or something.

For the most part, Archos has served me well on these points, but they have moved towards making any hard drive mp3 player huge with crazy video options and their portable ones small flash based things, like any other manufacturer. Ogg, etc support would also be nice, but I would be willing to live with just the first two. Battery life is also a factor, but my definition of usability takes precident. I think I have found one or tow from extensive searching. I don’t care about video; I just want music. These used to be made, so what happened? This is simple! Why can’t some weird Chinese compnay do this?