That's okay Forge42. I was a soldier in the 40 wars myself. But everything changes over time.
Welcome to Aximsite dvard!
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I'm a member of a number of online communities and I have to say AximSite may be one of the friendliest that I know of. Lots of great info here and some very helpful people. Welcome!
EDIT: One more thing to add concerning Mortplayer. I noticed that the distortion problem seemed to be worse when I was doing a custom EQ setting. If I used one of the presets that came with Mortplayer, it seemed that the distortion problem was much less of a problem. Personally, I liked the sound of the 'Techno' preset. The advantage of that preset over some of the other is that it didn't add that extra 'tone' in there... I know exactly what your talking about. Up around 2kHz or so, it seems like.. .some sort of weird harmonic almost. I'm not sure which effect it is that caused it, but I do know that the Techno preset didn't have as much of a problem with it.
The reason I feel why some dismiss it as no beter than the rest is because they're listening to it through bog standard headphones and at average bit rates. You need a pair of Sennheiser PX100s or if you're loaded some Shure e3cs to notice its quality.
The reason I feel why some dismiss it as no beter than the rest is because they're listening to it through bog standard headphones and at average bit rates. You need a pair of Sennheiser PX100s or if you're loaded some Shure e3cs to notice its quality.
Do Technomad Berlin's count?
I'm gonna fire up iPlay on them this weekend to see how much of a difference I can tell. Granted, they aren't headphones, but they can cut the cheese!
The reason I feel why some dismiss it as no beter than the rest is because they're listening to it through bog standard headphones and at average bit rates. You need a pair of Sennheiser PX100s or if you're loaded some Shure e3cs to notice its quality.
I listened to a few high bitrate MP3s with the 40th Iplay demo and my Shure E4s and noticed a notable difference in clarity. However, you're probably right about 40th Iplay not really offering anything for people using lower end headphones -- I plugged in a lower end pair and can't say I was as blown away by the difference in quality.
40th Iplay seems to be only worth its cost to people willing to shell out the money for both it AND a pair of good headphones.
I'm impressed by Iplay, but my one major gripe with it is that I needed to temporarily change my PDA's owner name to even try the demo. When I first got my device, I set my owner name to just my initials and had all of my software registered to that. Iplay wouldn't start at all when I had my owner name set to my initials or even just my last name. I had to put in my full name in before it would work.
dvard is from posting from Michigan. 40 is posting from Texas. Let's let sleeping dogs lie and just talk about the program okay?
Hey, that's fine then. I didn't want to start a flame against him, but all I saw was that it was his first post and it was a pretty pro-iPlay post.
I just put 2+2 together and figured he might be the 40th guy in disguise; I said that because I am frustrated with the whole iPlay thing too. Surely you can see it from my POV? I was wondering if a moderator would verify the IP, and since you had the sense to do so, that's cool. :approve: Don't get me wrong on this; I'm not evil.
Anyway, sorry for the presumption - no hard feelings, right? And welcome to the forums, dvard! :)
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Also, to follow up, I'm not exactly the average music listener - I have a few pairs of very good headphones. I also have sharp hearing and I notice differences in sound quality very easily.
iPlay offers nothing revolutionary that would warrant me pulling out my wallet. I don't understand how he tries to achieve his claims of better sound quality - where's the proof? It sounds a little different to other decent players, but not better (to me anyway)...
Note, by decent I mean the other pay-for players, and GSPlayer. I can understand a significant difference between iPlay and Windows Media Player, for example (WMP is hardly the best; doesn't even have an EQ).
I usually listen to lossless formats, which iPlay doesn't support (I hear it does FLAC with a plugin you buy - but how the heck is that legal? I thought FLAC was supposed to be open source!).
I don't see how playback quality can be any better than the source file you start with - as long as the player uses a modern, recent decoder for whatever format you're playing, quality shouldn't be an issue.
If you're an audiophile, you shouldn't be using MP3 anyway... ;)
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d0pefish - no hard feelings :) I have tried the GSPlayer and I think that it sounds
pretty good too, One problem though, it doesn't seem to do gapless playback, is this right or is there an option that I am overlooking? Conduits Pocket Player looks like it supports gapless so I will try that. FWIW I only shrunk (lame190-250) down a copy my collection specifically for the axim, I use the real copy on the main system.
I have since read many of the negs of 40th, but my original experience was no problem. I went to website download demo, install demo, run demo.
I have just tried 40thiPlay and it has blown me away.
It did me too, the first time I tried it.
Quote:
Phendric – You said that you tried a few different players and settled on the 40thiPlay Which I can see why. I am just curious, would you mind listing the other players that You tried? I truly feel that I need to look no further, but feel a bit negligent in not at least testing some of the others. The reason I tried Mortplayer first was because of all the great reviews, and I did like the slick interface very much, but I think that the people recommending it really don’t care too much about the actual audio quality.
I tried only free players: GSPlayer and TCPMP (which at the time was BetaPlayer), although I did a bit of reading around to see what people had to say about other players. When I came upon iPlay, I loved it so much that I very quickly just purchased it (sometimes I'm more of an impulse buyer than I should be - I have tons of games, and none of them are currently installed on my PDA :) .
To respond to what some others have said in this thread:
I know that people have had problems with the author's website not letting them enter the site. That would be really annoying if it happened to me. I'm not exactly sure why it is, but I know that he has had major issues with people spamming him (which I'm not sure what it has to do with the site as opposed to email...?)
d0pefish mentioned that the author's attitude is somewhat arrogant and that he doesn't listen to users' requests for features. All I have to say is that he has been pretty receptive to my emails - if I find a bug, he's very quick to fix it and supply an update. I even sent him a request several months ago for the implementation of super-playlists, and about a month ago, he came out with that functionality.
About the cluttered interface, I agree that it may be complicated. I don't think it looks bad, though, and, being an engineering student, I guess I'm used to complicated. I like the extreme customizability :) .
Someone mentioned that iPlay costs $40. It used to, but the base version now only costs $30. It includes an AAC decoder, so Conduits Pocket Player costs just as much if you purchase its optional AAC decoder. I realize, though, that for the iPlay server and/or FLAC plugin, it costs more.
About having to purchase a good pair of headphones to really appreciate iPlay, I might agree with that. I suppose that your portable system is only as good as the worst component is. For those who are not audiophiles, wanting the best quality music, iPlay probably isn't for them. That's why other players are out there :). I, however, like to have high-quality music (many in my family are musicians).
d0pefish - no hard feelings :) I have tried the GSPlayer and I think that it sounds
pretty good too, One problem though, it doesn't seem to do gapless playback, is this right or is there an option that I am overlooking? Conduits Pocket Player looks like it supports gapless so I will try that. FWIW I only shrunk (lame190-250) down a copy my collection specifically for the axim, I use the real copy on the main system.
I have since read many of the negs of 40th, but my original experience was no problem. I went to website download demo, install demo, run demo.
If iPlay has worked for you up to this point, I would stay with it, if you want the best audio quality.
I don't see how playback quality can be any better than the source file you start with...
If you're an audiophile, you shouldn't be using MP3 anyway... ;)
True, on both counts. :)
Although I do have to say that I think decoders can vary in quality. If you go over to the TCPMP forums, one of the big things that people are so excited about there is the fact that the TCPMP decoders are going to be blazingly fast, faster than many other decoders. Thus, if decoders can vary in speed, couldn't they also vary in quality, too?
I agree that MP3 decoder quality can vary sometimes. I too read about the TCPMP crowd going for speed over anything, so yes, they may be trading off a little quality for speed and lightweightedness.
Then again, bear in mind that at the moment, TCPMP seems more video oriented than audio; although it can play some audio formats that other players cannot (MusePack - one of my favorite formats). Maybe any quality/speed changes could be made into options...? :)
I'd guess and hope that GSPlayer's shouldn't be making any of those tradeoffs; either way it sounds pretty good to me and doesn't seem to use any more or less CPU time / battery than it should be. I don't think any differences in MP3 decoder quality between the likes of PocketMusic, Pocket Player and GSPlayer would be noticable at all - if there were any, they'd be really superficial unless they had some kind of deliberate low quality mode or something.
In any case, if I wanted quality but keeping thing file size down, I'd be using something like Vorbis and not MP3. Nowadays, MP3 quality is starting to look quite poor compared to newer codecs; aacPlus is fantastic for really low bitrates if you're tight on space. :)
With regards to iPlay, I'm honestly really happy for you that you are having a good experience with iPlay and the author, and that you're happy with the program. But to all those who can't reach his website and can't get a response out of him, it's kinda bad and off-putting, not to mention downright frustrating. It wasn't so much him not listening to requests for features, but more like not listening at all.
His product would be wayyyy more popular and successful if he'd come forward and mingle with his (potential) customers a bit more. People can't even try the demo because of this long-term problem with his site. It doesn't make sense...
@dvard:
Unfortunately GSPlayer doesn't have gapless. I hope the author updates it some time to add it in, or at least add CUEsheet support which would be better than nothing. GSPlayer is open source; maybe someone could work on it? :)
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I think the audio quality is sometimes an almost "esoteric" thing. If you like a player, it "definitily sounds better"... I think it's funny how people claim that GSPlayer sounds better than MortPlayer or vice versa (though not in this thread). Both use exactly the same code for the playback itself...
Another point is, the result doesn't only depend from the decoder. E.g. the encoding and hardware differences are important, too. For example an interpolation might result in good sound for low bitrates and a bad sound for high bitrates. And if the volume is pushed to its limit (in certain frequences), it might sound great on one device while the other starts to rattle or use clipping...
I think the audio quality is sometimes an almost "esoteric" thing. If you like a player, it "definitily sounds better"... I think it's funny how people claim that GSPlayer sounds better than MortPlayer or vice versa (though not in this thread). Both use exactly the same code for the playback itself...
Another point is, the result doesn't only depend from the decoder. E.g. the encoding and hardware differences are important, too. For example an interpolation might result in good sound for low bitrates and a bad sound for high bitrates. And if the volume is pushed to its limit (in certain frequences), it might sound great on one device while the other starts to rattle or use clipping...
Totally agree. :)
@CharlyV: Thanks! Pretty cool player - I like the visuals. I've been trying to find this player for a while ever since I saw a thread on the FMOD forums ages ago, but couldn't find it again. Cheers!
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