If you're planning on going with a single lossless library, I'm not sure that the T30 will work well for you. Even if it did support a lossless format, its storage capacity (max 1GB) wouldn't allow you to hold more than 3 (or maybe 4 or 5 classical) CDs, at best. Assuming you go with FLAC, your list of players is fairly limited according to the FLAC hardware page at http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware: a few from Cowon, a few of the iRiver Hard Drive based players with a third party firmware replacement, or the Rio Karma. The latter is discontinued and from what I've been able to tell has some hardware issues that have caused an inordinate number to malfunction and/or stop working.
That said, in considering this issue myself recently I decided that having lossless copies for a portable/car player was an unneccesary requirement. It seriously limits your choice of players (as does requiring Ogg Vorbis support, as I did until recently) and I don't think offers sufficient advantage in the portable/car listening environment. In my setup now, I maintain two libraries: FLAC and lame 3.96.1 -V 6 MP3. I know the MP3s are rather low quality, but as their target is the car/portable, small filesize is more important: in that environment, I just don't notice the mediocre encoding, but YEMV (your ears may vary). I use the lossless copy for the SqueezeBox and home computer listening. If in the future I decide that I want higher quality MP3s (or even some other format, like Ogg), re-encoding can be done from the FLACs mostly non-interactively; I won't have to rip my CDs ever again discounting a house fire that knocks out all my backups. Back to your original question. Assuming you use a similar setup, your options are then open to any player that plays MP3s (most anything), without locking yourself into a particular format or bitrate forever and without sacrificing sound quality where it matters (home). A downside I found in most players (including the T30 and other flash-based offerings from iRiver) is that they are limited to the amount of storage they are sold with. 1GB really isn't that much (~20 CDs at best), especially if you're used to the 10GB iPod. I'm personally used to bringing 40-60 CDs on trips. Also, if the flash memory goes bad on the player, you're in the market for a whole new player. As such, I looked for players that had a slot for some kind of external storage. In the end I went with the decidedly no-frills Lexar LDP 200 (http://lexar.com/mp3/index.html). It has *no* internal storage, just an SD card slot. Right now I have just 640M of storage in two cards, but I figure some day SD cards will be $10/G or less and I can pick up a bunch. As I said, the player is seriously no frills, and I do have some minor qualms, but overall it has been great. This has been long winded enough. If you're interested in more information/opinions/qualms, let me know and I'll elaborate. -- eq72521 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ eq72521's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1512 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18910 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
