> > > > ...or perhaps buy your MP3 players from a more FOSS-friendly and less > DRM-friendly company. > > Regards, > > -- Raju >
yeah raj, i ain't brand conscious at all. i have a trusty and cheap 1.5gbcoby mp3player that turned out to have one of the best mp3 decoders in town at that time. i checked apple, creative, sony, samsung, philip, and a few more. was rather surprised as i thought coby was some el cheapo brand. those days was deep into some ear-training practise with a 440hz tuning fork (the fossies here could instead check out the foss-software solfege, that helps in ear-training). so i bought the coby in sep 2005. thought for that price it wouldn't last more than 6 months. despite heavy, punishing use, that thing is still rockin'. it connects to linux desktops as a simple usb storage device, no fuss, no apple drm-dance loops. have even transferred data on it concurrently. by the way, that ear-training tip really works. here's what i recommend: before you set out to buy any audio gear, spend about a week or atleast 21 days with solfege, the gpl ear-training software. say about 30 minutes a day. you may spend more time if you wish. for those 21 days, pick up an acoustically rich piece of music as your reference point. listen to that piece at least twice or thrice every day until you can know every subtle nuance by memory. don't bother using highly-compressed mp3 or other file-formats. pick a pristine-quality wav file, or an original audiocd or audio-dvd. [i mean audio-dvd, not a data dvd crammed with hissy mp3 files]. finally, discard the hypnotism of brand-faith and loyalty. take your reference musicfile, and go test the audio-gear. you'll always be startled at your choices. like me, you may just develop reverence and deep appreciation for one of the finest foss utility software i know out there: solfege. it's not just zero-price, but priceless. last week i spent 5 hours in various outlets with a friend, testing portable speakers for my mp3player. you gotta hear the stuff i brought home. no other customer in the shop was even glancing at it. the shop-manager was quite clueless about its capabilities. by the way, bought it so i could listen to some music in my room in bangalore, through foss.in next week. so those of you attending foss.in and interested to prick your ears to its sound, buzz me. you'd appreciate it even more if you muck around with solfege and have a reference file. :-) niyam -- niyam bhushan _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - February 22/23, 2008 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
