Best MP3 Player for Large Library?

[MrGoodtunes]

The best MP3 player hasn't been released yet! I'm talking about the M8 player that'll hopefully come out soon and fall into the hands of a kind genius who'll extract the player for the rest of us to use. It has a thumb through slide area up at the top, just under the status info bar, where you select the cover art of the album you wish to play. It has a music video area, which might be a button for full screen video? It scrolls through lyrics, maybe automatically as played? Plus it has my fave feature, a frequency spectrum display. Try not to drool while checking out it's picture, here:
http://www.engadget.com/media/2008/03/m8_music.jpg

[Trondis23]

If you are in the US, check out PhantasmX at http://40th.com. In my opinion the best player available today. It loads very fast and has low power consumption, in addition to some unique sound features: xfeed, reverb, pro quality EQ.

If you don't live in the US, forget about it and get Pocket Player instead.

[ny152]

trondis23 - your link doesn't work... all I see is a black page

[Trondis23]

Originally Posted by ny152

trondis23 - your link doesn't work... all I see is a black page

That's the problem if you are outside the US, and maybe for some living inside the US as well. He wants a customer base limited to those living in the US only, so others are deliberately blocked out of the website. The link works for me at work, but not at home. I live in Europe. I bought the software before he recently excluded all non-US citizens from buying it.

If you can't get into the website, forget about it and get something else. I also have Pocket Player, which is pretty good. But if you can get into the web-site, check it out.

Phantasm handles libraries a bit different than Pocket Player. Both players base the libraries on metatags. Pocket Player scans the whole library, the main memory and each storage card, and stores the library in one file - you can specify where. Phantasm scans each volume seperately and stores the library in separate files on each volume. That means that if you keep the files on the CF card and put new files on the SD card only, all you need to do is to scan the SD card. Also, if you just put a few new files on the SD card and keep the rest, you can put them in a separate folder and the program will update just those files. That goes quite a bit faster. Since the library files are stored on the cards it means that you can have several cards with different libraries. All you need to do is restart the program, and you will have the current library. The program starts much faster than Pocket Player. This is the reason why I think Phantasm is the best program for large libraries.

Phantasm also have a better sound, it has perfect gapless playback for LAME or iTunes-encoded MP3 files, lower power consumption and a smaller filesize etc. All this make me prefer it over Pocket Player. But Pocket Player has more features otherwise, like support for more codecs, web-streaming, podcast handling, video playback and more. And many people might prefer Pocket Players library system once the files are updated.

[MrGoodtunes]

Thanks to daqq, original poster, for coming back to say:

Originally Posted by daqq

If it matters, I ended up going with Pocket Player. It handles my library well, and is fairly easy to use.

So, while I await shipment of my 16GB card, thought I check out the 30 day trail version of Pocket Player. After some wrangling to finally stop its over anxious automatic library searcher, quite a few uninstalls, reinstalls, and tweaking, it started behaving quite nicely. Finally, after 24 hours, I was able to sit back and actually listen. Its gapless playback is so good, I went ahead and registered. Then I filled my 8 gig card with some 1600 songs and loaded them into one playlist. It's amazing how well PP handles such a long list. Now I face the challenge of learning how to write skin code that results in the ultimate player, pieces of which have been floating around my imagination for years.

[momaydopod]

pocket PC 3.7 goooooooood

[MrGoodtunes]

Originally Posted by momaydopod

pocket PC 3.7 goooooooood

And it gets even better when you learn how to build a skin that works well for how you use v3.7 of Pocket Player. In my case, I ended up needing 2 skins. One to show a good long list, the other to share list space with picture art, nicely. Here's my 1st skin, Longlist:


Longlist will show album art, but with some undesireable side effects. So, I went ahead and built a 2nd skin that shows pic art the way I wish could also allow switching to longlist mode. Screenshot of 2nd skin, ListnArt:


These skins are manicured for my unique useage, but just in case you'd like to try one out or maybe borrow pieces, they're both in one ZIP file, here:

http://tinyurl.com/6kpbkr

Important: Tap extreme upper left corner to open Menu

[sparhawk6]

Which of these players have touch scrolling (preferably flick scrolling)?

[MrGoodtunes]

Originally Posted by sparhawk6

Which of these players have touch scrolling (preferably flick scrolling)?

Pocket Player supports finger scrolling, and that includes flicking. So both of my skins for PP have this functionality by default. However, when artwork is taking up the majority of playlist space, you have to be very careful to touch, scroll, and/or flick only in the tiny little region of the list. I can not do this well, in fact, I'm not comfortable with it in Longlist skin, though I'm getting better. Typically, my fingernail contacts the screen surface, and PP interprets this as if I'm selecting whatever song happens to be listed there. Or, PP will select (i.e. highlight, but continue playing whatever is currently playing) several songs listed in the area where my fingernail flicked. To cause scrolling, in wheel of fortune fashion, you have to use only the fleshy part of your finger. Then it glides along nicely, slowing down as it goes, on down to a crawl just before stopping. This is how it works on my Sprint Touch, could be different on another PPC, or with different screen settings.

Hope this helps, MrG