Dithering about portable MP3s

[ciphergoth]

Anti-war march today, 2pm, Waterloo Place, Edinburgh.

Some time ago, the replacement 6GB hard drive in my Archos Jukebox Recorder MP3 player died. It's now out of warranty. I'm considering spending GBP 91.64 on getting a 40GB laptop-style hard drive from Simply and fitting it as per these instructions (also these). Having taken my old laptop apart and put it back together, I'm pretty confident I could pull this off, and I could use open source firmware. But on the other hand, I could just spend GBP 50 on an MP3 CD player. Help me decide! Update: I have sent off for the hard drive, and taken apart my Archos to remove the old drive which turned out to be really easy.

Incidentally, 40 GB works out by my calculations to be around three weeks of continuous, 24 hour music. Expect a visitation by the music slurping fairies. What's the best free LAME-based tool for ripping CDs under Windows?

Comments

[ex-suum-cuiq980.livejournal.com]

Dammit I'm still in Aberdeen so I can't go to the march. There was a protest here last week which I didn't know about until it was too late to go. On reflection I was actually quite glad as pro-war members of the National Front apparently turned up and made trouble.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

When are you back?

Re:

[ex-suum-cuiq980.livejournal.com]

I will be back this Wednesday until the following Thursday, then back again on the Monday after that.

mp3 players...

[kingginger.livejournal.com]

... up to you and the capacity at which you use for storing Mp3's.

Would you / did you use the 6Gig that the old Archos had?
And could you use it to store files other than Mp3's as a mobile file transfer system aswell??

If you did - then I'd upgrade the Archos IMHO.

If you didn't, then I'd probably stick with Cd's - although 40Gigs of Mp3's is a lot of Cd's worth.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I'd upgrade the Archos, mp3 CDs are far too much hassle IMHO - you'll just end up with CDRs coming out of your ears!

And I think I've got one of those Torx screwdrivers that you need for the side screws on an Archos knocking around, which you're welcome to use - I've been meaning to upgrade mine for a while now, as I find 6 Gig is too restrictive...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

And I think I've got one of those Torx screwdrivers that you need for the side screws on an Archos knocking around, which you're welcome to use

Thanks for the offer, but I'm not sure travelling the 400 miles to pick it up would be wise. How much was it?

cheers!

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

IIRC it was about 8 quid. Which I thought was a lot for a screwdriver, but then I don't really drive a lot of screws...

Maplins and RS components should have them, but their websites are true marvels of unique design...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Turns out my socket set has the right thing, so I can do it...

[zotz]

Torx screws are excellent. I don't generally like proprietary gubbins like that, but for these I'll make an exception.

[alienspacebat.livejournal.com]

Maplin do a security hex bit set for a few quid which has every unusual bit. can be very handy indeed

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

LAME-wise, I use CDex under Windows. It's fast, free (in all the ways) and links to FreeDB.

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

I'm currently using 1.5b10 with very few problems.

[zz]

seconded, altho i rip to ogg :)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Sadly my Archos will never play Ogg files while the DSP specs are secret. See this FAQ question.

CDex does look like the good one. I shall load it onto the Archos so I can rip people's CD collections when I visit them!

[zz]

mm, my mum was complaining that i had oggs, because her cd writing software doesn't understand them for the purposes of making *shudder* audio cds..

i would use my nice new laptop for file/music raping purposes, if i ever visited people :>

i was going to try the linux laptop experience, but i can't seem to resize/delete partitions using either partition magic or dos fdisk (either booting from a bootcd or the hdd), claiming not to be able to write to boot sectors & whatnot, and yet there's no antivirus stuff in the bios.. compaq tech support are stumped too :>

[zz]

typical, after changing nothing and leaving it for a week, it works now..

[hughe.livejournal.com]

yes, thirded. cdex is very good

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) is the best ripping program. In fact, it's the only one I've found that's any good.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This is the first recommendation for a program other than CDex. What is it that makes EAC the only one that's any good?

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

It does C2 error correction, which is using read error data from the laser mechanism to know when you need to re-read. It'll re-read repeatedly until it gets the data, or use a "majority vote" mechanism to work out what the data should be. It also does speed backoff, going down to 1x if necessary for an error-free extraction.

It has managed to rip scratched and badly-pressed CDs which my audio CD player wouldn't play.