Reverend Conehead
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I would like to smash my MP3 payer with a sledge hammer, a brick, or a hydrogen bomb
Yesterday when I got off work, I was in the mood to listen to some Abba on the way home. I wasn't in the mood for hard rock like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, or Black Sabbath. I was in the mood for the light and foreign-sounding Abba. It should have been no problem. I have a bunch of their music on my Sandisk MP3 player. But, no, I swear the thing has a mind of its own and chose to deliberately mess with me. So when I went under “artists” like I normally do, it said, “No music found.” ***? I rebooted the machine and it was the same result. I can also play music from playlists I've created, so I went to the playlists where I have lists from some of the artists, but I had not created one for Abba. So I chose my Led Zep playlist and that at least worked.
However, it seems like the point of an MP3 player is to be able to listen to whatever music you're in the mood for at the time. This Sandisk does other annoying things. Sometimes I'll go to listen to some music, especially if I'm driving to or from work, and the stupid thing won't let me play anything because I have a message “refreshing music library.” I can understand if it needs to do this if I've added any music, but it does it when I haven't added anything. It takes bleepin' forever for it to finish and then by the time it's done, I'm already most of the way to my destination. It defeats the purpose of having an MP3 player if it doesn't let you play your stinkin' music when you want to.
There's more annoyance. My entire music collection is in either MP3 or ogg format. The Sandisk will play either format. That's good. That's a big reason why I chose this player. However, it does an awful job with the meta tags. I have a program on my Windows PC that lets me edit each music file's tags. I put in the artist's name, the album title, the track number, and the year. The music players on both my Windows and my Linux PCs interpret those tags just fine. Not so on my stupid Sandisk. Matt Whipkey is one of my favorite musicians. I put in his name spelled just like that for all his songs, but on one album it comes up as “Matt Whip” and the other album as his actual name. Boston is another musical artist I like, and it pulls up their songs as Boston just fine, but it can't seem to read the track numbers. It will therefore play any Boston album in alphabetical order instead of the order that Boston chose for the album. If you're familiar with their music, you know that they painstakingly chose the order of their songs so that each song builds on the previous ones. I got around this by making a playlist for Boston's albums, but I shouldn't have to.
Lastly, I cannot reliably copy music to the MP3 player from my Linux Mint PC. I have to use my Windows one. That's not a disaster since the Windows one works, but it would be really nice to be able to copy from the Linux PC, since it's the main one.
So why am I telling you about all these annoyances? I've concluded that I need to replace this MP3 player with something better. On its plus side, it's very small and fits easily in my fanny pack, and supports a MicroSD card. I owned previous MP3 players that were even worse.
I've never been an Apple user, but I'm considering buying an iPod for the first time. Of course, I could just put all my music on the MicroSD card on my Samsung phone, but I like having a separate MP3 player. My phone's battery life isn't very good, and having an MP3 player keeps me from having to run down my battery. What I wonder about is if you can effectively use an iPod without being a Mac user. Can you upload all your music to a cloud and then use that to put it on the iPod? Fortunately, none of my music is copy protected. I made sure of that by only using MP3s and oggs. I most certainly DON'T ever want to be roped into using iTunes. I strongly dislike that software, and there's no version of it for Linux anyway. I buy my music on CDs and then rip its music to MP3 or ogg. It would be great if I could simply upload the songs to a cloud and the iPod could download this to its internal memory or MicroSD card.
That is if iPod is the way to go. Perhaps there's another MP3 player I should consider. I just want to be able to listen to my music whenever I want to. I'm tired of the Sandisk making my life difficult for me.
Yesterday when I got off work, I was in the mood to listen to some Abba on the way home. I wasn't in the mood for hard rock like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, or Black Sabbath. I was in the mood for the light and foreign-sounding Abba. It should have been no problem. I have a bunch of their music on my Sandisk MP3 player. But, no, I swear the thing has a mind of its own and chose to deliberately mess with me. So when I went under “artists” like I normally do, it said, “No music found.” ***? I rebooted the machine and it was the same result. I can also play music from playlists I've created, so I went to the playlists where I have lists from some of the artists, but I had not created one for Abba. So I chose my Led Zep playlist and that at least worked.
However, it seems like the point of an MP3 player is to be able to listen to whatever music you're in the mood for at the time. This Sandisk does other annoying things. Sometimes I'll go to listen to some music, especially if I'm driving to or from work, and the stupid thing won't let me play anything because I have a message “refreshing music library.” I can understand if it needs to do this if I've added any music, but it does it when I haven't added anything. It takes bleepin' forever for it to finish and then by the time it's done, I'm already most of the way to my destination. It defeats the purpose of having an MP3 player if it doesn't let you play your stinkin' music when you want to.
There's more annoyance. My entire music collection is in either MP3 or ogg format. The Sandisk will play either format. That's good. That's a big reason why I chose this player. However, it does an awful job with the meta tags. I have a program on my Windows PC that lets me edit each music file's tags. I put in the artist's name, the album title, the track number, and the year. The music players on both my Windows and my Linux PCs interpret those tags just fine. Not so on my stupid Sandisk. Matt Whipkey is one of my favorite musicians. I put in his name spelled just like that for all his songs, but on one album it comes up as “Matt Whip” and the other album as his actual name. Boston is another musical artist I like, and it pulls up their songs as Boston just fine, but it can't seem to read the track numbers. It will therefore play any Boston album in alphabetical order instead of the order that Boston chose for the album. If you're familiar with their music, you know that they painstakingly chose the order of their songs so that each song builds on the previous ones. I got around this by making a playlist for Boston's albums, but I shouldn't have to.
Lastly, I cannot reliably copy music to the MP3 player from my Linux Mint PC. I have to use my Windows one. That's not a disaster since the Windows one works, but it would be really nice to be able to copy from the Linux PC, since it's the main one.
So why am I telling you about all these annoyances? I've concluded that I need to replace this MP3 player with something better. On its plus side, it's very small and fits easily in my fanny pack, and supports a MicroSD card. I owned previous MP3 players that were even worse.
I've never been an Apple user, but I'm considering buying an iPod for the first time. Of course, I could just put all my music on the MicroSD card on my Samsung phone, but I like having a separate MP3 player. My phone's battery life isn't very good, and having an MP3 player keeps me from having to run down my battery. What I wonder about is if you can effectively use an iPod without being a Mac user. Can you upload all your music to a cloud and then use that to put it on the iPod? Fortunately, none of my music is copy protected. I made sure of that by only using MP3s and oggs. I most certainly DON'T ever want to be roped into using iTunes. I strongly dislike that software, and there's no version of it for Linux anyway. I buy my music on CDs and then rip its music to MP3 or ogg. It would be great if I could simply upload the songs to a cloud and the iPod could download this to its internal memory or MicroSD card.
That is if iPod is the way to go. Perhaps there's another MP3 player I should consider. I just want to be able to listen to my music whenever I want to. I'm tired of the Sandisk making my life difficult for me.
