What MP3 Player did you use?

What MP3 player(s), did everyone use back then?

Me:

I had the original Zune, and a cheap Philips Mp3 player. The Zune was a superb MP3 player, with so many great features. Some of the best features were the display, the modern interface, the built in FM radio, and much more!

I also currently possess the original iPod classic, Sandisk Sansa, and the Zune. Now, they unfortunately all sit in my desk. My phone has taken over all the duties now. Albeit, I do use both the Zune and the iPod Classic on occasions.

Conversation 23 comments

  • fggbd

    18 July, 2018 - 8:06 am

    <p>Of course an iPod like everyone else.</p>

    • maxima

      23 July, 2018 - 8:12 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#293159">In reply to fggbd:</a></em></blockquote><p>Zune hd</p><p>Use it in my car to play audiobooks</p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    18 July, 2018 - 9:33 am

    <p>I've used so many I will forget some of them. Everything in that shot above. Rio Carbon. At least two Dell-branded MP3 players. Virtually every single iPod model. Every single Zune model. </p>

  • FalseAgent

    18 July, 2018 - 10:13 am

    <p>I used a Creative Zen Mosaic. The sound quality back then was incredible – it still works, and the sound still holds up!</p>

  • ABT

    18 July, 2018 - 10:17 am

    <p>Echo Paul's comments. My first player was a Diamond Rio (clear plastic case with Parallel Port connection, smart media card expandability, probably maxed out at 64 mb of storage). From there I had several portable cd players that could play MP3 files, including a mini-cd player that would also record discs (3" discs, I think). I spent an inordinate amount of time managing music file. I had numerous no-name players that were basically sd card readers. My first experience with iPod ownership was a Nano, which I recieved as a gift. I purchased several sansa players when they added microSD card support. The 3rd gen iPod Nano was introduced as the cheapest (per GB) player on the market, so I primarily used that as my go-to player for a few years. When I started traveling for work I bought an Enzo(?) media player (MP4 playback, or maybe wmv) that ran a mobile CE os from microsoft that had a similar UI as media center (tangent: I was a big media center fan before it was cool, just kidding, it was never cool, but I do still my old win 8 pc recording OTA tv on a hard drive in my home office). The Enzo thing was kind of a bust due to laborious process of encoding video and very short battery life, so I started buying up refurb Zunes about a year after they were released. I think I owned one of every model. The Zune HD was by far my favorite dedicated player. Like nearly everyone on the planet, I now use my phone (Android, moto G4, google play music, on device files, with a 128gb micro SD card). The media experience on the Lumia's bounced around from great (WP7) to abysmal (WP8). By the time they retired the WP lumia platform (8.1x) they had almost gotten things back to parity with the functionalilty of the Zune HD (way to waste 5 years of development MS). I still have a lumia 640 that is ready for dedicated media use on long travel trips. If there's a small dedicated MP3 player out there that will store 80+ GB of media with functional easy to use UI, I'd probably shell out another $75-$100, but again it's hard to compete with the versatility of the phone when I consider needing other devices during activites that involve MP3 playback (gps for run tracking or navigation, internet browser for killing time in airports, etc.) </p>

  • Polycrastinator

    18 July, 2018 - 10:23 am

    <p>Pre MP3 player, I had an MP3-CD player. That was an interesting device. I never actually got onto the MP3 device train. Kept thinking about it but never made the jump my wife had an iRiver H20, which was a pretty good device for the time, but I mostly listened to music at my desk, and I was able to copy it to my work PC.</p>

  • Brazbit

    18 July, 2018 - 10:56 am

    <p>I had a Zune 30 (Halo) and a Zune 80. My wife briefly had a video iPod but she ditched that for a Zune within about a week of seeing my Zune. </p><p><br></p><p>Never had a Zune HD, I wanted one but was waiting for a capacity increase which never came. </p>

  • Lauren Glenn

    20 July, 2018 - 8:58 am

    <p>I used the Zune. Loved it very much because iPod sound quality pailed in comparison. Also WMA Pro is still the best sounding codec I've ever used for converting lossless audio and it's very good for DVD-Audio rips.</p><p><br></p><p>I had the Zune 120 (tried Zune 1 but Zune 120 sounded better) and then even had a Zune HD 64 for a while. I showed it to people and they couldn't believe it could output 720p video for such a small device. It was a really great interface and audio player.</p><p><br></p><p>Unfortunately, I moved on to iPod Classic which I still use to this day primarily because Zune died and because of iTunes Match. Smart playlists are my biggest reason now to use it because I can set up a Not Recently Played playlist on the device and as I play songs, the playlist automatically updates while I'm on the road without a sync. Since I put a huge 3000mAh battery in the device and micro SD cards now, this device can go for 336 hours straight on audio playback so I only have to charge this unit once per month…. and it has never run out of power while doing that. </p><p><br></p><p>But to this day even though iPod Classic 2.0.5 is copywritten in 2012, no media player is this good as the iPod Classic in terms of user interface. The SmartPlaylist and ease of synchronization alone are two of the main reasons I still love this device.</p>

  • Lauren Glenn

    20 July, 2018 - 9:07 am

    <p>Probably the only reason I don't still try to use a Zune 120 is that Windows CE has a hard limit on partition sizes of 128GB, I believe (it may be 137GB). You can use the same drives you can from an iPod Classic but the hardware will not see beyond this drive size.</p><p><br></p><p>I still think I have my scrolling pacman clone I wrote in VB that I used to compile and send over to my Zune 120… you could use the squircle to move around and the whole board scrolled with it. I miss programming and trying to get games onto this device. It actually worked pretty well for games as I recall.</p>

  • dsharp75

    20 July, 2018 - 10:44 am

    <p>Zune, Zune HD; it was a superior beast that appeared in an already ipod majority world…</p>

  • epsjrno

    Premium Member
    20 July, 2018 - 10:47 am

    <p>My first music player that wasn't cassette tape or CD was a 40GB Creative Labs Nomad. Loved that thing. I always got a kick about powering it up and feeling it vibrate as the internal drive spun up to speed.</p>

    • Lauren Glenn

      20 July, 2018 - 12:21 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#294021"><em>In reply to epsjrno:</em></a></blockquote><p>Nice. I used to use my Nomad Jukebox 2 (20GB) and loved it. Only got 6-7 hours of playback but it was great for its time.</p>

  • SenorGravy

    20 July, 2018 - 1:58 pm

    <p>My first (and possibly all time fave) MP3 player was one that Nike put out. It was a round disc looking device and it screwed (yes, screwed) into an arm band. It was a fantastic device for jogging. Even had some crude software to transfer files. I remember being really disappointed when it was discontinued.</p><p><br></p><p>https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portable-audio-player-from-nike-designed-for-joggers-is-news-photo/736391#portable-audio-player-from-nike-designed-for-joggers-is-photographed-picture-id736391</p&gt;

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    20 July, 2018 - 4:28 pm

    <p>I was an iPod guy, starting with a 3rd Gen all the way up to the final revision of the iPod nano, which now sits kinda behind my screen with a pile of unused mice, dongles, unused cords, and old phones. Nowadays it's my iPhone with its Apple Music sub.</p><p><br></p><p>The progression was iPod 3G &gt; teal iPod mini &gt; white iPod nano 1G &gt; teal iPod nano 2G &gt; iPod nano 6G</p>

  • ErichK

    Premium Member
    23 July, 2018 - 10:27 am

    <p>My first was some sort of Samsung 4 GB thingee (I forget the model name), and then a Zune HD. Now I mainly use Google Play Music or Spotify on my tablets and such. (Actually I still use the Zune HD as a backup sometimes.)</p>

  • MikeGalos

    23 July, 2018 - 11:35 am

    <p>None. I was already using a Motorola MPx200 smartphone running Windows Mobile in 2003 that could play MP3s so the idea of carrying a second gadget seemed pretty ludicrous. </p>

  • Patrick3D

    23 July, 2018 - 1:39 pm

    <p>Rio600 32MB w/ the purple faceplate (circa 2000.) It struggled with certain MP3 encodes but was easy to operate. The storage was expandable but if I remember correctly it was the entire back half of the device that you had to swap out for the larger module. I forget if I got the 64MB or a 256Mb module. My memory was that I desperately wanted the 256MB module but that it didn't get released and I was limited to getting the 64MB module. Eventually the controls on the front stopped working. I upgraded to the 1st generation iPod Shuffle in 2005 and used those up until 3-4 years ago when I got a SanDisk Clip which can handle FLAC files.</p>

  • ErichK

    Premium Member
    23 July, 2018 - 3:32 pm

    <p>Ah, how this thread is making me think of the scene in that movie with Ashton Kutcher where he plays Steve Jobs and gets pissed at the CD player, throwing it into the trash…</p>

  • SRLRacing

    23 July, 2018 - 4:12 pm

    <p>My first MP3 player was a glorified USB drive from Creative called the Nomad MuVo. I forget if I had a 64MB or 128MB model but it could maybe hold like 20 MP3's and was powered by a single replaceable AAA battery. It had no screen and would only play songs alphabetical order. It was great. I held on to that until my parents bought me a 20GB U2 edition iPod and once feature phones started getting MP3 capabilities I slowly migrated to using phones and the iPod on trips where I couldn't be constantly syncing until I got an iPhone 3G.</p>

  • Alexander Rothacker

    Premium Member
    24 July, 2018 - 3:39 pm

    <p>My first was a Creative Nomad II MG, it was OK. Sounded good, but just to limited storage, and I remember it being kind of cumbersome to get songs transferred. It's probably still sitting in a box somewhere.</p><p>Then I got a 1st Gen iPod Nano, it was great and I used it a lot, although iTunes was still a pain to use. Years later Apple recalled it for battery expansion issues and replaced it with a 5th Gen Nano, the little square one with an all touch screen interface. It's still in the family and getting some use.</p>

  • StudBen

    24 July, 2018 - 4:11 pm

    <p>I had a creative forget the exact model, sits in my desk like you said. Still haven't switched to my phone though, I currently use this <a href="https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-a20-series&quot; target="_blank">https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-a20-series</a&gt; has bluetooth and plays lossless I keep my library in FLAC format.</p>

  • ommoran

    Premium Member
    24 July, 2018 - 4:43 pm

    <p>Creative Zen – they really were great. Then an iPod Nano. Then right to the phone.</p><p><br></p><p>Someone here mentioned cassette players. Yellow Sony Sports Walkman, with autoreverse. That was the bomb.</p>

  • infloop

    Premium Member
    24 July, 2018 - 7:08 pm

    <p>I used a Creative Rhomba 256MB which was okay, then later got a Creative Zen Micro 5GB Limited Edition that came with an extra battery and a pouch.</p><p><br></p><p>Then I moved to a 2nd generation Apple iPod touch 16GB after reading a good review of it from Paul. Later got a 5th generation iPod touch 32GB during Apple's last Black Friday sale that was straight-up discounted pricing (not the gift card stuff they do now). And now using the iPhone.</p><p><br></p><p>I was thinking about getting a Zune HD but didn't pull the trigger, then later found that Zune was at its end. So before I moved to the iPhone, I got a Nokia Lumia 900 from the local Microsoft Store, which I still use sometimes for FM radio to listen to local sports teams over headphones.</p>

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