Dead MP3 Player

[tandoc]

not sure if this is the right forum....

so today I'm biking to my orthodontist for the scheduled adjustment I had arranged for today... and it starts raining, pouring. bucketing down water, on the first calendar day of summer.

So i quickly take off my mp3 player and headphones (i know i shouldn't have been wearing them, but who cares) and shove them in my so called 'water-proof' pouch in my jacket. The rain gets stronger, so I decide to not bike to the orthodontist and catch the train, so I grab my phone out of my water-proof pouch to call my orthodontist to tell them I'd be a bit late. And what do I find inside my pouch?

A tiny pool of water about 1cm deep - enough to completely ---- over my iHP-120 (us$329) - I managed to get on the train, not rushing, the damage had already been done - i try to turn on my mp3 player - turns on, tries booting for 5 seconds, then turns off. The 2nd and 3rd try return similar results. On the 4th try I held down the 'play' (which is also the 'on' button) and the player managed to boot, but was unable to connect to the hdd. I turned it off, and every consequent try won't even light up the hdd activity LED.

And now, its ----ing sunny outside - perhaps god is punishing me for leaving school at recess instead of waiting until we were properly dismissed....

==========

on a more relevant note - does anyone know where I should send my iRiver off to to have it repaired (in Australia)????

 

[7trax]

From the iriver America site

1. Limited Warranty Conditions

The limited warranty is provided to the original owner only and is not transferable to any third party. Proof of purchase will be required for any limited warranty on iRiver America products. iRiver America's warranty covers only those defects which arise as a result of normal use of the product, and do not apply to any product: (i) which has been repaired or altered unless done or approved by iRiver America, (ii) which has not been maintained in accordance with any operating or handling instructions provided by iRiver America, (iii) which has been altered or damaged by accident; (iv) which has been subjected to unusual physical or electrical stress, misuse, abuse, power shortage, or negligence or (v) which has been used other than in accordance with the product operating and handling instructions.

http://www.iriveramerica.com/support/warranty.aspx

I don't know if that applies everywhere though. The closest iriver branch on their main website is in Taiwan.

On a sidenote, those are some damn fine SIGs.

 

[Wojtek]

Ok tandoc dude, follow this recipe:

Find a screwdriver that will fit your machine.
Unscrew all the screws in a counter-clock motion
Disconnect all the cables, plastic, and subsequent screws if needed.
Disasemble as much as you can.
Lay out everything on a paper towel or wathever for 24 hours
When it's all dry, reasemble everything
Say your favourite prayer, and push the Play button


Saved up a couple devices that way, maybe you'll resurect yours too
But be warned that it voids your waranty. So you probly would like to contact them and ask if they cover water submersion before trying my technique


Good luck buddy

 

[Conscript]

If that fails get an Ipaq rz1715 which is $199 new on Amazon.com, add to that a 512MB SD card or 1 GB SD card (1gb should run you bout $70 or so) and you've got a good replacement.

I never understood why people would spend so much money on mp3 players when they could have something that does much more for so much less or close in price.

As a side note, I have a 512MB SD card for my Ipaq 3115 and it fit 12 full CDs with 100MB left to spare. If you encode at 96kbps WMA you get CD-Quality (its great sounding, really) at about 25-30 MB per FULL CD (Nirvana's In Utero album for example is 28MB).

I bet I could fit a total of about 15 CDs into my 512 MB SD card.Who could possibly want more than that? If you have more music than that just think bout the top 15 CDs you'd possibly wanna listen to during a given day or week or and just copy those over, then just replace them with others another time.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, and sucks about your mp3 player. The advice to disassemble and reassemble is probably the best shot you've got. If that don't work look into a PDA like the Ipaq 1715 with a 1GB SD card (total purcahse of about $275 or so) to replace your mp3 player (and lets you do a lot more than an mp3 player).

 

[jmiller]

15 CDs at what quality though ?

Plus, SD cards are far more expensive than buying the equivelent amount of storage in an MP3 player.

 

[Conscript]

15 CDs at 96kbps bitrate in WMA, which is CD-Quality.

True, you could get a 20GB or 40GB Ipod or something for a price of only a few bucks above $275 (which would be the total price of a 1GB SD Card with an Ipaq rz1715). But honestly, do you need to carry that much music with you for a train ride or something? I can see a prolonged vacation or something but for a commute to school or work I think 15 full cds (which is a good solid 10+ hours of music, and by going with a 1GB SD card that's ~30 CDs) gives you enough choice and wiggle room to listen to what you want.

Later if you decide you'd rather listen to something else you can just copy it to ur SD card and get rid of something you don't want to listen to anymore.

I spent $350 on my Ipaq 3115, though I'm going to get $100 back since I'm an HP employee (was only going to get $50 originally but I finally got enough points in our employee program to up it to $100). I also got the 512MB SD card on Black Friday, for $29. That's a total of $280, which is $20 less than the $299 entry level Ipod we sell at work.

I've been using it on a few occasions now as my mp3 player and it does that function very well. It came in a nice leather case which I can slip it into with the headphone jack being open making it easy to handle and use - and if you want you can also pay a few more bucks and get Bluetooth headphones so you can listen wirelesly. And if I want I can slip it out a bit to either manually change the songs or use the Ipaq's control buttons on the bottom, although I usually set my playlist and just let it play through.

And the battery lasts quite a while too. I tested it out when I first got it and the battery lasted a solid 6 hours of continuous Mp3 playing. The battery also charges up to full very quickly, takes me bout an hour or so (though I'll time it next time I get the chance to see exactly how long). If thats not enough though you can purchase an additional extended battery, though I think 6 hours is plenty for most people.

If you are commuting over 6 hours per day you should move lol. I happen to commute about 45 mins - 1 hour each way to school, for about 2 hours total per day, so for me battery life isnt an issue.

It's quite conveniant. And for the price I also got the ability to play games, go online, keep track of all my appointments, keep track of billing info for my clients, keep track of sales at my part time job for HP, and a lot of other stuff.

The value you get by going with a PDA + large SD card I feel is much greater than just pure music cause you still get just bout all the music you want (and videos too if you want those!) plus a lot of other things that do come in handy. With an mp3 player you can only listen to mp3s. With a PDA you can do all that more for less or equivalent amount of money.

 

[tandoc]

Conscript: its 20gb, and i filled it.

Unfortunately for me, I don't have any screwdrivers(or whatever tools you need) to open this kind of screw, i guess you'd need a VERY VERY VERY small alan key.

there have been several developments in the 3 hours since it got wet - it now turns out, and boots into its os/program whatever you call it, but simply cannot see the hdd - either the hdd is screwed, or the connection is - only time will tell.

I've also contacted the iRiver distributor in Australia, and their head office is a block away from my school - handy.

Personally, I find PDA's useless - all I'd do is play games on it, which is why I have my gbasp - and people that walk around with pda's look really, really gay - unless they're wearing their phone and a suit.

What i'm more worried about now is the battery, and if it still has 10+ hours of life, because it'd be a shame if it didn't.

Anyway, its drying up now, I can see the vapor on the plastic screen that covers the lcd.

 

[jmiller]

Conscript,

CD quality is 128 and greater, buddy.

 

[Conscript]

hmm let's hope your screen doesn't fog up cause that will be difficult if not impossible to fix.

I find PDAs very handy. I thought they were useless too about a year ago but then my schedule started filling up, business cards from people were scattered all over my room, and I kept track of my sales at work and clients outside of work on post it notes. Not to mention my old CD player started skipping.

As someone trained in selling PDAs I guess I started myself realizing that a PDA would be a good answer to help me make my life more efficient and organized. Of course that's not for everyone, I realize that, but if you are even remotley interested in the PDA functions like organizer, contacts, pocket excel, Time billing software if you're a free lancer, etc. you'd get a much better value with a PDA.

Out of that 20GB worth of songs, how many did you actually listen to on a given day?

Back when I was PDAless and had only my CD player I used to carry a bunch of CDs, but I always found that I'd only listen to one - occasionally two - on a given day anyway. So I carried the rest of my CDs for nothing, and all I had to show for it were broken cases. That's when I started just picking out one CD I'd listen to for the day.

I guess its this getting used to listening to a limited selection (and making my selection at home) that allows me to simply pick a dozen or so albums I wanna listen to for the week without having to carry my whole collection with me. After such a long time with my cd player I almost feel spoiled by being able to pick among a dozen CDs while on the bus.

But of course everyone has their preference. But if you don't need to carry your entire mp3 collection at all times and you've ever thought about using an electronic organizer and other functions found on a PDA, I think a PDA would be your best bet. If all you want is music and you'd never use your PDA functions anyway, then obviously the added value of a PDA is lost and thus not important.

 

[Conscript]

Conscript,

CD quality is 128 and greater, buddy.

That's not what Nero wave editor tells me, which I used to convert some of my things with.

For mp3s it might be 128 and greater, for WMA it might be different I guess. In Nero it labels 96kbps as CD-Quality. My ears believe it too. Maybe I'm not too musically talented, but I can't hear the difference between my newly converted to 96kbps CDs and the CDs themselves as they played in my old CD player.

 

[tandoc]

Nero also labels 192kbps mp3s as cd-quality - WRONG.

320kbps mp3 is still lower than cd quality - to get cd quality - you need FLAC/APE/other lossless codec, or wave.

Also remember that the output will also depend on the quality of the device reading the media and the headphones/speakers used to listen to the music...

 

[LeX]

Nero also labels 192kbps mp3s as cd-quality - WRONG.

320kbps mp3 is still lower than cd quality - to get cd quality - you need FLAC/APE/other lossless codec, or wave.

 

[mjz]

well, if you can carry your entire collection of music with you at all times why would you settle for 10-15 cd's?

if i suddenly feel like listening to that song i most likely can, if you're gonna have a mp3 player, you might as well have a good one with some storage. i'm using all my 60gigs short for a few gigs that i keep empty if i wanna carry some big file with me for some reason...

my only regret is buying it almost a year ago instead of now, even though my mp3 player wasn't that expensive i could get it a lot cheaper now since the dollar took a huge dive... but i guess then i would've been stuck with my crappy md walkman for another year, so it was a good purchase after all...

as for "cd quality", its a very relative term ever since mp3 took its first breaths, i think 192 is close enouogh for mp3, wma im not so sure about but i would like a little more than 96kbps, like 128kbps in mp3 that quality sometimes just isnt enough.

tandoc: i would call their support and explain the situation, if that fails go with wojtek's idea... and if that fails sue whoever made that jacket if they guarantee that its waterproof... i don't suppose you have any kind of insurance that would cover something like this?

 

[tandoc]

I once had insurance on it, but that was during my travels (travel insurance) - none now.

I've contacted the Australian distributor of iRiver - CR Kennedy - and await their responce, or I'll just ring up again tomorrow. If the Toshiba minidrives are anything like their IDE counter-parts, then the hdd won't be in TOO bad condition, and hopefully the damage is more contained to the connections between things and maybe the battery.

I'd like to try Wojtek's idea, but unfortunately, I am not in possession of a torx screwdriver - and none of my friends have one either. Maybe I can swipe one of my friends iHP's (i have 2 friends with the same model...)

 

[trenzterra]

Well tandoc is correct.

320kbps can get you only near CD quality. Anything that's lossy isn't CD quality.

 

[trenzterra]

well, if you can carry your entire collection of music with you at all times why would you settle for 10-15 cd's?

if i suddenly feel like listening to that song i most likely can, if you're gonna have a mp3 player, you might as well have a good one with some storage. i'm using all my 60gigs short for a few gigs that i keep empty if i wanna carry some big file with me for some reason...

my only regret is buying it almost a year ago instead of now, even though my mp3 player wasn't that expensive i could get it a lot cheaper now since the dollar took a huge dive... but i guess then i would've been stuck with my crappy md walkman for another year, so it was a good purchase after all...

as for "cd quality", its a very relative term ever since mp3 took its first breaths, i think 192 is close enouogh for mp3, wma im not so sure about but i would like a little more than 96kbps, like 128kbps in mp3 that quality sometimes just isnt enough.

tandoc: i would call their support and explain the situation, if that fails go with wojtek's idea... and if that fails sue whoever made that jacket if they guarantee that its waterproof... i don't suppose you have any kind of insurance that would cover something like this?

60gigs? is that an iRiver?

 

[Robert]

First mistake was trying to turn it on.

What you should do (could be too late) is take out the batteries and let it sit out in the sun for 2-3 days.

 

[Robert]

That's not what Nero wave editor tells me, which I used to convert some of my things with.

For mp3s it might be 128 and greater, for WMA it might be different I guess. In Nero it labels 96kbps as CD-Quality. My ears believe it too. Maybe I'm not too musically talented, but I can't hear the difference between my newly converted to 96kbps CDs and the CDs themselves as they played in my old CD player.

128 is "cd quality". 96 is "near cd-quality".

 

[trenzterra]

128 is "cd quality". 96 is "near cd-quality".

For WMA 96kbps is generally classified as "cd quality". I try not to go beyond 128kbps nowadays, although I had to suffer 64kbps for a while before getting my MMC... for playing on my desktop I rip at 192kbps.

And VBR is useless crap.

 

[Wojtek]

Tandoc, try ebay for that screwdriver

I ordered my T9 screwer for my ericsson phone from ebay, maybe they got yours too