Comments on: Poll: Why don't you have an iPod or MP3 player?

What's wrong with you? Doesn't everybody have one of these things?

[minimalist]

I love technology and audio but I am not an elitist or a snob about either. iPods get a bad rap. They are routinely scoffed at and dismissed audiophiles as some sort of destructor of hi fidelity. But with a decent set of headphones they can be a very nice way to listen to music or podcast or watch movies on the go. They are not a replacement for my home audio setup (a music server connected to some decent mid level equipment) as much as they are a compliment to it.

The quality can be every bit as good as some old Discman from the 90s and is light years beyond FM radio. Well encoded VBR mp3s sound even better than sattelite radio in my opinion.

[rickhigginshtbr]

I bought a cheapie VueScape 2gb last year, but my Samsung Eternity has the 8GB Micro in it loaded up with songs... I never really had a need for a portable except for the gym. I did, however, buy the first MP3 CD HU on the market back in '01-ish for my car...

[PBMpharmacist]

Your poll should include a category for "used to own". I've had several iPods. I don't have one now b/c my last one broke about a year ago and I haven't bothered to replace it.

[Tigertame4]

No answer was my cat put my IPOD touch into its water dish and drowned it.

[milrtime]

Are you counting a phone as an mp3 player? I haven't owned a stand alone mp3 player since the price of micro sd cards became so cheap.

[NYCgoalie]

Why not a choice which says "I'm waiting for an MP3 with the capacity and audio quality features that I'm looking for!!".

Something tells me THAT would be your #1 answer.

Nothing is made out there for the true audiophile. I think the new Zune HD will come closest; but I won't know until I test drive it later this year.

Apple has absolutely no interest in getting the attention of audiophile; one of the main reasons I don't own one.

[Dirk VanNerden]

Do not have one. Never have had any. my car stereo plays mp3 Cd's. That's as close as I get. I dj, does Serato count as an mp3 player?

[konami-code]

I won't write about why I don't have an mp3 player (because I have one now) but I will tell you why I didn't have an mp3 player until last year. Although I enjoy music very much and would have loved nothing more than to follow the trend and buy an mp3 player for myself, there were a few factors holding me back from purchasing one. I will assure you, admittedly, that it was not because I wanted to "buck the trend".

Technically, I bought my first mp3 last June/July. Although I enjoyed my 4GB Creative Zen very much, I returned it hoping to eventually upgrade to an mp3 player with more storage. A big factor, however, in me deciding to return the unit was that I had virtually no money. As a 19 year old university student (now 20) I like to consider myself in as many respects as possible to be an independent person. That's why I felt that I had to use my own money to buy myself an mp3 player (a luxury of sorts) without the aid of my parents, despite the fact that I had yearned for one since I was a child when iPods first became popular.

Once I found myself a job later that summer, saved enough money and waited for my preferred choice of mp3 player to go on sale, I had no problem spending my hard earned money on a 16 GB Samsung P2 in October 2008.

To sum up and answer the question, the reasons why I didn't have an mp3 player until last year was because I was too proud to ask for one to be handed to me, I wasn't financially able to buy one until then and I wanted to be able to afford to satisfy as many of my requirements for an mp3 player as possible without having felt I had settled for way less that my expectations.

[soy_la_nen]

I refuse to buy an I-Pod (and other similiar mp3 players) due to having to use software in order to add my music to the mp3 player, which I find really cumbersome and restrictive (after having to use both an I-Pod and a Creative Zen Player over the years)

I used to have an I-River H140, which I loved until it suffered an accident, because it was just a 40gb hard drive that could play music and with a long battery life. All I had to do was drag and drop my music onto it, like onto any external hard-drive, then all of my music would be in the order I wanted, how I wanted. Quick, simple, no extra software involved. It even had an FM tuner, though it wasn't the nicest looking, or smallest mp3 player, by far!

Unfortunately there don't seem to be any mp3 players like this anymore, not even I-River seem to make higher capacity mp3 players like this these days. I wish there was a larger capacity player (at least 60gb) on the market which were simple, just like the smaller capactiy USB based players that are around everywhere, then I would be really happy and would fork out a small fortune for it!

[rickhigginshtbr]

Look at the cheapie ones, a lot of them are drag+drop

[scythie]

No "I have a phone and I use it to play my mp3s" choice?? :\

[MadLyb]

It all boils down to one thing, quality. It is the ultimate irony to watch a studio digitally record at 24bit/96 KHz only to have most people carry around that pristine recording as a low bit rate MP3/AAC and then play it through less than stellar electronics.

I have messed around with the various lossless formats and they each have their pros and cons.

Basically, I want my cake and to eat it too. I want a universally adopted PCM based file format with deep and accurate metadata and I want a player that can carry a decent portion of my library (over 3000 CDs) and a quality audio subsystem...I'll supply the headphones.

[supergroovey]

i mostly use cd's, radio, and sometimes i stream audio from my laptop to my hi-fi. i dont not use head phones. i am trying to preserve my hearing. i do not want to use head phones or ear buds. i would rather get another laptop and leave it set up with my hi-fi gear then get a mp3 player. it is what it is..

[ths3900]

I am waiting for the IPod Touch to include a camera. I really don't have a great need to access the internet in from every possible place for $30 a month extra on a phone bill. I would like to surf the web from home or a wifi spot.

[Th3T3ch]

Question is who would have an account on this site and not have owned an mp3 player at some point in their existence?

[trentZ2]

Hey if they can offer an iphone for $99 then why not the ipod touch? Somebody please explain!

[NYCgoalie]

Because they get you with the VERY inflated annual contract when you buy the iphone for $99.

Since there's no annual contract with the itouch, you have to pay for it outright.

[buzzvader]

When these players sound as good as a Zenith tube radio or a late 60's early 70's Marantz receiver, then maybe it would be worthwhile to have one. Also, we could get whole albums of music for $2.99 to 4.99 rather than just one song. Old? Yeah, but better? Definitely!

[zapharatu]

First off, I'm a 26 year old make, and I don't have an ipod, mp3 player, or zune, but not for any of the reasons listed on your poll. My reason is that I have such a massive CD and vinyl record collection, that the task of coverting all of them to mp3s in oder to add them to an mp3 player is mindnumbing and duanting. I also tend to listen to whole ablums (often classical symphonies, or operas) in one sitting, so it's just as easy for me to pop in a CD or put on a record then to scan through thousands of files on an ipod. And other then listening in the car, most of my listening is done at home. If I'm listening to a symphony, I'd rather wait to get home to sit and listen, then to only hear snipits as I walk around the grocery store or somewhere in public with a lot of background noise; that just gets annoying. I figure I'll get on eventually, but It'll take me years to get all my music on it, and I'll still keep all my CDs for hardcopy backups and for the liner-notes anyway. By the way, I don't just listen to classical, but also jazz and rock. But I still prefer to listen to whole albums or one single artist at once instead of skipping around through different artists in one sitting.

[PapiShank]

I don't use an Ipod or Zune etc. because I listen to music on my sidekick.

[StretcherBearerBand]

The sole reason why i don't own an MP# PLAYER< A WMA PLayer Or Flac, Mp4, OGG or any of those are because compressed Lossy Codecs Suck. IPOD, Zune Yo Momma I don't care I will use a 9.99 CD player with a Pair of Flat Respose headphones ( i.e. 20hZ to 20kHz) and still hear a better reproduction than you'll get at any KBps encoding. All Audio processing degrade the Origional content. So you get to have 3trillion files on a single disk, i'd still rather have 15-20 tracks of red Book or better uncompressed audio than... ahhh you've never heared music without some sort of artifacting, so you won't get it..just this one thing, analog tape at 30ips is a more acurrate reproduction of sound. Yes Magnetic tape captures music with acurracy. Digital is close at higher sample rates. You're wasting you're money if you buy mpanything good scam though that if you care about how music sounds cd is still a better route to go, you just might have problems jogging with it, in that case you most likely listen to crap music to work out to, and then you get what you pay for, you can keep the music is the background sountrack to my pathetic life...I'll stay in the studio and record it, at better than cd quality, and listen to music at cd or better quality. because I actually sit down to listen...wow I must be super unhip, please don't revoke my Starbucks Privliges...

[cioob]

i listen to music on my phone..