Topic: R09 as playback deck?

[phr]

Does anyone have an opinion of whether it's crazy to want to use the R09 as a general purpose mp3 and WAV playback deck (in addition to recording), I mean instead of an iPod?  That basically means does the headphone audio sound good, is the user interface reasonably tolerable for playback (using filenames and folders, I hate players that go by id3 tags), does the UI display id3 at all, and is the battery runtime longer for playback than for recording?  I don't give a crap about stuff like shuffle play, I usually want to rip CD's to folders, and then listen to entire cd's with all the tracks in the original order, so if the UI lets me find a folder and then play all the files in the folder, that's basically good enough for this purpose.  No I wouldn't be buying it JUST as a player, I want to know if it can reasonably do double duty. 

Update: per the official specs I see it claims only 5.5 hours playback time on a pair of AA's, which is pretty disappointing.  The other questions still apply since I could imagine wanting to use it at work, where I could run it from an ac adapter. Thanks.

[divamum]

It SOUNDS fine, but you'd need a pretty big SD card to make it work the way you're considering.....  2-4g isn't really that much space, especially if you want to leave room to record at hi rez.

[pgoelz]

Compared to MP3 players, the R-9 is bigger, uses more battery power, and is a bit clunkier to navigate anything other than the root folder.  But otherwise, it works fine. 

That said, I did have an instance where I was using the R9 to play back 192Kb/S MP3 files I had recorded on the R9 and there was an intermittent faint "click" every 10-20 seconds.  Never did figure out what it was, and it is not in the files themselves.... it was strictly a playback issue.  I suspect the processor was being interrupted by something...... it seemed to coincide with a slight pause in the meter response. 

Paul

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Yes,  it is crazy..   I'd suggest one of the many players that run rockbox. You seem to have specific things you want/don't want and rockbox will give you the most versatility, future bug fixes, etc.

The r09 is also pretty pricey to be risking as a general purpose player.

[shruggy1987]

i also imagine the R09 wouldn't index your music collection using Id3 tags as Rockbox gives you the option to do.  Navigating your mp3 collection would be a nightmare!  I would say that the R09's playback features should pretty much be limited to listening to recordings that you've made.

[phr]

Thanks.  I'm used to an ancient Archos hard disk player running Rockbox, that was file/folder navigation only and I could navigate it ok, just by having a folder structure similar to my physical record collection (alphabetical by artist or composer basically, then by album name within an artist folder, then by track number and name with an album folder).  Unfortunately all players currently made seem to mess something up.  I'd be using it for mp3 listening with an 8gb card, which is enough for a good sized collection.  For recording I'd either buy a second card or else just erase the card and restore it afterwards from my computer.  Anyway what I basically want is 1) a flash player, hard disks are too much hassle; 2) 8gb or more capacity, right now I have a 4GB Sandisk M260 which is sort of tolerable so if I'm going to switch, I want a capacity increase; 3) runs on AA or AAA cells, I have a hate affair against proprietary batteries which is why I refused to buy a Microtracker; 4) can (at least optionally) navigate by folder and file instead of by id3 (my Sandisk is id3-only and it's a big pain).

The R-09 is about the same price as a current Ipod (of course I hate Ipods) so the cost isn't that out of line.  Not that I have money to burn or anything like that, but it's priced about like a midrange digicam and I don't have much reservation carrying one of those around. 

I'm thinking of getting a Frontier Lab Nexblack, which is CF-based, about $80 for the player (no memory) and $300 for a 16GB CF card, putting the total about where an R09 is, but I wouldn't be able to use the CF card for recording in an R09.  I'd be able to use it in my PMD660 but I'd hoped to sell the PMD660 and get an R09.