Zune Is Dead. Long Live Zune.

[Carmine5]

But I don't want my mp3 player to be a mini computer. I want it to be a top notch music player, which rules out all the Apple devices. They have great interfaces but poor sound quality for discerning ears. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for 80% of the public, but I'm in the other 20%.

I'm old fashioned, and I like my devices to be unitaskers. I want my music player to play music, my camera to take pictures and my phone to make phone calls. Convergence means my phone does all of these things and none of them well. The camera, 5 MP, sucks. The music player is a joke. Sound quality is OK but not on par with my minidisc unit (which I officially retired after my last move, sadly.) The actual phone part is just another app that force closes sometimes and sounds terrible when I do actually place a call.

If you're listening to MP3s then you're hardly doing what is often referred to as 'critical listening' whether on a Zune or iPod. My iPod Touch sounds great for casual, on-the-go listening and I happen to like the fact that I can make Skype phone calls with it and even use it as a teleprompter which I did on a project a few months ago.

 

[Tom Wells]

But I don't want my mp3 player to be a mini computer. I want it to be a top notch music player, which rules out all the Apple devices. They have great interfaces but poor sound quality for discerning ears. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for 80% of the public, but I'm in the other 20%.

I'm old fashioned, and I like my devices to be unitaskers. I want my music player to play music, my camera to take pictures and my phone to make phone calls. Convergence means my phone does all of these things and none of them well. The camera, 5 MP, sucks. The music player is a joke. Sound quality is OK but not on par with my minidisc unit (which I officially retired after my last move, sadly.) The actual phone part is just another app that force closes sometimes and sounds terrible when I do actually place a call.

If you're listening to MP3s then you're hardly doing what is often referred to as 'critical listening' whether on a Zune or iPod. My iPod Touch sounds great for casual, on-the-go listening and I happen to like the fact that I can make Skype phone calls with it and even use it as a teleprompter which I did on a project a few months ago.

Well, that must be why I can't listen to an Ipod. I never have time to be casual or on-the-go.

I always drag a huge old 1930s shortwave radio with me everywhere I go.....

 

[tomservo]

You sound vaguely like "a 61-year old I know pretty well"...!

Ha ha, I've always said I'm an old soul, with all the crochetyness that comes with it.

YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN! ;D

And to answer Carmine5, 95% of my listening now is m4a or flac. I've found the m4a format to be pretty good for casual and moderate close listening. What amazes me is not only does it sound better than mp3 and my beloved ATRAC, it actually has a smaller file size compared to an equivalent mp3.

For podcasts, I re-encode them at the same bitrate as high quality music because it isn't even worth fiddling with the controls anymore. I can get an hour long mono mp3 down from 65 MB to 37 MB with no loss in sound quality thanks to the large overhead.

For music from CD, fresh encodes all the way around. Even when I did listen to mp3s exclusively, I made sure to get the LAME encoder after a/b comparing it with several other encoders. It is definitely the best of the bunch.

Even though I'm not an audiophile (or a very low grade one at best) I still want my music player to just play music, or at worst a media player that plays media well. It's not so much about sound quality, even. It's about functionality and purpose. Even the vaunted iPod/iPhone combo has a relatively limited audio and video player setup compared to dedicated devices. And it's supposedly the cream of the crop of multitaskers.

Edit to add: m4a or mp4 appears to be similar in structure to aac, but I am not technically versed on these newer codecs. In the excellent BoncENC front end encoder, the same FAAC encoder does both mp4 and aac. The only way my Rockbox'd player will play the files is with mp4 instead of aac selected, and with aac object type set to "LC" instead of "MAIN" or "LTP".

 

[d21ofnj]

I guess it was a foregone conclusion that, just as HD Radios aren't flying off the shelves, that they would discontinue the Zune due to "weak demand."
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/rip-microsoft-zune/

The question now is, when will they stop manufacturing HD radios?

The reason why the Zune HD failed is because Microsoft can't market things for $%^ which leads to them not giving a damn because of nothing really happening. I sincerely doubt anyone in their right mind bought a Zune HD mainly for it having an HD Radio. :

Mainly for me was the built in wifi, which sometimes was dependable. As far as Microsoft not promoting the product, I agree. Not to mention Microsoft really didn't manufacture the accessories that Apple has, i.e. boomboxes for the Zune, etc. I also would've thought Zune HD would also be the new iPod Touch with the enormous selection of apps, but Microsoft decided not to do that. Yep, thanks, Microsoft.