There are many people such as myself who use a player more frequently for playing audiobooks, podcasts, or lectures than for music. For us, variable speed playback( from half to double speed) with pitch correction is one of the most desired features. I realize this is not easy to program, however it is very important to us.
No comments?
I have been thinking about buying an mp3 recorder for use as a player rather than buying another player, since the model I found has variable speed playback, a card slot, a microphone jack, and runs for 51 hours on two nimh rechargeable AAA batteries. Sandisk,why can’t you make something like this, only better, or perhaps cheaper?
JK- what manufacturer/model are you looking at?
I was thinking about buying the Olympus DM-420 mp3 recorder. I can’t find any good reviews on it discussing its abilities as a player. I think you can download the manual for it at the Olympus website.
At the risk of sounding like an evangelist, Rockbox has “timestretch” features, so that you can vary speed and pitch independently of each other, and in small (percentage) increments.
So you can speed up podcasts and audiobooks without changing the pitch. It doesn’t work too well with music, but it’s fine for voice recordings.
I can’t say what extra demands this places on the CPU, or how it affects battery life, but it just goes to show that it’s achievable and it’s been done already.
njd wrote:
At the risk of sounding like an evangelist, Rockbox has “timestretch” features, so that you can vary speed and pitch independently of each other, and in small (percentage) increments.
So you can speed up podcasts and audiobooks without changing the pitch. It doesn’t work too well with music, but it’s fine for voice recordings.
I can’t say what extra demands this places on the CPU, or how it affects battery life, but it just goes to show that it’s achievable and it’s been done already.
Yes, the only way JK98 will get this feature is if he tries Rockbox. I’m using it now on one of my Clip+'s, and my V1 Fuze, but I have no need of variable speeds or pitch correction, so I can’t comment on how those features work. But the sound settings are light-years better.
I have been thinking about Rockboxing my Clip, but don’t want to Rockbox the Fuze and Clip+ as I don’t want to lose Slotradio capability on those. I guess I wouldn’t be that upset if I bricked my Clip, however I don’t want to risk a Fuze or Clip+.
Battery life is a concern though especially when using fast playback.
JK98 wrote:
I have been thinking about Rockboxing my Clip, but don’t want to Rockbox the Fuze and Clip+ as I don’t want to lose Slotradio capability on those.
Couldn’t you just boot into the OF when you want to listen to your SlotRadio cards?
I saw it mentioned that once Rockbox is put on a player it loses its ability to play DRM music perhaps even permanently. I assume it applies to Slotradio as well. I have not seen any posts saying that Slotradio cards will work on a Rockboxed player when it is booted with the original firmware.
JK98 wrote:
I saw it mentioned that once Rockbox is put on a player it loses its ability to play DRM music perhaps even permanently. I assume it applies to Slotradio as well.
Perhaps, but I think that was reported during the initail phases of Rockbox development for the e200v2, Fuze, Clip/Clip+ family of players. I believe I read later that people were not experiencing this problem as the builds progressed, so it may not even be an issue now.
JK98 wrote:
I have not seen any posts saying that Slotradio cards will work on a Rockboxed player when it is booted with the original firmware.
True enough, but I haven’t seen any that say they won’t either.
Miikerman wrote:
Yes, that was early-on information, and there was at least one report by a user since then that it (no longer) is the case. Having said that, I haven’t seen any definitive statement on this issue at the Rockbox site, and the site still notes:
Installation of a bootloader may or may not permanently disable DRM support, even if you uninstall it (this is an early and old problem, but there are reports that this may not be the case anymore, it might be related to the date/time setting).
I’m sure this is still there as a CYA issue.
JK98 wrote:
I saw it mentioned that once Rockbox is put on a player it loses its ability to play DRM music perhaps even permanently. I assume it applies to Slotradio as well. I have not seen any posts saying that Slotradio cards will work on a Rockboxed player when it is booted with the original firmware.
Well, I would test it out, but I have no Slotradio cards…and I can’t say they are on my shopping list.
Miikerman wrote:
How about a DRM’ed tune?
Nope, don’t have any of them either.
Miikerman wrote:
How about a DRM’ed tune?
JK98, I’ve started looking at digital recorders again. Looks like the Zoom H4n is close to the top of the heap in terms of features and value for the money. Street price under $300. External mics, onboard variable coverage mics, etc, etc. I’m tempted.
If you don’t mind spending around $300 then I guess it is okay. I was looking at the Zoom H2 a while back. I think it is down to around $125 now. I have read that the built in mics on the H2 aren’t bad, and the line in is good, but the mic jack is quite noisy. There is a new model the H1, which lists for just $100. I can’t get that much information on it yet.
Olympus just came out with new recorders, the WS-710M and WS-700M. They will record in pcm, mp3, or wma. They run on one AAA battery and have a micro SDHC card slot. They seem to not have any sorting by tags or shuffle feature, so even if their playback sound quality is great, they might not suit many people for use as music players. They have a mic jack, but no line in. Most of the recording I would want to do is voice recording and not music. It would be nice to find a good hybrid of a recorder(and voice recorder) and an mp3 player(that is also good at playing voice recordings, which also means having sound enhancements to make low quality voice recordings more intelligible like the Olympus voice recorders have) with high quality for both, but it seems like devices skimp on quality or features for one aspect or the other. 
My friend, this is the NUMBER 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 thing I MOST want
on the clip…
It is my one great disappointment that it doesn’t have it.
I’m in exactly the same situation: listen to lectures, audiobooks, podcasts…want to be able to speed up some sections to save time (or slow down others)…but find the pitch-change annoying.
It also needs to be variable: not just fast, slow and normal - but able to be changed in increments of say 2% or 5%.
You should be able to press the left or right buttons and have it change, then hit the select button to return to normal.
Al this can be implemented easily!
And frankly: SANDISK, you’re speed-change feature is incomplete until you make it possible to retain the normal pitch!
How do I know it can be implemented easily?
Because a special user-created firmware called RockBox that is used on the clip+ and other players
DOES IT ALREADY.
(The only problem is, Rockbox does auto-resume really badly. The existing firmware is much better at this. RB does allow you to have MULTIPLE BOOKMARKS - which is great. But it DOESN’T give you the option of simply resuming at the last place you left off with just a click or two. It’s also a bit cumbersome to use in general - like many powerful programs).
SANDISK, PLEASE IMPLEMENT THIS ASAP!
Have you noticed that many of your customers are people who bought the Clip+ and other products
SPECIFICALLY ** because they are audio-book friendly?**
Implement this and you will go from popular status, to LEGENDARY, with thousands more customers!
PS Guys, I also think it might be more useful to urge sandisk to implement some of these more basic features,
than relying on something like RockBox…
Frankly, I love my clip+ in every way, EXCEPT for the lack of this one feature
I find that RB is MUCH MORE CUMBERSOME to use.
The clip+ is FAR, FAR simpler.
I’m a student and often have to listen to lectures when I’m tired and don’t really feel like it.
I don’t want to have to deal with the complex menus of rockbox.
The clip allows me to just hit a couple of buttons and my lecture starts where I left off.
(Whereas RB makes you go down a list of bookmarks ~ this can be quite complicated if your lectures are just named after dates (eg. 2010-10-03)…and I don’t want to sit there renaming all my lectures with memorable names)
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE CLIP FOR ME IS THE LACK OF
VARIABLE (ie. 2%-5% increment) SPEED-CHANGE WITH PITCH CORRECTION.
If they implement that, I will become their best salesman for free!
Apparantly having continuously variable speed playback with automatic pitch correction is rather processor intensive and hard to program for a very limited slow processor. Other device makers implement variable speed playback with automatic pitch correction on small portable devices by having play speed in just a few increments, for example, 0.5x, 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x. I don’t mind this but would prefer a few more settings such as 1.4x, and 1.7x.
