MP3 Players

[vestanpance]

I plan on buying an MP3 player and the Sony Walkman NWA3000 looks ok although I've heard one or two problems with the software it uses. I've got about 500 albums on my PC all in WMA format. About 300 of these are from CDs I've bought and 200 are from allofmp3. Does anyone know if the Sony can play these files or if not which would be the best player to get?

[fo3nix]

As far as I know, Sony's actually can read wma's and mp3's etc. but then convert your music to their proprietary atrac format.

Personally I'm an iPod fan, but I believe Creatives, iRiver and Samsung also make decent devices.

[vestanpance]

Cheers fo3nix,

Have you any idea if I could load these onto an iPod?

[fo3nix]

iPod uses the iTunes music program (I love it) to organise your music and sync it with the iPod. It will happily play mp3 and aac, and if you import your wma files it will automatically convert them to mp3/aac first.

[PatTheRat]

Just going off on a tangent here, but the Sony Walkman seems to have way superior sound quality to the ipod. I havent looked too deeply into it, and it could be an earphone issue, but I just though you might like to know.

[fo3nix]

Pat: from my experiences, there is no difference. The iPod sounds great, with great earphones at least. Their standard white earphones are pretty good as far as in-the-box earphones go, but a long way from audiophile quality.