Howdy all,

I've recently bought a lovely Sony MP3 player. The player itself is wonderful to use and listen to, but loading music onto it is such-a-very-long-way-away-from-intuitive that I sometimes want to encase it in concrete and bury it in a deep, dark hole.

I've tried iTunes in the past – similar story.

I understand that these programs help the player with sorting its Table Of Contents (or something…) but there must be a better way.

Is there not a large-capacity (20Gb) MP3 player in existence that I can simply put music onto using Explorer or FreeCommander?

I know one of you benevolent and erudite folk has the answer…

I thought most of the Creative ones use a drag & drop style. And the very cheap ones do too (try Aldi). Just drag the files onto the target drive and they're done.

Lots of phones work like that too. And with the big SD cards these days you can get 16GB which is not far off 20GB. Large capacity mp3 players are in the 160GB range these days aren't they?

iTunes+iPod makes it easy for me. import music into iTunes. Plug in iPod. Music syncs. Not sure what went wrong for you.

Thanks, Parrot, I'll take a peek.

Regarding iTunes: why should I have to fricking import the fricking music into another fricking program and THEN have it put onto the device? What is the fricking point of that???

Sorry to rant, but it just seems so unnecessary. Thanks for your time though. 🙂

some of the new sony ones also use drag and drop, i think it depends which one you buy. currently on apple and don't have a problem with itunes, but i prefer the sound of the sony. didnt like the creative one.

Ah, I see your iTunes problem. You're right, juggling files between programs makes no sense if you have to do it a lot.

I made the move to iTunes when it came out on PC and I had a FireWire iPod touch wheel that I'd been using with MusicMatch JukeBox. After the initial import I've just stuck with iTunes & iPods.

PCMag has some mp3 buying info PCMag mp3 guide

well, similar expereince, battling with Itunes and windoze media player. I am in no way a computer geek and struggle with basic tasks such as drag and drop etc. I had a Sony, good quality headphones and very (tooo) loud, and yes I know you can turn it down. Plus a shuffle , rubbish stupid headphone controls , plus a Creative Zen plus , and a Stone. The Stone is by far and away my favourite. Easy to load and use, loud enough with my Istuff 'phones , although mine is only 4Gb IIRC
My bro loves his 60Gb Ipod classic , but he is a computer nerd so gets on well with the faff off ripping and syncing players.

Try a third party program like Sharepod which allows you to upload tracks from an iPod onto your PC and put the tracks of your choosing on without iTunes imposing it's own restrictions.

I love my iPod, but iTunes is a counter intuitive nightmare of a program and the people who wrote it deserve to have their fingers smashed with hammers.

Creative zen x-fi, i've had i-pods but the creative sound just blows them away, software is a doddle too, plus you can slip in a memory card up to 32gb.

I thought Sony MP3 players just dragged and dropped via Windows Media player? Mine does anyway..

Its why I sacked my ipod off too cos i was sick of Itunes complexities

Whatever Creative fits your pocket and wallet, as far as I know they all act like external drives. Not to mention being generally good players. I don't like the Creative software much so I just don't use it, drag and drop from drive to player, job done.

ive got a sansa clip plus thats just drag and drop its tiny sounds good too and comes with 8gb memory and a micro card slot that will take up to 32gb card to a 40gb player the size of a zippo 😉 currently only £40 in the sales at currys

Ooheee, thanks everyone, I've been looking and looking at all these suggestions. Decisions, decisions…

That Sansa Clip looks the bees knees, and I had a play today with a friend's iPod Nano, which is an impressive piece of shininess.

Hmmm, do I need another player though…? Mine works fine – how an I possibly justify it???

Regarding iTunes: why should I have to fricking import the fricking music into another fricking program and THEN have it put onto the device? What is the fricking point of that???

It's a fair point but really, while I'm not in anyway pro-apple, I've not seen anything else that works as slick as itunes and ipods.

love my iPod, but iTunes is a counter intuitive nightmare of a program and the people who wrote it deserve to have their fingers smashed with hammers.

My 8 year old loves her Nano too, but was having a right eppi at her brother for messing up her playlists on itunes, meaning she had to sort them out (into American, and non-american, her filing system, since you asked) She seems to have no trouble managing her music, perhaps you're thinking about it too much?

How did people cope when music came on 7" discs of plastic, three minutes to a side???

Maybe we're all just spoilt and complaining about iTunes and SonicStage is a little pathetic.

And yeah, if an 8-year-old can do it… 😳

i have a microsoft zune, its works well good sound and come with high quality headphones, has wifi built in, fm radio, and does picture too!

the softwear is super easy, drag and drop style.

I like it, and its bike/snow/tree proof.

i have a microsoft zune

Really? Never met anyone with one of those before. Interesting …

Thanks 4pot, it looks a nice player but this…

The Zune device was designed to only work with the Zune software.

…means it's in the same sorry boat as iTunes and SonicStage.

I am a computer geek and I couldn't / wouldn't use explorer (finder in my case as I have a mac) to categorise my music ever. In any case you don't have to import it really you have only got to tell itunes to find your music and put it on its interface (ie it does not even have to put them in a new location, all your files remain where they always have been). From there it is a matter of tick the boxes of the songs you want to be transfered and sync…

For the guy that struggles with drags and drops … a decent book for novices will help, I mean spend some time to learn the basics it will make a huge difference in using your computer.

Glad I'm not the only one who hates itunes… creative Zen?

Sony still make a Discman. I think that's what you need if itunes is too hard. 😉

am i making i tunes too easy
click import folder, then click on the album you want to go into itunes, thats it!!???

Take a look at the Cowon range, had one of these (D2) until I got an iphone. Itunes works fine but it is a pain in the @rse using it between my home and office pc's.

In terms of using the actual device I don't think many can match apple for the interface but itunes does put a spanner in the works.

The trouble with iTunes is not its useability but the fact that it ties you to one program – I just want to be able to use a MP3 player like a harddrive.

B I don't understand your problem.

I have 2 Sony mp3 players both over a year old and they are both loaded up through windows media player.

Its dead simple, you rip the cd (or whatever) to WMP and drag and drop when the thing is connected. I like Sony particularly because of this. I can rip cd's, listen on the computer as well and its easy to transfer between players (you can copy off someone elses if you want). Also its not tied to a specific pc either.

Its also pretty fast to transfer as well.

Sonic stage was a major PITA though.

Thanks for the advice MetalHeart, I wasn't aware you could use WMP to load stuff onto a Sony player!

However, it doesn't quite address my issue of wanting to be able to use a simple file-management program (such as Freecommander) to control the files on the MP3 player.

I think my trouble is tha I'm being old-fashioned in wanting to have total control over the actual files, rather than having some pretty-looking program decide how and where stuff is stored.

itunes doesn't decide anything. It's simply a table of contents. All the music is where you left it.

iTunes is hard to use?

Jesus. 😯

Itunes came on my laptop a couple of years ago when I bought it. Opened it up just to have a look and it started converting all my mp3s to AAC without asking, shut it down rapidly and I've not touched it since.

bananaworld – are you using Sonic Stage? I thought Sony ditched that a long time ago. The People said "Sonic Stage is a pile of toss, just let us drag and drop" and Lo, Sony did.

Mine is a NWZ-A-something-something, and you can drag and drop files and images using Windows Explorer if you like – just shows up as another drive in Explorer. Music is easier to transfer in Media Player, though.

Only complaint about mine is that I tried to put a 3GB movie on it in an unsupported file format. It's sitting in there taking up space, but I can't find it and I can't delete it. Nobody's Fault But Mine. Still room for Led though!

my last two sony mp3s have use media player/explorer. however sony did use sonic stage up to a couple of years ago so older ones can only use that rubbish.
how recent is yours?

It is not-very-new and indeed inextricably tied to SonicStage, sadly.

Thanks for the inputs, I'm off to browse Creative's and Sansa's offerings, along with, perhaps, some iPods.

Sandisk Fuze. 8gb + 16gb MicroSD Card. Great sounding. Small. Cheap. Drag n Drop.

Don't give up on Sony. I bought the one I have because it had better headphones, better battery life, no annoying softwarem, and was cheaper than the comparable ipod. And reportedly better sound.

I'd get one of these if mine gave up the ghost: http://www.trustedreviews.com/mp3/review/2008/11/09/Sony-Walkman-NWZ-S639F-16GB/p1 and maybe even if it doesn't. BBC iplayer compatible would be handy.

Probably worth reading the review anyway: it mentions other players which might suit you if you have different priorities.

Maybe we're all just spoilt and complaining about iTunes and SonicStage is a little pathetic.

Sony's Sonic Stage software is unquestionably what killed off their efforts at taking the MP3 player market by storm. At the time Sony released their first players, they were better quality than iPods (of the time), had much longer battery life, and were smaller and lighter too… But Sony's software is by far and away the worst piece of computer software I have ever had to use!

iTunes is a pain if you're moving everything into it, already ripped elsewhere… Unless you know some tricks and tips! 😉 It is perhaps not totally ideal that you can't just drag and drop with an iPod, but TRUST me, when you start to get lots of music on your computer (not just a few tunes), using iTunes as a Database file manager begins to pay dividends!

Also, the iPod's are pretty much the best players on the market now anyway, as well as the most common. And should you ever turn up to someone's house party where the music is crap, 9 times out of 10 you'll just be able to plug your iPod into their sound dock and play some of your music! Try that with another player… 😉

Regarding iTunes: why should I have to fricking import the fricking music into another fricking program and THEN have it put onto the device? What is the fricking point of that???

How the hell else are you expecting to get your music into a format that an mp3 player can use? iTunes is just a librarian, it's just a list of all the music you have in your music library. If you tell it to import everything in mp3 file format, it will, if you enable AAC, then that's the format it'll use, although if you buy music from a source like emusic, which is mp3, then the tracks will stay mp3, iTunes will not convert them, unless you specifically select those tracks and tell iTunes to convert them. It doesn't have a mind of it's own, it's not an AI, it can only do what it's told to do. If you have a library of previously sourced mp3 tracks, all you do is select them and drag them into iTunes. If you have a memory card or mp3 player mounted on your desktop, all you do is select the tracks you want and drag them onto the card or device. Christ, how difficult is that to grasp? I've dragged individual tracks out of iTunes onto an 8Gb SDHC card, stuffed it into a Nokia N95 and they played perfectly in AAC format. Sony players will also play AAC. AAC is not a proprietory format belonging to Apple, unlike WMA and ATRAC, which are MS and Sony formats, it's actually MP4, and designed as a replacement for mp3. iTunes operates happily as drag and drop, if you tell it to. You just select manually manage music and video. How fracking difficult a concept is that to grasp? It's how I've been using it for some years now, none of my players or my phone operate any other way than via drag and drop; I've got over 80Gb of music, connecting a 16Gb phone and autosyncing is gonna fail dismally otherwise. Why do some people make such a simple process as ripping a cd, then dragging selected tracks onto a music player, such a complicated rigmarole? iTunes was designed to be intuitive and simple to use. It is. I was using it for ages without any instruction before I got a book about the more exotic things like smart playlists, which I never use anyway. It's childsplay; get a child to show you how to use it.

What Xipe Totec says… Without sounding condescending and know it all 😉

iTunes seems like a PITA at first, but once you get used to it, it's a marvellous bit of software. It is essentially just a Database, in the same way that Microsoft Access is. Only it manages your music for you!

OK, so unless you tell it otherwise, it defaults to AAC instead of MP3, at a pretty low quality bit rate and joint stereo, and it might not necessarily access your music files from the right place (again unless you tell it to), but once all is sorted, away you go…

I couldn't be without iTunes now for managing my music. Awesome piece of software!

Here you go fella:

http://www.iriver.at/harddisc_player.html?p_id=145&L=0&view=

Oh, poopy, let's go over it all. Again.

All I want is a MP3 player that I can simply add a file or two to using a 'normal' file-fiddling program. My music collection isn't made up of neat albums with the appropriate tags and the appropriate genre and the appropriate 'album art' in the appropriate folder, it's random mish-mashes of MP3s collected over the last ten or eleven years. It ain't neat and from past experience I've found out that iTunes and similar programs don't like it.

Yes, it's shameful and I should sort it out sometime, but the cheapo 1Gb player (drap 'n' drop…) I've used for the last few years has never complained. Now I just a player that does the same thing, but bigger. Mmmmmmmkay?

Thanks for your suggestion, Daffy!

(Mark: how's the 29ering going? And what are these docking parties you're going to…? 😉 )

what I said.

(and what Daffy said.)