Mp3 Player Discussion Thread (formerly recommendation thread)

[Spectere]

My Zune won't turn on. I haven't dropped it or gotten it wet or let any harm come to it, but not matter what I do, it won't turn on. The hold isn't on, reset doesn't work, my computer doesn't detect it, turning it on with the play/pause button doesn't work. Nothing is on the screen, and there's nothing I can think of to do.

This page recommends holding back and the up button on the d-pad.  If that's what you when you say "reset," then...uh.

Aside from that, try taking it back to the store for a replacement.  It could just be a bad unit.

[Sqthreer!]

Yeah I spent about twenty minutes looking through Google results and nothing helped. It seems quite a few other people have the same problem...

God damn.

[Sqthreer!]

Well I got myself a new Zune, so I'm glad that's over with.

I should note that the Zune software is kind of shitty. It's really slow and unresponsive a lot of times. Even if you turn all the fancy screen animations off. It takes forever to sync the damn thing, too. You can't use any other software to manage the content on it, which is annoying. There are third-party programs people have made that supposedly allows you to use Winamp and something else with it, but not iTunes. Also, I haven't managed to get the wireless sync to work.

[Spectere]

Here's some info about a program that'll let you use WMP11:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/21/zalternator-opens-up-your-zune-to-wmp11-itunes-sync/

From what I've used of the Zune software (i.e. enabling media sharing with the Xbox 360 before I realized that WMP11 does it better), WMP11 is considerably better.

[Sqthreer!]

Well the thing is, I have my iTunes very organized, and to transfer all that to WMP11 would take too much time and effort.

Relating to that, I have found something about the Zune I am not liking, and that is how you can't edit song information ON the device, as opposed to in the software.

When I want to find some music to listen to, I always browse by artist, and then album, but when it lists ALL the artists in the meta data (is this right term?) of each song on the thing, it gets really annoying. If you don't get what I mean, take Aphex Twin for example. I know that he has a lot of other aliases, but I only want ONE artist labeled "Aphex Twin" and not "Aphex Twin (aka AFX)" and "Aphex Twin (aka GAK)" and "Aphex Twin (aka Q-Chastic)" etc. to avoid clutter. But unlike with the iPod, you can't edit the music info IN the Zune, and it doesn't sync to the Zune if you do it in the software. I spent about ten minutes going through all my music and consolidating all the random artists (what's particular painful is working with mixes that has an artist for each song in the mix) and then I start syncing and find that I have a list of all these random artists that only have one or two songs to it.

Also, another example would be that I have a bunch of classical piano, which is organized by year, and the genius who put the thing together put the year the song was composed at the beginning of the title, so I have like, fifty "artists" that start with fuckin' years.

IT SUCKS

[Spectere]

I don't know of a single MP3 player that allows you to edit song information on the device itself.  I know you can't do that on the iPod (you can't even make playlists on the iPod).  I dunno, maybe you can on the Touch, but I wouldn't pay a hefty premium just so I could edit metadata on a touchscreen keyboard (oh, and browse the Internet...because that's...useful).

[Sqthreer!]

Oh no I mean through the Zune software interface. With the iPod, having it plugged in, you can change song info through iTunes for the songs ON the iPod, right? Well you can't do that with the Zune software. The only options you have in the "device" tab for music (or anything) are to copy it to your computer or delete it.