I was still on homemade cassettes (from CD or vinyl) until I did mp3 CDs starting in 2000. I remember these devices but didn't know much about them. iTunes supported some of this like the Rio (from memory) before the iPod. Glad I didn't go that expensive limited route. I opted for mp3 CD for the car. Sometimes I used an iBook with iTunes on it in the car before the iPod. My first mp3 player was Sansa Clip 2GB ($70) in 2007 (of which I have now collected 10) which I use for listening to OTR. My first iPod was the last 160GB iPod Classic c. 2009 which I still use to take a big chunk of certain genres of music with me including songs NOT on spotify. I have a few devices that support the 30-pin iPod to use out back when grilling and so on. Interestingly, I got a 30 GB iPod that can play video given to me just a year ago and it's in perfect shape.
One thing to consider, when CD’s first came out, the tracks didn’t always start within the first second. My original copy (pre-officially Remastering) of Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind” was like this: the first track, “The Horizontal Bop”, actually started 3 seconds into the track…not right at the first second.
The band couldn't be entirely mad at the MP3 player pilfering their name. Much like REO Speedwagon their name was taken from somewhere else. That being the REO Motor Company and it's successor, Diamond REO Trucks.
A little unrelated, but I remember when my Mom got a green iPod Nano 3G on Christmas of around 2006-7. We didn’t have an MP3 player before (mostly used CD’s), so it blew my little mind to have something that could play music off the internet *and* play decent quality movies and shows on the go (my closest personal experience to this was a VideoNow Color, lol). It was also the first time I watched the original Thriller video, not so ideal when I was already terrified of zombies, lol.
I did buy a creative Nomad II with 512 MB. I think I could get 25 songs on it! I do remember I had to update my windows so I could use the USB port. I remember using Bearshare to find music for it....Ahh the early 2000s
You aren't the only one who doesn't want to use streaming. I own all of my music. I have live stuff (and other oddities) that wouldn't be available on streaming. I am a fan of some bands who don't do streaming. I have a cheap phone plan and don't have access to the internet when I'm driving. I don't like that artists aren't paid fairly for streaming. But also I just like to have control of my music myself, so I'll stick to owning my own stuff in digital or physical format. I didn't have these early players but definitely remember them and their computer-based counterparts. We had some computer program in college that stored the music in a proprietary format that I can't quite remember - those tracks were useless because they couldn't be played in iTunes or even Winamp.
I also prefer owning music I play. Luckily, smartphones still have the option of playing audio files offline, and there are many players available in the Play Store. That said, I still prefer listening to stuff on my PC with a 5.1 sound system connected to it.
I didn't get into MP3 players until around the time CD mp3 players were a thing and the first digital player I owned was a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra Jukebox. It came with a sufficiently large enough mini hard drive(60GB) to store most of my CD collection. Much cheaper than digital memory cards at the time and was just as replaceable/upgradeable with some minor surgery. The drive still works to this day even outside of the player. It's only Achilles heal sadly was the headphone jack which was notorious for detaching from the main board due to inadequate solder/stress relief design. Despite this issue, it had incredibly robust sound with fully customizable by frequency band EQ.
The audacity of including a "random" button on a machine that holds maybe 15 tunes natively is astounding. Incidentally, when I first saw that button, I thought it said "raccoon". Now that could be fun.
I remember the Rio and wanted one, just never got it. I remember my friends with them saying how many songs they got on it and I could hear how lossy they sounded. I prefer quality over quantity. They would think I was an idiot.
I lived in Federal Way/Seattle in 1999. About a Handful of my High School Classmates had Rio500 while the others used Nomad and Samsung Yepp. Your friends were downloading a very shoddy bitrates of 32kbps and 64kbps . Those who knew how to properly utilize MP3 Players downloaded at Bitrates of 128Kbps. At the time, Hotline/Kazaa and Napster were all the rage. They clearly had no idea what they were doing.
The first MP3 Player I owned was a Goodmans with an actual 2gb1.5" hard drive in it. It ate batteries in about 4 hours, but it was really simple to use and worked flawlessly. I really wish I had kept it as I cannot find a picture of it online. It was just like a grey square box design.
You are not alone in using your iPod still. I still have my 160 GB iPod Classic (I have a second one as a backup but I'm not sure it's entirely legit), I've had a battery replaced, and I still use it regularly. What I kind of like about Apple Music is that it works with my iTunes and put my music library on the cloud so if I don't have my iPod with me but I'm on Wifi (I find have unlimited data) I can listen to my iTunes library through my phone.
I was never an iPod guy, because I continued to use Walkman-style cassette players through the late 2000s, when I finally purchased a $20 Coby MP3 player. It only had 4GB memory, but it introduced me to the world of ultra-cheap MP3 media players. Even throughout the early 2010s, Menards would sell cheapo portable MP3 players, usually sold as "MP4" players from such hot brands as "Altus" or "Hip Street". As cheap and kludgy as these were, I found such cheap digital players rather intriguing. The battery life was rather decent and playback quality of MP3s was pretty good. One thing these cheapo players had was built in FM tuners, with some of them even being able to record broadcasts. As long as you had a clear signal, these things could make rather decent quality aircheck recordings. And it was when I got my first "MP4" FM-enabled player in 2011 that I mostly stopped making airchecks on cassette tapes.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who started with iTunes as a library and then later got an iPod video 30GB. And I still use my iPod although it's not the same one because I had it stolen but I thankfully got myself an 160 gig classic right before they discontinued them.
Ben, you doing a video on the Diamond Rio proper would still have been fine for me and I'm sure many others who, for whatever reason, don't watch LGR. I prefer your style for history lessons (they are actually my favorite Archive episodes) and would have loved to get your spin on it all.
For Xmas 2002, my brother bought me an Archos Jukebox player with a 20 GB hard drive and it was the coolest thing ever. Until I replaced it with a newer Archos media player in 2007 or so, with an 80 GB hard drive and the ability to play video. I still have it but haven't used it in a few years. That thing got me through so many days at work, it was priceless to me. I bought my brother an iPad with a lot of drive space at one point, thinking I was doing him a favor but he was not a fan, he didn't find it user friendly at all.
I still have my Rio PMP300, but only because I thought I lost it for about a decade from 2000 to like 2011, so I no longer have the cable to connect my computer to it lol. So it's literally a y2k time capsule of how little 112kbps music could fit on the basic 32mb internal memory.
Oh man, I was only tangentially aware of the whole MP3 thing because my family was pretty behind the times technologically. (My folks didn’t get internet at home until 2010.) When it came to home audio, I only had a fairly cheap CD+cassette+radio jukebox. I would occasionally have friends burn MP3s onto CD-Rs for me and dub those onto cassette, but, most of the time, I used cassettes and recorded off of the radio. I used a late model Walkman that I bought in 2003/2004 as late as 2007. (I seem to remember that the battery compartment latch ultimately failed.) My freshman year of college, I was in the dorms and had internet, so I tended to download MP3 files from the internet and dump them in iTunes. I went for about a year without portable audio before I finally got an iPod nano. Had I known and understood MiniDisc a little better (if Sony in that era had done a better job at advertising!), I may have picked up a MiniDisc player (if they’d been more widely available in the US), especially one of the entry level HiMD recorders. (I could have continued dubbing from the radio and CD and still done SOME copying of MP3 files from friends [just have them use Sonic Stage and dump MP3 files onto my MiniDisc recorder, though yes, this would mean having to lend my recorder to my friends], which would have been the sweet spot for me in around 2005.)
I used to transfer MP3s to cassette tapes and did that until, like you, I got a 30GB iPod in 2006. I like my phone and have a lot of music on there (no streaming) but I maintain that my cassette Walkman and my first iPod were the best personal music players I ever had. I still use iPods regularly with an iPod speaker dock.
I bought the Diamond Rio in '99 if I recall correctly. I never bought a memory card for it and it would hold almost a whole CD. It just wasn't ready for prime time yet, but it was close. Today I still buy music online and load it on my phone because I don't get down with streaming services. I bought it, I own it, I can back it up as much as I please. Great video, sorry for the semi-lucid rant
I've never liked Apple products ever since I was forced to use the Apple II Plus and iMac G3 in school. My first three MP3 players were Rio Cali and Rio Cali Sport. Most of my music is from ripped CDs or vinyl.
I didn't get an mp3 player until freshman year of highschool when my aunt gave me her old ipod (one of the very first ones I think) this was 2011-2012 before that I used a portable CD player (2009-2011) until the ipod bite the dust and my parents got tired of buying the cheap mp3 players for their high school kid so about 2013-2020 I used a portable CD player. Now I have data and use my phone
Seems almost like the WMA support might've been added in later as a software decoder and the hardware might just not be up to it and struggles to keep up until it builds up some amount of buffer. Probably just something tacked on to make the device competitive and still appease the music owners by picking something rather closed off and with DRM baked in. Would probably also explain the poor battery life if the CPU is just burning away doing everything rather than hardware dedicated to the task like on an ipod.
4:49 lol look at that CD burner for 279. 12x speed was pretty fast in that time. We got our 10x Acer during a black friday morning. After the rebates it came to 100 bucks. We got a hell of a lot of use out it. That was when Black Friday was an exciting event. I think it was 1999.
I listened to my cassette walkman through the early 2000s. Then I used a CD walkman until the start of the 2010s. Still use an MP3 player when it's charged.
My first hard disc MP3 player was the iRiver H100 which had a 20GB hard drive inside. I then upgraded to iRiveer H300 and to a 80GB HD (thanks Rockbox!). The HD was a swine to find one without Apple firmware due to Apple using the same model in their player. This was used to store radio programmes to listen to at work. These days I use a Rockboxed Sandisk Sansa Clip+ with 256GB SD card for work and another one with 128GB SD card for music. When these go I'm going to be in trouble as I like my music players to have tactile feedback. As for RealAudio: Don't you know what spyware is? You do now!
Try formatting the CF card in the Lyra to FAT16 instead of FAT32, if it isn't already. You may need a third-party disk formatting utility, if you don't have an old Windows 95/98 machine that lets you choose that option when formatting.
Just dug it out from the episode, it is indeed FAT16. blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqqQiYg8w_2V70vXrEwaojso2pGekbGhn-BSiiWcymy2YfEknsgYhGrCeXQrG4samcshfE0cu_manXE-nEb_X6M3svZXkuYFZONZJljpc0C9-uo1Nt43xqQRPmfZMYnUsSCRRhpTS2XBiGJ5Gc7u1oFpyWbFbrb7LYmvk6ie_QzyIOwFEv5P9N0gfmSA/w228-h574/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-27%20at%203.35.46%20PM.png
This is a great video. My first MP3 player was a NOMAD II from 2000 that held 16MB of music. My first iPod was the mini in 2005. As for the country group mentioned at the 6:20 point, I would rip these songs to the player: Mirror, Mirror, One More Day, Meet in the Middle, Beautiful Mess, and I Believe.
Oh god I'm not nostalgic for the unreliability of hardware connectivity at the time, with no or non-working PnP. But yeah the solutions of the day are definitely amusing. :p Apple really hit it out of the park with firewire and usb options.
My first MP3 player was the RCA K@zoo and I still have it and it still works but I can't get songs on it anymore because it used musicmatch jukebox to load songs. I modified it to fit regular SD cards and tried to load songs on by card reader and it acknowledged the card but wouldn't play. Turns out the files are encrypted to .mpx format. That may be what's happening to your Rio player. If you can get it to load songs try loading them onto the card then putting it in a card reader. I have a ton of mp3 playing devices now.
Oh man, to go back to the days that 128k CBR MP3s were good enough...Got a D-Link DMP-110 back in 2001 or 2002, sucker had a whopping 32MiB of space on it, and those lovely SmartMedia cards could be used as added storage. A few years back I got another of the same player so I could read my cards that I still had after all these years...Only cost me a tenner nowadays, and I'm certain it was ten times that 20 years ago. 😆 Those suckers quickly downsized for sure, as by 2005 I was using a flash drive sized Creative MuVo, and thankfully those you actually accessed like a flash drive. I would later move to Zune then Zune HD for the short-lived period that was on the market, then would discover the joys of RockBox around 2008 to 2009 with a multitude of players leading up to about 2013 (Clip, Clip Plus, Clip Zip, Fuze Plus, all SanDisk devices). In 2013 I would finally give in and get myself a smartphone. I recently dug out my Fuze Plus from a drawer only to discover that it still had stuff on it from 2013, literally pointing out the exact day I had purchased some music then had encoded it to mp3 and copied it over.
Diamond Rio was a really underrated band. I was a huge fan back in the day. Check out some of their deep cuts, they have some great instrumentals buried in their albums. Jimmy Olander can really make that B-bender sing! Good luck with your Diamond Rio that plays nothing but Diamond Rio!
I love Gram, but this about lead guitarists that played modded “B-Bender” telecasters. For what it’s worth, Clarence and Bernie both backed Gram at varying times.
I'm with you. I don't care for streaming. You never know what you're getting. I tried Spotify for a week & immediately got angry that I already had higher quality versions of everything they offered. I should be streaming my stuff for them. Unfortunately, I don't plan on paying licensing fees any time soon.
Its about convenience mostly, the quality quite frankly is good enough for most people and that’s awesome that we can quickly enjoy music whenever, for the rest of us we can keep our flacs
Recently got a Sony NW-E505 (512mb) from 2005. I remember seeing it in Circuit City when getting my first mp3 (a much cheaper iRiver). Had to figure out how to use it without the proprietary Sony-ware in 2022 but after that I can store a quick playlist on it (in 320kb mode) and the simple functionality of the unit is beautiful. Other than that I'm using my phone or a fleet of 2000s discmen for portability.
Cassettes and mixtapes here until 2005, when my last try at resoldering the headphone jack to the board failed. BTW I love the sound of 16 kbps music. Listening to some of my own collection that way sounds like the most remote, mysterious internet stream that happens to play all the music that I like.
Am I the only one to still thinking "ultra compressed rattling and muffled sh!t" while I hear the name "mp3"? I know it's now actually a good format. But I heard so many early mp3, I just can't.
Most Early MP3 files had mediocre compression and poor bitrates. Its why I decided in '99 to spend $200 on a Dreamcast instead of Rio500 or Samsung Yepp or Nomad.
The smart media has no internal controller, its literally just a nand chip broken out to the pads. XD picture card tried to take up the slack but sucked for the same reason but I think it topped off at 1GB. Anyways, the RIO treated SM card as another nand chip simply using a chip select line to swap between and wrote the music in a proprietary file system (but not encrypted.) There is actually a software hack that allows you to pull the music back off of player and its expansion card.
Back in the early 2000s I had a bunch of mp3 players and mp3 CD players. My fav was my Rio Volt SP250 CD/MP3 player and the one I hated was my Rio Riot 20GB jukebox. The most impressive CD/MP3 player I had was the iRiver SlimX IMP-400, it let you look at lyrics in real time and had a built-in snake game lol. I also have a bunch of smaller 1-2GB players and those got used more than anything because they would get amazing battery life on one AAA battery at max volume.
3:56 I almost have that exact walkman, I found my sony wm-fx491 at a thrift shop for only 2 AUD and bought it mostly for the old stock earbuds that it also had in the box, sadly it's left-biased and makes music sound louder on the left side and thus don't use it I have another walkman a yellow waterproof one but that also has headphone jack issues and cuts down the volume when not holding on the headphone jack pressed to the side
With a third party utility called Riositude, the Rio PMP300 will even work on 32-bit version of Windows 7 (tested on an old ThinkPad R52 which does have a parallel port). As for the encode settings, I prefer ripping tracks at VBR V8 using Foobar2000. Sonically speaking it's far from optimal, but at least it sounds somewhat better than the CBR 64Kbps configuration.
At 6:05 in your video. The reason you failed to get the software running is because the Rio uses the parallel port for downloading the music and the software has to directly "Bit-bang" the registers in the parallel port device. Because of this low level communication with the hardware. It is impossible to make this work on any emulator or virtual machine. It MUST be ran on native hardware.
Love it. I had the Lyra around 2002, and it played great, but getting music on it was always a tedious mess. That was the problem with most of these early players, the music syncing was always terrible. Apple made it much simpler and probably became the standard because of that.
It's probably less encryption and more file hierarchy or proprietary extension format modifications. A lot of devices followed the camera standard and there was at least two or three different folder names that were accepted assuming you had a classy device like a palm. Otherwise it might have sneakily renamed the file extension or converted to a semi proprietary obscured format through the software on transfer. It's quite surprising the number of devices that use the parallel port from printers scanners network cards compact flash readers and other weird devices. There might be a built-in driver that's generic but not auto detected through the added device function. That's the benefit of removable media it should at least work with a standard card reader unless the software is hard coded to look for that device.
I stubbornly stuck to legal CDs until 2007, when they were all stolen. I kept them all in a large binder and I didn't have any backups on tape or my computer. Whoops. So I bought an 8 GB iPod Nano and a crap ton of MP3s off of iTunes. But for the past 5 years, I've used Spotify and an app on my phone to play local files. Been debating buying an iPod Touch but too expensive for such little storage space IMO.
I still have my EgerMan F20, parallel port cable, and SmartMedia cards. My desktop minitower PC still has an integrated multicard reader that accepts SmartMedia cards as well.
I kind of miss downloading 16kbps mp3s over AOL private room mp3 servers on my 56k in 98. /OddityArchive send list. 16kbps was enough Ben. Send for Seech.
Sony cd players was the nostalgic point for me. I used to have a 2008 one. The annoying part is when the battery dies it dies. I use my tablet which plays more tracks and spotify.
03:56 I have that same exact portable tape player. It was my pride and joy many years ago. Can you recommend a DC power source to use that player without batteries? No jacks I have at home fit inside it.
I think that was the biggest problem with early MP3 playersI think that was the main problem with the early MP3 players, the performance and failures at the basic task of playing music. It really doeshn't take much to work out why the iPod won out over everyone else, it really was that much better than any other device out there on anything except price. Also, didn't the RCA/Thomson Lyras use the short lived MP3Pro codec? Not that you'd be able to actually find a way of transcoding anything to MP3Pro.
I remember the first MP3 player I got, and I remember how lousy it was. Granted, it was a little later model than most, I got it about 2007 or so, but it was a REAL piece of work. It was cheap as hell, I got it as a gift and it was a gift with purchase at that. It was the more advanced at the time and had the ability to play video and came with this unfunny 2 minute CGI cartoon about a polar bear. Not that you could put that much on it to have many other videos, since it was a chore just to get music on the thing. One time, I deleted everything from it because you could put more music on it through this other way, and all it did was load empty file folders, not the music. Oh. And it had this REALLY tiny plug for the ear buds that would only work with the ear buds it came with. So once they died, you had a tiny little chunk of plastic that did nothing.
I'm guessing I'm about the same age as you. I remember Real player very well and also Music match. Then I moved on to more fun stuff such as remember LimeWire? which all I used on my old 486 (I have the motherboard still with CPU and memory, everything else went to tech hell). My first MP3 player was a Creative Zen, which I still have somewhere but don't use it. It was a pain in the rear end to use and the sound quality sucked a tad. But me been me I've gone back to CD's, Cassettes and Vinyl. Great video bud. I've watched most of your content now and think it's awesome. Keep up the good work Ben. Thanks.
I was EXTREMELY late to the MP3 Party. I didn't even use my first Portable CD player until 1997(Although I got a Sony Boombox Cassette and CD Player in Christmas 1995) and spent 1988-1995 just using Cassettes for music, and FINALLY got my first 8 GB iPod Touch(The First Generation) in August 2008 after 9 years of Burning MP3 files on CDs using Kazaa,WinMX and Limewire. It costs me about $150 on Amazon and starting in 2009, used Frostwire for MP3 Files. The iPod Touch's(Especially up until the 4th Generation) are very unremarkable and often unreliable, Firmware updates will often brick them and the Touch Screens are pretty shoddy with High Break and Failure Rates. Since '08, I've gone through 4 iPod Touches, with the most Recent one purchased last year(after my 3rd Gen one was destroyed by Sunlight in my Car of all things.) Back when MP3s started getting popular(First Half of 1999), I seemed to Recall them being quite popular. There were about a Half Dozen High School kids at my HS in Federal Way/Seattle who owned MP3 Players. The Two Most popular ones were the Nomad and Diamond Labs Rio500, and the Samsung Yepp: www.wired.com/1999/08/dl-players/ www.cienacapitalear.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=174716342355&source=www.sonmieux.com The Most Reliable and common Player was definitely the Rio500. Everytime I had thought about buying one at the time, that $200 kept popping up in my head. I finally said to myself "$200? You can buy a New SEGA Dreamcast with that. You don't need an MP3 Player, at least right now" and skipped them for the Dreamcast. Ironically, the Rio500 itself was modded to be compatible with DC. Apple pretty much monopolized the MP3 Player Market as iPod begin to Overtake everything else in Sales by 2003, and it didn't help matters the SLEAZY and Disgusting Root Kits and Horrible Infected MP3 Software DRM Ecosystem SONY forced on its own MP3 Players during the mid 2000s effectively killing its OWN Successful Walkman/Discman line.
I liked musicmatch jukebox. The interface was maybe not the greatest but i had no issues with it really, and it was kinda fun in its way. Real player from around the same period was much worse. Somehow took a rather standard Windows looking UI and made it clunky but also needing a lot of power and memory for seemingly no reason, where musicmatch jukebox just ran well for the time. Winamp was the best for an on-PC player but it had the least compatibility with stuff like online services and devices. I guess the only ones who were big enough in the industry to have the business deals with those services and manufacturers were also the best able to make the biggest, slowest software. :p
Those two were way too expensive for my taste, but years later I got an iRiver and then saved up a ton for a Zen Vision M. I still have the last version of the Zen, but the screen no longer works - all it can do is port files to a PC. Early MP3 compression was trash, which was fair given how expensive storage was, but I will say for it, towards the tail end they really got good with battery power. My last "media only" device that played mp3s? Weirdly enough, it was an older kindle. UI was not that much more annoying than early mp3 players and the battery power was insane - awesome for long car trips and flights back when your phone drain was a real issue. Darn thing finally gave up the ghost and kindle lost the headphone jack and ability to upload your own mp3s (probably thought they were a way to dodge audible, who knows). To this day I still hold on to my old phone because of that headphone jack. I know sooner or later I'll have to go dongle/full bluetooth, but I'll keep it as long as I can.
In '99, I recall the Storage size for my Classmates' MP3 Players only maxing out at 32 MBs of Storage. This meant that you could only fit equivalent to that of a Dozen CDs onto a single SD Card(YES, SD Cards existed in 1999) at just under 75 Songs, and only the Rio500 could use 32 MBs, Samsung Yepp and Nomad both capped out at just 16 MBs(Only 50 Songs Max). Genie in a Bottle I recall was the Most Downloaded Song of 1999. Everyone Around me in '99 either used Napster or Kazaa(when it was still known as Hotline) and I recall it being relatively EASY as pie taking Non Sony Music Label CDs(Mostly Jive/RCA Zomba Discs like the Stuff from Britney Spears,N'SYNC and Backstreet Boys) and Compressing their tracks into MP3 Files via Real Rhapsody or Windows Mixer(Later WinMX). Hotline/Kazaa was Definitely MORE userfriendly than Napster. But Napster was superior at Compression as Many Files on Hotline/Kazaa often couldn't properly compress 6+ Minute Songs. The RIAA was ALREADY in Full Freakout mode before Napster even launched, Sony put Rootkits in ALL of its Columbia, Epic E.t.c label CDs.(Mariah Carey's 1999 LP Rainbow was loaded with VERY nasty Trojans in it) Other Labels like Warner Bros(Tevin Campbell's 1999 CD, Tamia's CD and Michael Fredo) used TOC DRM locks on it while BMG(Monica,Whitney Houston) used Licensed Encrypted Software to Convert Tracks
@@Tornado1994 totally remember that. I also remember moving to college around that time and experiencing crazy download speeds on the ethernet they had. People were overloading their PCs with music within a month of being on campus. As someone who at best had mediocre 56k dialup, moving to campus and seeing a music track download in less than 25 seconds was amazing.
@@noralewis5390 Ah, the Glory days of 56k Dial Up Modems(Which I used for 6 years from 1999-2005), and MP3s Downloaded on Kazaa and Napster at 128kbps. I also remember when Ethernet/DSL first got introduced in the Fall of 1999. We didn't get DSL until 2005 with Earthlink, and it was amazing watching how FAST DSL grew and how many ISPs started latching onto it during 2003-2004.
A Mac Mini attached to your home theater system is better than most things a human can do. Easy to set up a Plex server. Plays back Dolby Digital without all the windows headaches.
With the Rio with the smart media card, one thing might be that it required a different voltage of smart media card than what your card was. I don't know much about the Rio or smart media cards, but I do know that early smart media cards and devices used 5 volts and later ones used 3.3 volts. Also missed opportunity for (highly overrated) Rio by Duran Duran.
oh my pkcell
I was still on homemade cassettes (from CD or vinyl) until I did mp3 CDs starting in 2000. I remember these devices but didn't know much about them. iTunes supported some of this like the Rio (from memory) before the iPod. Glad I didn't go that expensive limited route. I opted for mp3 CD for the car. Sometimes I used an iBook with iTunes on it in the car before the iPod. My first mp3 player was Sansa Clip 2GB ($70) in 2007 (of which I have now collected 10) which I use for listening to OTR. My first iPod was the last 160GB iPod Classic c. 2009 which I still use to take a big chunk of certain genres of music with me including songs NOT on spotify. I have a few devices that support the 30-pin iPod to use out back when grilling and so on. Interestingly, I got a 30 GB iPod that can play video given to me just a year ago and it's in perfect shape.
The 30 pin ecosystem was great and I kind of miss it.
I like the acid folk stylings of your theme music. Raw, rich in warmth and texture, and psychedelic in flavor.
One thing to consider, when CD’s first came out, the tracks didn’t always start within the first second. My original copy (pre-officially Remastering) of Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind” was like this: the first track, “The Horizontal Bop”, actually started 3 seconds into the track…not right at the first second.
I just so happen to have both the 1990(-ish) and 2001 CD's of that album. I'll have to dig it out and check to see if I've got that same error.
The band couldn't be entirely mad at the MP3 player pilfering their name. Much like REO Speedwagon their name was taken from somewhere else. That being the REO Motor Company and it's successor, Diamond REO Trucks.
And that REO having come from Ransom E. Olds of Oldsmobile fame. Nothing to do with any rivers.
This isn't a name theft. Rio is Spanish for river.
Well, my dream for an Oddity Archive episode came true, especially since Apple recently discontinued the iPod after 21 years of production.
A little unrelated, but I remember when my Mom got a green iPod Nano 3G on Christmas of around 2006-7.
We didn’t have an MP3 player before (mostly used CD’s), so it blew my little mind to have something that could play music off the internet *and* play decent quality movies and shows on the go (my closest personal experience to this was a VideoNow Color, lol).
It was also the first time I watched the original Thriller video, not so ideal when I was already terrified of zombies, lol.
Well, you could’ve first seen it as a little kid on a dodgy CRT at Halloween (like I did).
I did buy a creative Nomad II with 512 MB. I think I could get 25 songs on it! I do remember I had to update my windows so I could use the USB port. I remember using Bearshare to find music for it....Ahh the early 2000s
You aren't the only one who doesn't want to use streaming. I own all of my music. I have live stuff (and other oddities) that wouldn't be available on streaming. I am a fan of some bands who don't do streaming. I have a cheap phone plan and don't have access to the internet when I'm driving. I don't like that artists aren't paid fairly for streaming. But also I just like to have control of my music myself, so I'll stick to owning my own stuff in digital or physical format. I didn't have these early players but definitely remember them and their computer-based counterparts. We had some computer program in college that stored the music in a proprietary format that I can't quite remember - those tracks were useless because they couldn't be played in iTunes or even Winamp.
I also prefer owning music I play. Luckily, smartphones still have the option of playing audio files offline, and there are many players available in the Play Store. That said, I still prefer listening to stuff on my PC with a 5.1 sound system connected to it.
I didn't get into MP3 players until around the time CD mp3 players were a thing and the first digital player I owned was a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra Jukebox. It came with a sufficiently large enough mini hard drive(60GB) to store most of my CD collection. Much cheaper than digital memory cards at the time and was just as replaceable/upgradeable with some minor surgery. The drive still works to this day even outside of the player. It's only Achilles heal sadly was the headphone jack which was notorious for detaching from the main board due to inadequate solder/stress relief design. Despite this issue, it had incredibly robust sound with fully customizable by frequency band EQ.
No lie, I hum this theme song not just in the beginning of every video but also at work and while I drive. It's a very catchy tune.
The audacity of including a "random" button on a machine that holds maybe 15 tunes natively is astounding. Incidentally, when I first saw that button, I thought it said "raccoon". Now that could be fun.
It's no more audacious than a single disc CD player including a random button.
I remember the Rio and wanted one, just never got it. I remember my friends with them saying how many songs they got on it and I could hear how lossy they sounded. I prefer quality over quantity. They would think I was an idiot.
I lived in Federal Way/Seattle in 1999. About a Handful of my High School Classmates had Rio500 while the others used Nomad and Samsung Yepp. Your friends were downloading a very shoddy bitrates of 32kbps and 64kbps . Those who knew how to properly utilize MP3 Players downloaded at Bitrates of 128Kbps. At the time, Hotline/Kazaa and Napster were all the rage.
They clearly had no idea what they were doing.
Funny thing, MP3 players didn't just go away. They evolved into the modern smartphone.
The first MP3 Player I owned was a Goodmans with an actual 2gb1.5" hard drive in it. It ate batteries in about 4 hours, but it was really simple to use and worked flawlessly. I really wish I had kept it as I cannot find a picture of it online. It was just like a grey square box design.
You are not alone in using your iPod still. I still have my 160 GB iPod Classic (I have a second one as a backup but I'm not sure it's entirely legit), I've had a battery replaced, and I still use it regularly. What I kind of like about Apple Music is that it works with my iTunes and put my music library on the cloud so if I don't have my iPod with me but I'm on Wifi (I find have unlimited data) I can listen to my iTunes library through my phone.
I was never an iPod guy, because I continued to use Walkman-style cassette players through the late 2000s, when I finally purchased a $20 Coby MP3 player. It only had 4GB memory, but it introduced me to the world of ultra-cheap MP3 media players. Even throughout the early 2010s, Menards would sell cheapo portable MP3 players, usually sold as "MP4" players from such hot brands as "Altus" or "Hip Street". As cheap and kludgy as these were, I found such cheap digital players rather intriguing. The battery life was rather decent and playback quality of MP3s was pretty good. One thing these cheapo players had was built in FM tuners, with some of them even being able to record broadcasts. As long as you had a clear signal, these things could make rather decent quality aircheck recordings. And it was when I got my first "MP4" FM-enabled player in 2011 that I mostly stopped making airchecks on cassette tapes.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who started with iTunes as a library and then later got an iPod video 30GB. And I still use my iPod although it's not the same one because I had it stolen but I thankfully got myself an 160 gig classic right before they discontinued them.
Ben, you doing a video on the Diamond Rio proper would still have been fine for me and I'm sure many others who, for whatever reason, don't watch LGR. I prefer your style for history lessons (they are actually my favorite Archive episodes) and would have loved to get your spin on it all.
For Xmas 2002, my brother bought me an Archos Jukebox player with a 20 GB hard drive and it was the coolest thing ever. Until I replaced it with a newer Archos media player in 2007 or so, with an 80 GB hard drive and the ability to play video. I still have it but haven't used it in a few years. That thing got me through so many days at work, it was priceless to me.
I bought my brother an iPad with a lot of drive space at one point, thinking I was doing him a favor but he was not a fan, he didn't find it user friendly at all.
I still have my Rio PMP300, but only because I thought I lost it for about a decade from 2000 to like 2011, so I no longer have the cable to connect my computer to it lol. So it's literally a y2k time capsule of how little 112kbps music could fit on the basic 32mb internal memory.
Oh man, I was only tangentially aware of the whole MP3 thing because my family was pretty behind the times technologically. (My folks didn’t get internet at home until 2010.) When it came to home audio, I only had a fairly cheap CD+cassette+radio jukebox. I would occasionally have friends burn MP3s onto CD-Rs for me and dub those onto cassette, but, most of the time, I used cassettes and recorded off of the radio. I used a late model Walkman that I bought in 2003/2004 as late as 2007. (I seem to remember that the battery compartment latch ultimately failed.)
My freshman year of college, I was in the dorms and had internet, so I tended to download MP3 files from the internet and dump them in iTunes. I went for about a year without portable audio before I finally got an iPod nano.
Had I known and understood MiniDisc a little better (if Sony in that era had done a better job at advertising!), I may have picked up a MiniDisc player (if they’d been more widely available in the US), especially one of the entry level HiMD recorders. (I could have continued dubbing from the radio and CD and still done SOME copying of MP3 files from friends [just have them use Sonic Stage and dump MP3 files onto my MiniDisc recorder, though yes, this would mean having to lend my recorder to my friends], which would have been the sweet spot for me in around 2005.)
I used to transfer MP3s to cassette tapes and did that until, like you, I got a 30GB iPod in 2006.
I like my phone and have a lot of music on there (no streaming) but I maintain that my cassette Walkman and my first iPod were the best personal music players I ever had. I still use iPods regularly with an iPod speaker dock.
Love that compressed version of 'Telesound' in the outro, there's something charming about that twinkly/underwater sound of lofi audio artifacts
I bought the Diamond Rio in '99 if I recall correctly. I never bought a memory card for it and it would hold almost a whole CD. It just wasn't ready for prime time yet, but it was close. Today I still buy music online and load it on my phone because I don't get down with streaming services. I bought it, I own it, I can back it up as much as I please. Great video, sorry for the semi-lucid rant
I've never liked Apple products ever since I was forced to use the Apple II Plus and iMac G3 in school. My first three MP3 players were Rio Cali and Rio Cali Sport.
Most of my music is from ripped CDs or vinyl.
I didn't get an mp3 player until freshman year of highschool when my aunt gave me her old ipod (one of the very first ones I think) this was 2011-2012 before that I used a portable CD player (2009-2011) until the ipod bite the dust and my parents got tired of buying the cheap mp3 players for their high school kid so about 2013-2020 I used a portable CD player. Now I have data and use my phone
Seems almost like the WMA support might've been added in later as a software decoder and the hardware might just not be up to it and struggles to keep up until it builds up some amount of buffer. Probably just something tacked on to make the device competitive and still appease the music owners by picking something rather closed off and with DRM baked in. Would probably also explain the poor battery life if the CPU is just burning away doing everything rather than hardware dedicated to the task like on an ipod.
4:49 lol look at that CD burner for 279. 12x speed was pretty fast in that time. We got our 10x Acer during a black friday morning. After the rebates it came to 100 bucks. We got a hell of a lot of use out it. That was when Black Friday was an exciting event. I think it was 1999.
I listened to my cassette walkman through the early 2000s. Then I used a CD walkman until the start of the 2010s. Still use an MP3 player when it's charged.
Oh for fuck's sake, i didn't see this one at all till now because of the algorithm and this is a topic I love, Ben.
Guess I'm on YT's bad side again.
My first hard disc MP3 player was the iRiver H100 which had a 20GB hard drive inside. I then upgraded to iRiveer H300 and to a 80GB HD (thanks Rockbox!). The HD was a swine to find one without Apple firmware due to Apple using the same model in their player. This was used to store radio programmes to listen to at work.
These days I use a Rockboxed Sandisk Sansa Clip+ with 256GB SD card for work and another one with 128GB SD card for music. When these go I'm going to be in trouble as I like my music players to have tactile feedback.
As for RealAudio: Don't you know what spyware is? You do now!
Try formatting the CF card in the Lyra to FAT16 instead of FAT32, if it isn't already. You may need a third-party disk formatting utility, if you don't have an old Windows 95/98 machine that lets you choose that option when formatting.
Just dug it out from the episode, it is indeed FAT16. blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqqQiYg8w_2V70vXrEwaojso2pGekbGhn-BSiiWcymy2YfEknsgYhGrCeXQrG4samcshfE0cu_manXE-nEb_X6M3svZXkuYFZONZJljpc0C9-uo1Nt43xqQRPmfZMYnUsSCRRhpTS2XBiGJ5Gc7u1oFpyWbFbrb7LYmvk6ie_QzyIOwFEv5P9N0gfmSA/w228-h574/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-27%20at%203.35.46%20PM.png
This is a great video. My first MP3 player was a NOMAD II from 2000 that held 16MB of music. My first iPod was the mini in 2005. As for the country group mentioned at the 6:20 point, I would rip these songs to the player: Mirror, Mirror, One More Day, Meet in the Middle, Beautiful Mess, and I Believe.
I love that crazy parallel port cable you have. Life is better with a parallel port and Windows 98.
Oh god I'm not nostalgic for the unreliability of hardware connectivity at the time, with no or non-working PnP. But yeah the solutions of the day are definitely amusing. :p Apple really hit it out of the park with firewire and usb options.
@@Aeduo I agree that the future is better in many ways. But for retro gadgets, having a parallel port is very handy.
@@JanusCycle oh yeah for sure. Just even for the time it was crap. SCSI should've been more of a thing on PC compatibles.
My first MP3 player was the RCA K@zoo and I still have it and it still works but I can't get songs on it anymore because it used musicmatch jukebox to load songs. I modified it to fit regular SD cards and tried to load songs on by card reader and it acknowledged the card but wouldn't play. Turns out the files are encrypted to .mpx format. That may be what's happening to your Rio player. If you can get it to load songs try loading them onto the card then putting it in a card reader. I have a ton of mp3 playing devices now.
Oh man, to go back to the days that 128k CBR MP3s were good enough...Got a D-Link DMP-110 back in 2001 or 2002, sucker had a whopping 32MiB of space on it, and those lovely SmartMedia cards could be used as added storage. A few years back I got another of the same player so I could read my cards that I still had after all these years...Only cost me a tenner nowadays, and I'm certain it was ten times that 20 years ago. 😆
Those suckers quickly downsized for sure, as by 2005 I was using a flash drive sized Creative MuVo, and thankfully those you actually accessed like a flash drive. I would later move to Zune then Zune HD for the short-lived period that was on the market, then would discover the joys of RockBox around 2008 to 2009 with a multitude of players leading up to about 2013 (Clip, Clip Plus, Clip Zip, Fuze Plus, all SanDisk devices). In 2013 I would finally give in and get myself a smartphone. I recently dug out my Fuze Plus from a drawer only to discover that it still had stuff on it from 2013, literally pointing out the exact day I had purchased some music then had encoded it to mp3 and copied it over.
i was waiting for this for a while :)
I still use an MP3 player. I just recently bought a Lucia M4.
Diamond Rio was a really underrated band. I was a huge fan back in the day. Check out some of their deep cuts, they have some great instrumentals buried in their albums. Jimmy Olander can really make that B-bender sing! Good luck with your Diamond Rio that plays nothing but Diamond Rio!
I’m far too attached to Clarence White and Bernie Leadon. :D
@@OddityArchive I will have to check out Clarence White. Cheers!
@@OddityArchive check out Gram Parsons as well. He only did two solo albums, one released posthumously. Pretty good Country Rock.
I love Gram, but this about lead guitarists that played modded “B-Bender” telecasters. For what it’s worth, Clarence and Bernie both backed Gram at varying times.
@@chipbush0111 start with The Byrds album “Sweethearts Of The Rodeo”.
I'm with you. I don't care for streaming. You never know what you're getting. I tried Spotify for a week & immediately got angry that I already had higher quality versions of everything they offered. I should be streaming my stuff for them. Unfortunately, I don't plan on paying licensing fees any time soon.
Its about convenience mostly, the quality quite frankly is good enough for most people and that’s awesome that we can quickly enjoy music whenever, for the rest of us we can keep our flacs
look at these nuggets
Recently got a Sony NW-E505 (512mb) from 2005. I remember seeing it in Circuit City when getting my first mp3 (a much cheaper iRiver). Had to figure out how to use it without the proprietary Sony-ware in 2022 but after that I can store a quick playlist on it (in 320kb mode) and the simple functionality of the unit is beautiful. Other than that I'm using my phone or a fleet of 2000s discmen for portability.
Sony's Early MP3 Players were HORRIBLE. Loaded with Tons of Root Kits and Nasty Viruses and Incompatible with anything besides Music Now.
Cassettes and mixtapes here until 2005, when my last try at resoldering the headphone jack to the board failed. BTW I love the sound of 16 kbps music. Listening to some of my own collection that way sounds like the most remote, mysterious internet stream that happens to play all the music that I like.
Am I the only one to still thinking "ultra compressed rattling and muffled sh!t" while I hear the name "mp3"?
I know it's now actually a good format. But I heard so many early mp3, I just can't.
Most Early MP3 files had mediocre compression and poor bitrates. Its why I decided in '99 to spend $200 on a Dreamcast instead of Rio500 or Samsung Yepp or Nomad.
>early MP3 nuggos
Wait, I didn't click on a Dankpods video...
Ah my PKCELL!
The smart media has no internal controller, its literally just a nand chip broken out to the pads. XD picture card tried to take up the slack but sucked for the same reason but I think it topped off at 1GB. Anyways, the RIO treated SM card as another nand chip simply using a chip select line to swap between and wrote the music in a proprietary file system (but not encrypted.) There is actually a software hack that allows you to pull the music back off of player and its expansion card.
Back in the early 2000s I had a bunch of mp3 players and mp3 CD players. My fav was my Rio Volt SP250 CD/MP3 player and the one I hated was my Rio Riot 20GB jukebox. The most impressive CD/MP3 player I had was the iRiver SlimX IMP-400, it let you look at lyrics in real time and had a built-in snake game lol. I also have a bunch of smaller 1-2GB players and those got used more than anything because they would get amazing battery life on one AAA battery at max volume.
Still have my rio, also upgraded memory. Hopefully can get something for it someday.
3:56 I almost have that exact walkman, I found my sony wm-fx491 at a thrift shop for only 2 AUD and bought it mostly for the old stock earbuds that it also had in the box, sadly it's left-biased and makes music sound louder on the left side and thus don't use it
I have another walkman a yellow waterproof one but that also has headphone jack issues and cuts down the volume when not holding on the headphone jack pressed to the side
With a third party utility called Riositude, the Rio PMP300 will even work on 32-bit version of Windows 7 (tested on an old ThinkPad R52 which does have a parallel port). As for the encode settings, I prefer ripping tracks at VBR V8 using Foobar2000. Sonically speaking it's far from optimal, but at least it sounds somewhat better than the CBR 64Kbps configuration.
Never heard of that group, when I hear Rio, I think Duran Duran or Bianca Del Rio
My Dad worked with the sister of the drummer of Diamond Rio for years
At 6:05 in your video. The reason you failed to get the software running is because the Rio uses the parallel port for downloading the music and the software has to directly "Bit-bang" the registers in the parallel port device. Because of this low level communication with the hardware. It is impossible to make this work on any emulator or virtual machine. It MUST be ran on native hardware.
The printer port passthrough is a good idea. But the transfer rate must be atrocious.
Love it. I had the Lyra around 2002, and it played great, but getting music on it was always a tedious mess. That was the problem with most of these early players, the music syncing was always terrible. Apple made it much simpler and probably became the standard because of that.
98 is finicky in virtual machines on a good day, so it's probably not your fault.
4:31 From August 23, 2000. (Notice how we're still referring to "the year 2000" even though it's far in the past now...?)
It's probably less encryption and more file hierarchy or proprietary extension format modifications.
A lot of devices followed the camera standard and there was at least two or three different folder names that were accepted assuming you had a classy device like a palm. Otherwise it might have sneakily renamed the file extension or converted to a semi proprietary obscured format through the software on transfer.
It's quite surprising the number of devices that use the parallel port from printers scanners network cards compact flash readers and other weird devices. There might be a built-in driver that's generic but not auto detected through the added device function. That's the benefit of removable media it should at least work with a standard card reader unless the software is hard coded to look for that device.
I stubbornly stuck to legal CDs until 2007, when they were all stolen. I kept them all in a large binder and I didn't have any backups on tape or my computer. Whoops. So I bought an 8 GB iPod Nano and a crap ton of MP3s off of iTunes.
But for the past 5 years, I've used Spotify and an app on my phone to play local files. Been debating buying an iPod Touch but too expensive for such little storage space IMO.
I'm a Xennial and Hipster like Ben. I STILL rely on iPod Touch. Too bad MP3 Rocket has gone the way of the Dinosaurs.
I still have my EgerMan F20, parallel port cable, and SmartMedia cards. My desktop minitower PC still has an integrated multicard reader that accepts SmartMedia cards as well.
I came here to see if the Iomega HipZip was mentioned lol. That was my first mp3 player.
I got a diamond rio with my lucent technology stock profits in 1999. Best decision I ever made
I kind of miss downloading 16kbps mp3s over AOL private room mp3 servers on my 56k in 98. /OddityArchive send list. 16kbps was enough Ben. Send for Seech.
Sony cd players was the nostalgic point for me. I used to have a 2008 one. The annoying part is when the battery dies it dies. I use my tablet which plays more tracks and spotify.
03:56 I have that same exact portable tape player.
It was my pride and joy many years ago.
Can you recommend a DC power source to use that player without batteries? No jacks I have at home fit inside it.
I've only ever used batteries on it.
I think that was the biggest problem with early MP3 playersI think that was the main problem with the early MP3 players, the performance and failures at the basic task of playing music. It really doeshn't take much to work out why the iPod won out over everyone else, it really was that much better than any other device out there on anything except price.
Also, didn't the RCA/Thomson Lyras use the short lived MP3Pro codec? Not that you'd be able to actually find a way of transcoding anything to MP3Pro.
I remember the first MP3 player I got, and I remember how lousy it was. Granted, it was a little later model than most, I got it about 2007 or so, but it was a REAL piece of work. It was cheap as hell, I got it as a gift and it was a gift with purchase at that. It was the more advanced at the time and had the ability to play video and came with this unfunny 2 minute CGI cartoon about a polar bear. Not that you could put that much on it to have many other videos, since it was a chore just to get music on the thing. One time, I deleted everything from it because you could put more music on it through this other way, and all it did was load empty file folders, not the music. Oh. And it had this REALLY tiny plug for the ear buds that would only work with the ear buds it came with. So once they died, you had a tiny little chunk of plastic that did nothing.
Early MP3 Players were hit and miss in Performance and Remarkably.
I never had an MP3 player until quite late in the game, I was still using tapes until the mid 2000's because I am poor.
I'm guessing I'm about the same age as you. I remember Real player very well and also Music match. Then I moved on to more fun stuff such as remember LimeWire? which all I used on my old 486 (I have the motherboard still with CPU and memory, everything else went to tech hell). My first MP3 player was a Creative Zen, which I still have somewhere but don't use it. It was a pain in the rear end to use and the sound quality sucked a tad. But me been me I've gone back to CD's, Cassettes and Vinyl. Great video bud. I've watched most of your content now and think it's awesome. Keep up the good work Ben. Thanks.
Ben was 13-14 in 1999. He was born in 1985. I was 16.
@@Tornado1994 I was 19 in 1999
As an addendum, that is the walkman I have.
I was EXTREMELY late to the MP3 Party. I didn't even use my first Portable CD player until 1997(Although I got a Sony Boombox Cassette and CD Player in Christmas 1995) and spent 1988-1995 just using Cassettes for music, and FINALLY got my first 8 GB iPod Touch(The First Generation) in August 2008 after 9 years of Burning MP3 files on CDs using Kazaa,WinMX and Limewire. It costs me about $150 on Amazon and starting in 2009, used Frostwire for MP3 Files.
The iPod Touch's(Especially up until the 4th Generation) are very unremarkable and often unreliable, Firmware updates will often brick them and the Touch Screens are pretty shoddy with High Break and Failure Rates. Since '08, I've gone through 4 iPod Touches, with the most Recent one purchased last year(after my 3rd Gen one was destroyed by Sunlight in my Car of all things.)
Back when MP3s started getting popular(First Half of 1999), I seemed to Recall them being quite popular. There were about a Half Dozen High School kids at my HS in Federal Way/Seattle who owned MP3 Players. The Two Most popular ones were the Nomad and Diamond Labs Rio500, and the Samsung Yepp:
www.wired.com/1999/08/dl-players/
www.cienacapitalear.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=174716342355&source=www.sonmieux.com
The Most Reliable and common Player was definitely the Rio500. Everytime I had thought about buying one at the time, that $200 kept popping up in my head. I finally said to myself "$200? You can buy a New SEGA Dreamcast with that. You don't need an MP3 Player, at least right now" and skipped them for the Dreamcast. Ironically, the Rio500 itself was modded to be compatible with DC.
Apple pretty much monopolized the MP3 Player Market as iPod begin to Overtake everything else in Sales by 2003, and it didn't help matters the SLEAZY and Disgusting Root Kits and Horrible Infected MP3 Software DRM Ecosystem SONY forced on its own MP3 Players during the mid 2000s effectively killing its OWN Successful Walkman/Discman line.
I liked musicmatch jukebox. The interface was maybe not the greatest but i had no issues with it really, and it was kinda fun in its way. Real player from around the same period was much worse. Somehow took a rather standard Windows looking UI and made it clunky but also needing a lot of power and memory for seemingly no reason, where musicmatch jukebox just ran well for the time. Winamp was the best for an on-PC player but it had the least compatibility with stuff like online services and devices. I guess the only ones who were big enough in the industry to have the business deals with those services and manufacturers were also the best able to make the biggest, slowest software. :p
WinAMP is so 2003!;)
BTW, I used WinAMP for Radio and Audio Interview Broadcasts.
Is this dankpods? Lol good work man
Wow amazing tech from 1998
Fun fact: $250 in 2001 is over $400 today!
"Don't like being online all the time."
Amen to that.
17.09 sounds like You Can Call me Al.
Those two were way too expensive for my taste, but years later I got an iRiver and then saved up a ton for a Zen Vision M. I still have the last version of the Zen, but the screen no longer works - all it can do is port files to a PC.
Early MP3 compression was trash, which was fair given how expensive storage was, but I will say for it, towards the tail end they really got good with battery power.
My last "media only" device that played mp3s? Weirdly enough, it was an older kindle. UI was not that much more annoying than early mp3 players and the battery power was insane - awesome for long car trips and flights back when your phone drain was a real issue. Darn thing finally gave up the ghost and kindle lost the headphone jack and ability to upload your own mp3s (probably thought they were a way to dodge audible, who knows). To this day I still hold on to my old phone because of that headphone jack. I know sooner or later I'll have to go dongle/full bluetooth, but I'll keep it as long as I can.
In '99, I recall the Storage size for my Classmates' MP3 Players only maxing out at 32 MBs of Storage. This meant that you could only fit equivalent to that of a Dozen CDs onto a single SD Card(YES, SD Cards existed in 1999) at just under 75 Songs, and only the Rio500 could use 32 MBs, Samsung Yepp and Nomad both capped out at just 16 MBs(Only 50 Songs Max). Genie in a Bottle I recall was the Most Downloaded Song of 1999.
Everyone Around me in '99 either used Napster or Kazaa(when it was still known as Hotline) and I recall it being relatively EASY as pie taking Non Sony Music Label CDs(Mostly Jive/RCA Zomba Discs like the Stuff from Britney Spears,N'SYNC and Backstreet Boys) and Compressing their tracks into MP3 Files via Real Rhapsody or Windows Mixer(Later WinMX). Hotline/Kazaa was Definitely MORE userfriendly than Napster. But Napster was superior at Compression as Many Files on Hotline/Kazaa often couldn't properly compress 6+ Minute Songs.
The RIAA was ALREADY in Full Freakout mode before Napster even launched, Sony put Rootkits in ALL of its Columbia, Epic E.t.c label CDs.(Mariah Carey's 1999 LP Rainbow was loaded with VERY nasty Trojans in it) Other Labels like Warner Bros(Tevin Campbell's 1999 CD, Tamia's CD and Michael Fredo) used TOC DRM locks on it while BMG(Monica,Whitney Houston) used Licensed Encrypted Software to Convert Tracks
@@Tornado1994 totally remember that. I also remember moving to college around that time and experiencing crazy download speeds on the ethernet they had. People were overloading their PCs with music within a month of being on campus.
As someone who at best had mediocre 56k dialup, moving to campus and seeing a music track download in less than 25 seconds was amazing.
@@noralewis5390 Ah, the Glory days of 56k Dial Up Modems(Which I used for 6 years from 1999-2005), and MP3s Downloaded on Kazaa and Napster at 128kbps.
I also remember when Ethernet/DSL first got introduced in the Fall of 1999. We didn't get DSL until 2005 with Earthlink, and it was amazing watching how FAST DSL grew and how many ISPs started latching onto it during 2003-2004.
A Mac Mini attached to your home theater system is better than most things a human can do. Easy to set up a Plex server. Plays back Dolby Digital without all the windows headaches.
With the Rio with the smart media card, one thing might be that it required a different voltage of smart media card than what your card was. I don't know much about the Rio or smart media cards, but I do know that early smart media cards and devices used 5 volts and later ones used 3.3 volts. Also missed opportunity for (highly overrated) Rio by Duran Duran.
You are correct. I didn’t discuss it in the episode, but I did use a basic 5 type card.
Will you be doing a OA on Heartland Music?
Nice box joke! Those ‘90s country mullets…
4:05 - I wonder what this woman on the cover art is doing now.
The subject of a few creepypastas I’d imagine. “They say she’s still dancing in place today…”
Okay.. wanna know about my day?
ua-cam.com/video/sBQK_CyMFHk/v-deo.html Destiny by Daniel Johns only has 65 views, this is his official upload.
I'm creative zen ™️❤❤❤
i like this dude but i can only watch him with 1.25 speed, sorry 😪
So, my attending the Bob & Ray School of Slow Talkers paid off? 😀
@@OddityArchive i guess so. but anyway, don't wanna be offensive. cheers
I found his voice quite soothing, it induced me into taking a nap.
Ps. Write if you get work.