• How good is a Zune?
    17 replies, posted
Hey guys, I'm in dire need of a music player. Now with my experience with today's tech, I'm not impressed with battery life. I was thinking of getting an iPod, but I wanna search my options. How good is a Zune? Is it a good alternative? Is the battery life good? Since it's a Microsoft product, does this mean it's much more compatible with Windows? You don't need to download a third party program like iTunes? Other than these general questions, I have no idea how good a Zune is, can anyone with experience in this topic tell me some great tech for music players?
Zune's still exist? As far as I know you may need the Zune software as most Microsoft Mobile devices from that era didn't support USB filesystem support. (I used a phone with windows phone 7) I've always had Android and Windows Phones all my life and always put my music on those over USB. If you just want a dedicated music player over USB, I personally think you're better getting a generic mp3 player.
Zune have been known to be a terrible joke. We had one back in the day and i honestly can't remember if it was good or not. Which probably means that it really wasn't that great.
The Zune HD was great. I remember those were out before the iPod Touch really took off. They were immaculately designed, had good storage capacity, and basically pioneered subscription-based music downloads. And that interface? Absolutely beautiful. The other Zunes were decent, but Apple's DRM locked them out of half the digital music market. They were solid PMPs, but they just couldn't compete. And now Apple doesn't do a proper PMP to save their life, so you're kind of stuck.
Had the 120gb 2nd gen zune back in high school, the device was amazing though the software required to put music onto it was a laggy nightmare most of the time.
According to a friend of mine, Zunes play FLAC so if you are into lossless compression with large file sizes than the Zune might be right up your alley. If you believe the hype, and want to look like a snobby audiophile, the Pono is supposedly alright too, although it's not cheap so I don't know how dedicated you are to obscure digital audio playback devices.
[QUOTE=splenda;49228273]According to a friend of mine, Zunes play FLAC so if you are into lossless compression with large file sizes than the Zune might be right up your alley. If you believe the hype, and want to look like a snobby audiophile, the Pono is supposedly alright too, although it's not cheap so I don't know how dedicated you are to obscure digital audio playback devices.[/QUOTE] Well then your friend has no clue what they're talking about because there is no FLAC support on the Zune, the software refuses to even add the file type to the library. That being said, the ZuneHD is absolutely the best mp4 player even today. The battery life is incredibly long and it charges quickly when it does need to be charged. You have to use the Zune software on your PC but it is so much lighter than iTunes and isn't absolute garbage. I've been using mine daily for the past 5 years and it still feels amazing to use.
[QUOTE='[ToRn];49220615']...You don't need to download a third party program like iTunes?[/QUOTE] This is possible the best line ever written in history. Perfectly sums up the experience with iTunes
My Mom has one and she complains about it all the time. She's not stupid with computers either, so it's probably shit.
The creative xen is like a million times better.
I got a Zune (30gb, first generation 'Brick') for free during that Windows Club Live crap back in like 2007. Great music player. Beautiful interface, fairly non-intrusive (but mandatory) software. Battery lasts forever, though it uses some bullshit proprietary charger.
For alternatives I hear the latest Walkman is pretty good, very pricey though.
[QUOTE=Propane Addict;49232066]Well then your friend has no clue what they're talking about because there is no FLAC support on the Zune, the software refuses to even add the file type to the library. That being said, the ZuneHD is absolutely the best mp4 player even today. The battery life is incredibly long and it charges quickly when it does need to be charged. You have to use the Zune software on your PC but it is so much lighter than iTunes and isn't absolute garbage. I've been using mine daily for the past 5 years and it still feels amazing to use.[/QUOTE] Wow shit good thing I didn't listen to him and did not buy a zune, yes I know flac on a small device like that is worthless but so much of my library is flac that something having native support just means I don't need to convert stuff.
They're built like a bomb shelter, have insanely long battery life, and the UI is pretty great imo. They're not really a product you can buy anymore though afaik, and although you can still find the installation media the apps for them don't really exist on the player anymore. [editline]2nd December 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=splenda;49234170]Wow shit good thing I didn't listen to him and did not buy a zune, yes I know flac on a small device like that is worthless but so much of my library is flac that something having native support just means I don't need to convert stuff.[/QUOTE] If you had a 16GB player you probably couldn't reasonably expect to fit much more than 400 songs if they're all FLAC, FLAC on a mobile platform is a really awful idea in general unless you like the idea of constantly re-organizing your music files. My music library is mostly 320kb/s or worse and despite not being too huge it's 7GB, fucks up my phone's storage good.
[QUOTE=Elspin;49234202]They're built like a bomb shelter, have insanely long battery life, and the UI is pretty great imo. They're not really a product you can buy anymore though afaik, and although you can still find the installation media the apps for them don't really exist on the player anymore. [editline]2nd December 2015[/editline] If you had a 16GB player you probably couldn't reasonably expect to fit much more than 400 songs if they're all FLAC, FLAC on a mobile platform is a really awful idea in general unless you like the idea of constantly re-organizing your music files. My music library is mostly 320kb/s or worse and despite not being too huge it's 7GB, fucks up my phone's storage good.[/QUOTE] Yea I know it's super bad for all my music to be in FLAC, trust me even I say that. But when your computer setup is a bunch of pretty expensive shit and stuff, you amass a lot of FLAC. Like I'd rather just have FLAC versions of all my stuff then have to make separate versions for my phone. Also I have a 64 gig sd card in there, so it holds enough music for me to have a lot of options. I also am a fan of changing out my whole phone's library on occasion to spice up my listening experience, so FLAC files size lends well to that.
[QUOTE=splenda;49234255]Yea I know it's super bad for all my music to be in FLAC, trust me even I say that. But when your computer setup is a bunch of pretty expensive shit and stuff, you amass a lot of FLAC. Like I'd rather just have FLAC versions of all my stuff then have to make separate versions for my phone. Also I have a 64 gig sd card in there, so it holds enough music for me to have a lot of options. I also am a fan of changing out my whole phone's library on occasion to spice up my listening experience, so FLAC files size lends well to that.[/QUOTE] Ideally the software would compress your music for you when transferring to a mobile player without affecting the files on your desktop, and I think the zune player might have even had that option, just don't know if it did it from FLAC.
They're probably alright but I'd buy a FiiO X3ii instead IMO
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