So I’ve managed the first tranche of mp3 recoding and trawled around town with the new player (its a Panasonic SV-SD80S SD Audio Player) yesterday and today. If fits comfortably in my shirt pocket, contains just over three hours of music (and has space for another two or so) on a 256Mb card, it cuts out all the local conversation that I’m not going to understand anyway, and it tells the time.
There are a few audio artifacts in there but I’m guessing thats ‘cos that batch took an extra recoding from 96kbps mp3 to 96k aac because I’d ticked the wrong option in the jukebox program, they sound a little like tape flutter so it was disconcerting when I first noticed it but not a problem once I’d gotten used to it.
No idea what battery life is like yet, but I’ve run through all of the 3 hours of music at least once and done a bit of messing around so far, if it turns out to be that bad its got a case that’ll take a standard AA battery. Disturbingly I compared the player to my watch (which I no longer use since it irritates my skin) and they’re give-or-take the same size and weight. The mp3 player is a little more square around the corners and a little thicker in patches but its not exactly big.
Was it a worthwhile purchase? Dunno yet but all the signs are good so far, after the initial annoyance with the software (or lack of).