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Forbodium · Apr 23, 2005, 02:03 PM

I'm looking for a flash-based personal music player that offers an SD-card slot and is UMS (universal mass storage) compliant. So has anyone owned one that they can offer a review of? I was very interested in the Sandisk Sansa until someone said that it is not UMS-compliant.

rozwado1 · Apr 24, 2005, 07:38 PM

I don't think there are any non-Apple, Mac-friendly flash players; hence the reason for that stupid lawsuit last year.

new newton · Apr 24, 2005, 08:37 PM

Of course there are. My old Nomad II works just fine with iTunes. I've got no idea what's out there for players you'll find in stores now, as I can't imagine wanting a flash-based player. I'm sure there's quite a few that would work, though.

Forbodium · 10:19 PM

I don't understand the "lawsuit" comment.

Regardless, I know there are flash-based music players with expansion slots that are UMS-compliant (Lexar LDP-600 comes to mind, although it was unfortunately designed very poorly). That is all I'm asking suggestions for here. It doesn't have to show up in the iTunes window. Simply dragging from the iTunes window to the player's icon in the finder is fine with me (which is one of the characteristics of UMS-compliant).

I want a flash-based player so that I can listen to my preferred music while running. It is not as easy to find a good one as I thought it would be, considering the apparently evil Microsoft plan known as "Plays For Sure" (which is what prevented me from choosing the Sandisk Sansa - It supposedly won't show up as an external HD on anything other than a Windows desktop).

cef · Apr 28, 2005, 12:35 AM

Go on over to dapreview.net and spend a few good hours reading up. They cover at least 2-3 new (and often weird) players a day. I've found tons of mac-friendly flash players there, some of which even handle AAC (non-DRMed) files, but I don't remember if any took SD cards because I never looked for that.

Forbodium · May 13, 2005, 05:15 PM

Thanks, Cef. I frequent Dapreview, but also know that they don't usually go into whether a player is UMS-compliant or works with a Mac or not.

On another note, I just got confirmation by Sandisk tech support that the Sansa IS IN FACT COMPATIBLE with Macs. I should have asked if it's UMS-compliant, but was happy enough to hear that it will work with Mac that I didn't bother to ask anything else. SO, thumbs-up and thank you, Sandisk.

cef · May 13, 2005, 06:56 PM

According to the manual on the site (http://sandisk.com/retail/dap-manual-pm.asp) I believe it is UMS compliant:

"Because your player appears and acts like a hard drive connected to your computer, you can use your computer file browser to create folders and move music files on your Digital Audio Player. This can help make it easier to organize and find music on your player."

Elsewhere, the manual also states that you just plug it in and go (no drivers).

Forbodium · May 13, 2005, 11:14 PM

Originally Posted by cef

According to the manual on the site
(http://sandisk.com/retail/dap-manual-pm.asp) I believe it is UMS compliant:

"Because your player appears and acts like a hard drive connected to your computer, you can use your computer file browser to create folders and move music files on your Digital Audio Player. This can help make it easier to organize and find music on your player."

That's the older Sandisk player. The Sansa is the one I'm considering
(http://sandisk.com/retail/sansa.asp).

The published info for the Sansa never mentions UMS, MSC, Mac compatibility, or "shows up as a hard drive regardless of OS". Previously, someone incorrectly told me that it was not compatible with Mac because of Microsoft's PlaysForSure scheme holding a virtual exclusivity clause that prevented those players from working with anything other than Windows. Since all the other flash-based players that have an SD-card slot pretty much suck (in my opinion), I was very relieved to hear an official statement that the Sansa was compatible with Mac.

Anilan · May 14, 2005, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by Forbodium

I'm looking for a flash-based personal music player that offers an SD-card slot and is UMS (universal mass storage) compliant. So has anyone owned one that they can offer a review of? I was very interested in the Sandisk Sansa until someone said that it is not UMS-compliant.

How about the flash players from MPIO ?
A lot of them are OS X compliant and can be used as mass storage as well.

I own the MPIO FL100 and I use it with my iMac using an iTunes plug-in available on the MPIO website. It works well. It has an expansion slot that reads SD and MMC cards.

chenyichung · May 30, 2005, 11:12 PM

Hi,

I was just wondering how to install the iTunes plugin for your MPIO FL100. I downloaded the file, it's a "sit" or "sitx" file, I don't remember. But when i try to open up the file, it says that there are no applications that can open it up. I was wondering how to get this plugin to work.
If you can help me out that would be great, thanks!

-Yi Chen

Anilan · May 31, 2005, 06:40 PM

Use Stuffit Expander to extract the downloaded file.
Move the plug-in file to ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins folder.
Once you've done that, open up iTunes and if you have the player plugged in, it should appear on the sources menu on the left.

wuzup101 · May 31, 2005, 10:22 PM

I run w/ my iPod... go figure

There definitely are some nice flash based players out there, but personally I wouldn't consider one over the iPod, or any of the other nice HDD based players. But to each his own I guess. I personally just make a "lifting/running" playlist and that's what I use while at the gym.

Drakino · Jun 5, 2005, 11:03 AM

All the Rio Flash players work fine with iTunes on the Mac, and many have expansion card slots beyond the internal flash. The main caveat for nearly all the flash players out there is that they typicially will only support MP3 and not AAC in iTunes.