MP3 with line-in jack

[cronnin]

I wanted to record some live shows directly from power-mixer so I bought some MP3 player with line-in connection. It had very poor quality of recorded sound. The salesman and I did read in the manual that it records at 128Kbps bitrate, and it seemed to us fine cause we thought it was 'mp3' compressed, all because the manual stated that the player works only with 'mp3' and 'wav' formats and it obviously can't be 'wav'. But it was. The IT representatives somehow always find a way to manipulate with data.

The player records in some mutant version of 'wav' called 'wma' and it is something like 2 channels x 16 KHz sampling x 4 bit resolution = 128 Kbps.
FGS it cuts highs at 8 KHZ! It is totally useless. Note that the extension of the file is *.wav, though it is everything else but 'lossless'.

Does anyone know if Creative Zen are any good for line-in recording.
They are also supposed to work at 128/160 Kbps (don't remember exactly) but it is important for me to know what is the format of the recorded sound and it would be nice to hear some real owners expirience.

I am interested in:

Creative Zen Nano
Creative Zen V
Creative Stone

(plus or non plus versions )

 

[cronnin]

You guys are totally useless

You guys are totally useless

I got Creative Zen V at last, and it works superb.
Its line-in encodes directly to WMA format at 160kbps (max) with 44.1KHz sampling rate. It is better than 160Kbps MP3, though it adds some metal in.
Its highs are more crispier than average

You can use it for recording music from different sources, like old LPs or you can record your live show directly from power-mixer's headphone/control out.
You will have a problem recording live drums without a propriate number of microphones though.

It even has a screen with VU-meter on it, so you can adjust the output volume of the source to a perfect level.

Its microphone records at 32Kbps, 8KHz sampling rate to ADPCM audio format. The highs will be cut off at 4KHz which is the same like you land-line telephone. Imagine recording somebody speeking through the speakerphone from his kitchen? Almost useless for any purpose


About the player...the sound reproduction is awesome. I haven't heard better in sub-$80 range. Headphones are cool, crispy clear, very good bass, you won't need better for the start.


If you want FM-tuner and video-player (though only at 15fps) get Zen V Plus version.