Got a Philips?

[madkid]

Hello. I'm just curious to see how many people here at AnyhingButIpod have a Philips GoGear mp3 player. I have the sa3245 4gb model. I've had it since August. It's got a few problems, but it's held up longer than some of the other players I've used. It plays my mp3s pretty well but sucks at WMAs. Kinda sucks because a lot of my music is in WMA. So now I have to convert them to MP3 for the best results with the player. But it's worth it. If you have one, please post the model (if you know it) and what you like or dislike about it. I just want to know if I'm alone or not. Thanks for your time.

[CrowdAds]

[advcomp2019]

Did you know that converting a lossy format to another lossy format is a bad idea? One reason, you will lose SQ.

[madkid]

I'm already aware of that. But thanks for the heads up anyways. I'm not one of those people who are obsessed with the best sound quality around. So therefore I don't notice the difference. Everything I converted sounds like it did when it was WMA. Maybe it is partially because of the FullSound technology Philips has been putting into it's GoGear players.

[beteks]

when convert from a lossy format to another you should convert to WAV and then Mp3.

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by beteks

when convert from a lossy format to another you should convert to WAV and then Mp3.

No, there's no advantage in that. It's just more work.

[madkid]

Like I said before, I don't notice the decrease in sound quality when I convert my audio file from WMA to MP3. And I really don't see how converting to WAV and then to MP3 would make the sound quality any better. It'll still strip out the same sound. So yes it would be more work with no advantages whatsoever. I appreciate the idea though.

[beteks]

well MP3 is better than WMA but if you want space then stay with WMA. I use MP3 128K 48hz and decent enough for me.

[fihart]

I have the strange triangular Philips SA1110 USB stick-type 1gig mp3 player.

It's well constructed and the best SigmaTel based player I've used (most are dreadful). Philips' support site is pretty good compared to the non-existent support for most SigmaTel based brands.

Has small controls and rather confusing menus, sounds good but volume is a trifle low.

[madkid]

Sounds like you have a nice player fihart. Hope you continue to enjoy it. I just screwed up my Philips about an hour or so ago. All my music that was on it is now gone. Thanks to me getting so curious and messing with things that I shouldn't. Luckily I fixed it and I'm putting my music back on it from my computer. Lots of converting, but it's well worth it. beteks, I thank you for the recommendation but WMA isn't a choice. My player doesn't play WMAs very well. It'll play MP3s just fine though. That's why I'm converting my WMAs into MP3 before I put them onto my player.

[fihart]

I was warned off the more sophisticated Philips models by friends due to their annoying proprietary software.

But the simple stick model does drag and drop and supports folders so it conforms to my "anything but iPod" ethic.

So far, despite being bought for just £5 (say $7.50) secondhand it has proved reliable and battery life is reasonable from a single AAA cell.

[madkid]

Sounds a nice player fihart. I'm glad you find it reliable. Personally, I never found those cheap stick players to be reliable at all. I always got the cheap players as well. My first player was a LennoxSounds player I think. 35mb of SDRAM I believe. Required a battery to store the information. Take the battery out for too long then you lose all your music and data. That broke on the bus only about a month of owning it. Just dropped it and it stopped working. Second one was a black Nextar stick player. Thing worked for about two to three months. After that the audio output jack stopped working. My third player was the first one I had with an internal battery and video support. Got it for Christmas of 2007. It held one charge. The next day, the battery died and wouldn't charge back up again. That sure sucked. Not long later my friend's dad gave me a used iPod Shuffle. That worked for the rest of 9th grade. After that, for the summer before 10th grade started (now I'm currently attending High School in 10th grade) I was using an RCA Pearl. A month before school started and on the same day I made $80 from a guy at church, the volume + button stopped working. Got angry and threw the darn thing into my fish tank. About a week or so later I bought with most of my $80 my current player. Philips gogear sa3245 with 4gbs flash memory. I'm hoping this thing will last me the next year or two. I'm glad you found such a good player fihart.

[fihart]

Your history is similar to mine -- succession of cheap chinese (all I think SigmaTel chipped) junk. Ugly and horrid to use; illegible screen fonts, crappy controls, mystery menu structures.

But they sound okay and have the virtue of being so cheap that losing or breaking them is no big deal. I've ended up with 5 of them including the Philips with a total of 5.5 gigs of space (excluding resident software overhead in each). Hard to remember what music's on which.

However my "disposable is good" theory has been challenged by buying a £60 (say $90) LG FM37 4gig touchscreen multimedia player with FM, text, movie and photo facilities. It was ridiculously cheap secondhand, sounds good and is superbly made -- though annoyingly it doesn't support folders and the colour screen eats power. Trouble is, carrying it I worry that I'll I crush, drop or lose it.

[babya]

I have a 1GB SA3115-you do have to use Philips own conversion software for videos, but other than that it's a UMS device for drag and drop transfer (appears on my Mac and PC).

[babya]

I have a 4GB SA6145 which was on sale for $99 (RRP was $250 originally in Australia) and it has a integrated speaker which sounds very good-can be used to play music through (and radio with v1.07 firmware).

Unlike many players with a simple built-in speaker, the speakers in the SA6145 are 2 full-range speakers.

And there's a built-in Class D amplifier in the SA6145, which many cheaper players don't have.

Headphones are Philips AY3815 (looks similar to SHE2610 or SHE1360) and are very good for stock earbuds (quite like the bass).

One feature that I really like is:Superscroll is a very easy way to scroll through songs.
You press the up/down buttons a little harder than usual for quicker scrolling.

The screen is a large 3.5" (QVGA) which makes it lovely to watch videos and view photos on-very crisp and vibrant colors.

MTP only-but can drag and drop music/videos/photos using Windows Explorer (will charge on a Mac interestingly, though)

[Appletree]

Originally Posted by madkid

Sounds like you have a nice player fihart. Hope you continue to enjoy it. I just screwed up my Philips about an hour or so ago. All my music that was on it is now gone. Thanks to me getting so curious and messing with things that I shouldn't. Luckily I fixed it and I'm putting my music back on it from my computer. Lots of converting, but it's well worth it. beteks, I thank you for the recommendation but WMA isn't a choice. My player doesn't play WMAs very well. It'll play MP3s just fine though. That's why I'm converting my WMAs into MP3 before I put them onto my player.

Mmm... Can you tell me more detail about Philips WMA playback issue? I have plan to buy Philips GoGear SA5245BT. Just want to know about this product capability.

[JoshT]

I just got the GoGear SA3025 for christmas, and its similar to the sansa sandisk e200 series, which I have had before, and loved. I'm hoping for a rockbox version for gogear but I cant seem to find one. If anyone has any development links I'd like to help out.

[Jazmina]

I just bought my mom the 2 gig GoGear. I got it for her so when she goes away tomorrow she can listen to a audiobook on her drive. I can't seem to get it to play consecutively though. It jumps from 1 to 23, then 34, etc.. And each time you start over it changes (1 to 26, etc....). I have re-labeled and tried using just numbers 01, 02, 03, etc.... But I can't figure it out.

Has anybody had any luck with listening to audiobooks on the gogear?

[fihart]

Could the player be set to random or shuffle?

Also depends on how the chapter files are labelled. If they have proper Tags they should play in order but if the chapters are folders and the player doesn't support folders it may revert to alphabetical or numerical order.

[Jazmina]

Originally Posted by fihart

Could the player be set to random or shuffle?

Also depends on how the chapter files are labelled. If they have proper Tags they should play in order but if the chapters are folders and the player doesn't support folders it may revert to alphabetical or numerical order.

Thanks. Everything was labelled correctly and there were no other folders, just numbers to make it easy for the mp3 layer to pick up (I used to have to do that with my old mp3 players). As far as I could tell it seemed like the player was stuck on shuffle, but I couldn't find anyway to unshuffle it. I ended up doing the repair with the software and it said there was a problem. It lost all the info and I loaded it again and everything played correctly.

For future reference, is there a way to turn the shuffle off? I only see an option in the all songs (or something similar) and it doesn't seem to have an on/off.

[fihart]

As you may see from earlier posts I have an older Philips player -- I don't think there 's much in common between it and yours.

I supect though that it you go to Menu and select System there may be a setting that helps.