I wanted a small and compact player for the summer. I eventually want to get a HD player…but for now I just want a 1 gig flash player. After a lot of research I narrowed my choice down to two players. The iRiver ifp-899 and the Sony NW-E507. I went and bought the Sony mainly because of the size, battery life and because it looked so damn cool. The player itself looks and feels great. However, after using it for a week, I may have come to the conclusion that it may not be for me. I guess I didn’t do enough research as to what I needed.

I listen to a lot of radio shows and pod casts in mp3 format. These can run in lengths of over 3 hours at times. However, there are times when I want to take a break from that and switch to music for a little while. I can’t do that without losing my place in the file. If I switch to music, and then return to the radio show or podcast I was listening to…I have to start from the beginning, and then scan to where I left off. This is really annoying. I have read the same complaint from others, that most players do not offer a bookmarking feature. I know the iPod offers bookmarking, but that’s only for files in .aac… that doesn’t help me. I don’t want to convert every mp3 I download or have archived. It would also be helpful if I could set the speed of the fast forwarding…but I can’t.

Another big problem for me is that the player only accepts mp3s encoded from 32 to 320 kbps. Any file with 24kbps or below cannot be played. This is big for me, since a lot of my radio shows are encoded at 24kbps. Now is this a common thing? Is it common for most players to not play files below 32kbps? Are there players that do?

I really want to be able to keep this Sony. I love the ATRAC3Plus format for music, but honestly, I listen to radio shows just as often as music. I need a player that caters to both. If I knew there would be a firmware update that would enable bookmarking or the ability to play lower bitrate MP3s…I would easily stick with this.

So basically I am looking for a flash player (preferably 1 gig) that can bookmark mp3s (without converting to another format) and that plays mp3s with bitrates under 32kbps. I could probably just split the radio shows into 10 minute segments and do without bookmarking if need be, but I need the lower bit rates. Maybe there is a way to trick the NW-E507 into playing lower bit rates?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Doing this research is a lot of fun, but it sucks to have a player you really want to keep…but just doesn’t have the features you need.

The Creative Zen Micro V plus allows you to save a book mark when you are listening to a track. You can store up to 10 book marks (handy for me as I like to listen to podcasts and audio books).

The Zen has an FM radio too.

Sorry, don't know about the minimum bit rate though.