I just remembered what my first ever MP3 player was, the SSI Neo 25. What a pile of dogshit it was, and $500! From memory this was just before the iPod was released (I rapidly changed to a MkI iPod), and also around the time I got my first slimp3, how it transformed my listening was almost miraculous.

What was your first? Fond memories?

empeg mk1 of course, wish I hadn't sold it

empeg mk1, still have it.

There must be some of you that had something other than the empeg as your first...

I had a decision to make slimp3 vs empeg, slimp3 won because at the time I was only listening to Radio 4 progs on my mini disk player while mobile (maybe CD before mini disk).

empeg Mk2. The only other hardware player I've ever bought was a Rio Karma, which I ended up returning. I've occasionally loaded songs onto my cell phone to listen to, but I've never quite found another dedicated MP3 player worth buying.

The first software player I used was Fraunhofer's Winplay3, and the first MP3 I downloaded was "Naked Eye" by Luscious Jackson. It took more than half my meager computer's CPU to decode and play it.

The Karma is by far the best MP3 player I've used, shame the scroll wheels broke and that Rio went bust before they could release an update.

Really can't remember the first mp3 I downloaded, or even where it was from. I remember using allofmp3 quite a lot, but I think that was later. Mind you, ripping my existing collection kept me occupied for years.

RealPlayer (??) was my first mp3 app, what a piece of absolute crap. Was so happy to ditch that shit and move to WinAmp & whatever AudioGrabber's predecessor was called.

First MP3 player, was the Neo 35, followed by the Riocar (empeg mk2) a month later.

The first MP3 I downloaded was years earlier, and was actually the first commercially released single online, Duran Duran's Electric Barbarella.

Empeg mk2, then empeg mk2a

Admittedly I do have an iPod Shuffle, but that is only thanks to Hugo's box of gubbins. It is useful when learning new songs with the band - if I'm on a train the low audio quality isn't a major issue anyway, I usually just need to learn timings etc.

Aside from those 3 - no others needed :-)

Mine was a NEX-iA. Fairly unknown and fairly unsupported. It used CF cards and AA batteries (the model I bought delivered with a 1GB microdrive- luxury!). It got me through many flights.
The follow-on model NEX-Black didn't quite make it to market before the company collapsed. I found one on eBay for cheap. Sort of an upgrade, but not by much. Still have both units, but haven't used them in a while.

I never saw the point of ripping CDs to MP3s until empeg came out. I was furiously ripping CDs in the weeks leading up to the arrival of my Mk2. (And then had to later re-rip them when discovering that 128 kbits is just not enough.)

empeg MK 1 here in 1999 was my first dedicated MP3 unit. I had a roomate at the time who owned the Rio500, but the 64 meg limit was a dealbreaker for me. I had been considering MP3 CD players, and even bought one as a gift for my sister, but never did buy one myself.

The Rio Karma ended up being my first portable player, followed by an iPod Nano (scratch if you look at it edition) that I used for podcasts. Since then, any on the go music has moved to my iPhone.

I can't remember what my first actual MP3 was, but it was played with a pre 1.0 version of WinAMP on my AMD 486 120mhz system. It was amazing to hear the quality, but it came at a cost of consuming nearly the entire CPU to do it. Once I moved to a Pentium system, I began ripping music from CD, and burning them back to CD-Rs.

I had my name in the waiting list for an empeg and slimp3, as soon as I did that I started ripping.

I was already interested in MP3s long before portable players were available. I was converting much of my music collection to MP3 so that I could play them on my computer without swapping out CDs.

When the portable players started to come out (the early Rio units), I wasn't interested because they never had enough storage space. So when I heard about the Empeg, I was clearly the target market. My first MP3 player was the Empeg Mk 1.

Portable players were never really something I was interested in. I alpha tested the Karma and some of the other Rio players, but never really used them seriously beyond the testing. The Karma was the first portable player I touched that had anywhere near the storage space I needed, but at that point my needs were already solved by the Empeg. I didn't do activities (jogging, biking) that would have required a portable player, so those things were never high on my list.

I never owned an iPod for the purpose of playing music. When I finally got an iPod Touch, it was just for the web browsing. And when I got an iPhone, it was so I could do the web browsing without a Wifi network. I *still* don't load my music collection onto my iPhone because they *still* don't have enough storage space! After all these years!

Not me. Mk2a.

What was out prior to the mk1? Nothing that I can readily recall.

Prior to the empeg, I used the 'puter to play mp3s. I still do.

My 9 year old daughter has a nano... I still have the empegs only.

I do some of those type of activities, but I don't use a portable player, and I wish all the other people that did wouldn't, if they're in a location shared with other people.

Mk2, first, then MK2a, then another MK2a.
Before that, PC.
Now I also own and iPod I never use and a Zune I use mostly for podcasts.

Ditto.

I actually laughed at the guy at my office who bought and empeg until he took it out of the box and showed it to us. That's when I "got" it and had to eat my words.

But I remember the chore of ripping down all my CDs (both times)- now I'm doing the same with my DVDs (and I'm pretty sure I'll do it again because I'm not crazy about the quality of the rips but I've already purchased two tools and can't invest in another atm).

First mp3 player was an empeg Mk2 here. And many since.

Cheers

This is killing me. I'm certain I had an MP3 player well before the empeg. I was listening to MP3s on my computer in around 1997. I so clearly remember only having something like a dozen tracks, including "Oh, What a Night" and "Stairway to Heaven." I listened to those over and over again just because I could, and I remember being amazed that these files were only a tenth of the equivalent WAV files! It's just incredible to me to look at a micro SD card today and think about the percentage of space that my MP3s took up on my parents' computer

But I'm sure I had a player before the empeg...I must have! I certainly listened to MP3s all the time in 1999. It was my freshman year of college and the year that Napster broke out. EVERYone listened to MP3s. Did I really not have a player until I put the empeg in my car the following summer?.....

Most of my friends using Napster, back then, used to burn CDs from MP3. Meaning, back to CDA format, so that they could listen to them on standard cd players.

That, or only listened to them on the computer.

Yes. That was me as well,once I got a PC powerful enough to decode them without glitches.

I now remember swapping MP3s with a friend after downloading them on a 57K line before ADSL times. Not nice

Actually, I would also occasionally record them on a cassette tape for my pre-empeg Pioneer car stereo. Then the Empeg came and the world changed and all was good. I still remember the immensely satisfying feeling of having some intelligent, computerish, versatile, powerful car stereo in my very first car (VW Polo, 2001). A dream come true. And the liberating feeling from all the tapes and cd cases and all that waste of space and time.

Oh well, you all know well about that

Yup. I am the not terribly proud owner of a fully functional Diamond Rio PMP300 with an awesome 32MB memory and 16MB expansion card. Parallel port transfer cable. Sits in a box with my awesome 640x480 resolution Agfa digital camera, a Motorola Star Tac, and other technological relics.

MK1 for me too. There wasn't too many around back then.

I had an laptop with a bad screen installed in the trunk/boot of my car with a serial character LCD and a serial IRMan for input in circa 1997

Okay, I just had my brain unfreeze on me. The empeg WAS my first MP3 player, though not long after that I had the Archos Jukebox recorder (in, I think, 2001). I can't remember what model it was.

Then, because my wife and I were going to Europe for a month in 2004 and wouldn't have a laptop with us, I bought the Archos AV340 and the additional CF card reader in order to store the photos we took onto it. Of course, we ended up taking more pictures in a day than could even fit on those CF cards, so I would end up sitting in the middle of St Paul's cathedral copying files onto my Archos to free up space. I can't believe that was 6 years ago, and now your average P&S camera can take a card big enough to last most people a week-long trip without dumping their card.


ANYway, I finally remembered what I used for music before the empeg and my Archos. I had a Sony Minidisc player! I think I got it before MP3 players came out, and when they did it didn't make much sense to trade up for one, because the players were about the same size, held the same amount of music as a Minidisc, and I could just carry multiple discs around with me if I wanted to listen to something else.

Minidisk was a great format.

I know a broadcaster who still makes a copy of every show he does on a mini-disc and keeps it.
Curioualy, at my end of the radio waves, I record his show on a 10 1/2 in. reel to reel tape and listen to it in the week, although I don't keep an archive, I record the next show over it each week.

Blinking nora boxer, that's a bit extreme isn't it?