The DAP I want to buy does not exist yet

[Feldon]

As the subject says, the DAP I want to purchase does not yet exist.

The minimum features I'm looking for:
-At least 16GB in space
-OGG Vorbis Support
-User-replaceable battery with minimum 12 hours battery life for OGG Vorbis
-No software required for transfer, no OS requirements, just drag and drop on Windows, Linux, Mac or from any device I can plug this DAP into.

Bonus features:
-60GB+ with FLAC support
-An ID3 database to track/select my songs
-FM Tuner
-FM Transmitter


Why this choice of feature sets?

I am currently lugging around a personal CD player and my entire CD collection when I go on trips.  It would be nice to replace all of that with one relatively small device.  As such, I need a player that has enough space to store my entire collection (lossy formats like OGG are fine).  I am also a firm believer in non-proprietary everything!  That's why I use FLAC/OGG, its why I want a user-replaceable battery, and its why I want simple drag-and-drop with no special software.

As for the bonus features, my entire music collection ripped to FLAC uses about 40GB of space, and a player that's big enough to store my library in lossless format would be nice.  I said above that I take my collection on trips, often these are car trips.  As such, a built in FM transmitter is handy.  Its not required though because I can always buy a third party add on.  The ID3 database is just a nice-to-have.

You will note there is no mention of colour screens, album art, or video playback capability.  This is because for all intents and purposes it doesn't matter.  If you are big on showing off pictures to your friends, you probably own a cell phone or carry your digital camera with you anyways.  If video playback is what you're looking for, get a PMP, not a DAP that does video on a small screen.


What currently comes close?

iAudio 7 and the iAudio X5 come close but don't have a user-replaceable battery.
The Neuros 2 also comes close, except that it requires special software to transfer songs.

[Feldon]

I haven't visited the Neuros site in well over a year, so I thought I'd check it out.  Seems like they're still focused on the OSD.

Funnily enough, I stumbled upon my old post about my DAP requirements.  Not much has changed for me in the last year, and still no player that meets all the requirements.  I edited the post to bump up my space requirements slightly, but that's it.  It seems with the market switch from harddrive to flash players I've essentially been waiting for flash drive sizes to increase to at least the 16gb level.  They just barely have, so now I'm waiting for the user-replaceable battery.

[ChadV]

I think you're being a hair hard on the Neuros 2... You don't have to use any software to transfer songs to it, as the new firmware has a File Browser.  Problem is, it can't shuffle through subdirectories, so you either have to put all your music in only one folder or only play one artist / album / folder at a time.

And you can then use NDBM whenever (and from any java-capable system) to rebuild the ID3 database, restoring shuffle functionality, and adding artist / album functions.

Voila.  Now, go find yourself a Neuros2. 

[Dusty Bottoms]

Chad pretty much summed it up, you might have luck on Ebay, or maybe a user on this forum is not using theirs anymore.  But the warranty will not be valid, since we stopped selling these December 31, 2006.