AGPtek-players any good ?

[Homer19k]

Thanks for the answer Leo.
A faster fastforward and the option to deactivate the "skip to next title" would certainly be a big plus for people who use their player mainly for audiobooks.

Also for the switch of the A12
I see the purpose off the switch now. As in as to prevent to accidentially turning the device on but that is such a rare occurrence (for me at least) that i still think its redundant.

[hunterleo]

Thanks for the answer Leo.
A faster fastforward and the option to deactivate the "skip to next title" would certainly be a big plus for people who use their player mainly for audiobooks.

Also for the switch of the A12
I see the purpose off the switch now. As in as to prevent to accidentially turning the device on but that is such a rare occurrence (for me at least) that i still think its redundant.

Holding the middle buttons to go to sleep mode. Switch off is for long term keeping when it is not in use. That is good for the battery.

Thank you,

Leo

[Kconv]

I am not really someone with much knowledge in the field of mp3 player. The clip+ was the first player i specificly chose because it was recomended as a good player for Audiobooks. And that you could tickle a few extra hours battery life  with Rockbox out of it was a nice bonus .
 
 All i care for in a mp3 player is:
- Battery life
- that its userfriendly for long audiofiles (audiobooks and podcasts)
- that it can take a bit of punishment
- and a good "bang for the buck"-ratio
Everything else is secondary for me.
-Audioquality is not that important for audiobooks
-Playlist are useless for me ( that the player recognises 001 is followed by 002 is enough)
-Any great audio adjustments are not needed 
So keep in mind that my impression is through a very narrow point of view

So for the comparism on the surface the A12 is pretty much a slightly updated version of the clip+. Longer Battery life, micro usd-port  instead of mini-usb and a pretty redundant on/off switch on the side. I consider it redundant because you dont need two ways to turn such a small device on or off (you can just press the play button in the middle for 3 seconds).
Battery life seems alright so far. clip+ best case 15H A12 best case 35 hours
It gives an equally sturdy impression to the clip+ (for that price range). So again i assume it will survive a bit of rough handling.

As i said in my earlier post its glaring weakness is the Firmware especially for my purposes. Although i dont have the knowledge if the slow fast forwarding is because of the software or a limitation of the chip of the device

Thank you for the suggestions. We will improve the features of audiobooks and podcasts. The max speed of fast forwarding is 8X for this chip, so we couldn't revise it with this model. We will take your advice for the new model. 

Regards,

Leo

I have similar interests with an mp3 player. Rockbox has by far and wide the best bookmarking of any firmware out there.

For audiobooks and podcasts, this is probably the biggest thing that rockbox has over their normal firmware, at least in my opinion. If you are looking to pull in more people interested in audiobooks good bookmarking is the way to go.

[pebble]

..now a days Sansa Clip+ can't be sold by fair price, always a blowed price, because it's SanDisk stopped making them.

Could somebody explain, why those older Clips are expensive (AFAIK new were $40-60)? SanDisk does have newer models (Sport,Jam), so it's not the discontinuation. Sound quality? Rockbox support?

[Kconv]

..now a days Sansa Clip+ can't be sold by fair price, always a blowed price, because it's SanDisk stopped making them.

Could somebody explain, why those older Clips are expensive (AFAIK new were $40-60)? SanDisk does have newer models (Sport,Jam), so it's not the discontinuation. Sound quality? Rockbox support?

Usually once a product stops being sold price goes up, rockbox support is another issue.

Mp3 players that handle audibooks well are few and far between, mp3 players in general are disapearing in favor of phones, but phones are actually not that great for audiobooks, because trying to touch a little spot on a screen while walking or running is much harder than pressing a raised button.

This makes those little clips really desirable for people who listen to alot of audiobooks or podcasts.

[Sour_Graping]

Hi

Does the AGPtek A12 support replay gain and have a search function in playlist?

I hope it has both functions or even just the replay gain.

[hunterleo]

Hi

Does the AGPtek A12 support replay gain and have a search function in playlist?

I hope it has both functions or even just the replay gain.

No, it hasn't. Search function in playlist? You have too many playlists? Or you want to search certain song in one playlist?

[Sour_Graping]

Hi

Does the AGPtek A12 support replay gain and have a search function in playlist?

I hope it has both functions or even just the replay gain.

No, it hasn't. Search function in playlist? You have too many playlists? Or you want to search certain song in one playlist?

Search a certain song in playlist like foobar's jump to file/search in playlist.
Those two functions in rockbox were indispensable to me so I asked.

Looking forward to your rockbox capable device in the future.
Had a clip zip before but it broke half a year ago(crappy buttons no longer work) and I still haven't found a good alternative.
I saw the agptek A12 on amazon and I thought it was a good alternative.

[hunterleo]

If our new player can be ported with Rockbox. It will have the features as other Rockbox compatible players.

[Sour_Graping]

Thanks for the info.

[JimZipCode]

If our new player can be ported with Rockbox...

HunterLeo, I'm very grateful for your participation on this forum.  If your new player can be ported with Rockbox (and will hold a microSD card), I'll be lining up to get one!  Please keep us posted.
 

[gem]

Can I find a diagram of the menu tree for the A12 anywhere?  I suspect it has some functions that are not documented in the present online .pdf manual, which is very sparse.  (I could certainly write one that is more complete.)  I would like to explore further before buying one.

[spentforce]

I purchased an AGPTEK A12 to see if it might be a good replacement for the Sansa Clip+ for me.  I have been using it for a couple of weeks now. 

It is a pretty good device, with good audio quality; but I won't be buying another until the firmware adds a few important (to me) features.

I mostly use my mp3 player to listen to audiobooks.  I occasionally listen to music files, but that is a small fraction of the time that I spend with audiobooks. 

The battery life is longer than the Sansa product and the battery charges to a full state very quickly.  The audio quality is not noticeably better or worse than the Sansa product.

1)  The playback order does not seem to be in either alphabetical order or related to the MP3 tags.  This means that audiobooks that are broken into separate chapter files often play out of order.  I have  gotten around this problem by writing a PERL script that writes writes the files to the player in the proper order.  This appears to work, but it is not really convenient.

2)  Fast forward speed is very slow.  I worked around this problem by breaking my files into very small chunks using mp3splt.

3)  The player does not seem to remember where it was in a particular track from one time to the next.  This means that if I stop listening to a large file one hour into the track; I have to spend a lot of time trying to fast forward to the correct point the next time that I use the player.  I have worked around this problem by breaking my files into very small chunks using mp3splt.

There are some other minor issues, but these are the ones that are causing me grief.  If there is a setting somewhere or a better workaround that addresses any of these concerns, I would like to know about it.

[gem]

There are rumors that the A12 can record in MP3 format, possibly in WAV format (but which WAV ... ADPCM, or Microsoft 16-bit WAV?), and several different bitrates.  If the rumors are true, that would be an advantage over the Clip family.  I can't find the info anywhere.

Can you check the RECORD menu(s) and try to ferret out some more specific info about the recording capabilities?  A list of all the options would be nice, for example:
• MP3, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz
• MP3, mono, 64kbps, 32kHz
• WAV, stereo, 16bits/channel, 44.1kHz
etc.

Thanks in advance!

[Trapper01]

Hi,
I wanted to ask if the A12 has the feature, that if you insert MicroSD card, it acts like one storage together with internal storage, like in Sansa Clip+. Thank you.