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after all these great replies, i'm starting to think the clip is the way to go. the main advantage of the i9 for me would just be battery life. also i can pick up an 8gb original clip for about 5,000 japanese yen delivered. an 8gb i9 would have me looking at 10,000 (16gb is 13,500). a clip+ is basically unavailable in japan or prohibitively expensive to get online.
 
if i go for the original clip, what are the main advantages of rockboxing? i read that the version is still not 100% supported, and the audio quality is supposedly excellent already.
 
i'm tempted to get a teclast/s:flo2 as well, just as a stay-at-home beast that i can potentially hook up to my cmoy. if it could stream mp3s over SMB then we'd really be talking. ^ ^

 

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well i got an 8GB refurbished clip off ebay for $55 including postage to japan. can't wait!
 
still not sure whether to do this rockbox thing or not though. especially not if it's gonna make the whole system unstable at all. also on the rockbox site there is this quote regarding the v2 firmware:
Quote:

Clipv2: There is some very annoying noise which can be heard especially at low volume.

 
reading these forums is dangerous, i already have new headphones and players lined up for future purchases!