Back in March (2006), I searched many countless hours and poured of countless reviews to find the perfect MP3 player. I needed a flash MP3 player to use while running as the crappy old MiniDisc player was just not cutting it. Well, to be honest, I don’t want it to be just an MP3 player, I wanted to play Ogg Vorbis and Flac files. As it turns out, VERY few players actually play Flac, but more and more are adding Ogg support. One in particular caught my eye.

The Samsung YP-Z5 (ZB). This is the player created by Iventor, the creator of the original iPod click-wheel. I read many underground reports about alleged Ogg support and then stumbled across AnythingButiPod’s review of the sweet device. I’ll spare you the obnoxious amatuer photos and refer you to their rather graphic images (they took the device completely apart). Once I read this, I was hooked. I walked into Best Buy and plunked down $150 for the 1GB version (I was unsure of Samsung’s quality) and a DJO neoprene armband.

I should note that Samsung has not yet officially claimed Ogg support (in any of their packaging or marketing materials). In fact, very few sites mention it, even in the reviews. Amazon (at one point) did not have Ogg file format listed as one of the supported formats (I believe this has changed).

One concern of mine was that MTP devices would be a problem. MTP is a protocol invented my Microsoft and like many of their products, it sucks. I was looking for a USB Mass Storage device that would hook up to my Gentoo machine as a SCSI device like my flash card reader. The salesman at Best Buy was actually helpful (first time EVER) and was able to tell me that most flash players are actually MTP. Well, the second I brought the device home, I tried to get Ogg support working in Windows first; lets just say that Microsoft’s support for Ogg is less than stellar. Even after I had the plugin installed and actually working, the files were dropped in the device outside of the Music folder (I’ll explain how I know this later). I think I’m going to have to write a Grinds My Gears about WMP because the interface to creating playlists and syncing to devices is deplorable.

I was curious, so I plugged the device into my Dell monitor USB 2.0 hub connected to my Gentoo machine. Lo’ and behold, the player hooked up as a UMS device! I’ve been reading around the net that this DID NOT work in Windows, but in Linux it worked like a charm. That’s right, my hardware worked better in Linux than Windows. Come to find out, you can actually use GPhoto to communicate with MTP as well as PTP, but there was no point.

After I hooked up the device, it let me magically create and move any file I felt like anywhere I felt like. All I had to do was mount the device with the SCSI device file (sdf1 on my system, ‘mount /dev/sdf1 /mnt/samsungz5′). Ogg files copied with the greatest of ease. I now have NO devices that only work in Windows; that includes my Kodak camera, Easyshare printerdock, Cannon scanner, and now my Samsung YPZ5 Ogg player.

The player lives up to the hype. The battery works as estimated, even when playing Ogg files. I found out about a recent firmware upgrade that adds UMS support to Windows (haha, I’ve had it for months) and On-The-Go Playlists (”Mobile Playlist”). All you have to do is copy the DAT file to the root of the device and follow the reboot instructions provided in the download. The OTG playlist support is the sweetest new feature. This finally lets me create a good mix for my timed races. You can also browse files as they appear on the filesystem (rather than browsing the tags).

So in conclusion, I eagerly await the Next Big Thing from Samsung. Hopefully I will be able to afford something around 8GB.