Use the Tilt as Your Full-Time MP3 Player?

Ever since I purchased my Tilt, I have been integrating it into all aspects of my life.  One of its primary functions now is as a digital audio player.  I purchased an 8GB microSD card and have loaded over 2,000 tracks on my Tilt, a combination of my personal collection and Zune subscription tracks.  In order to use the Tilt as my main audio player, I turned to Pocket Player from Conduits.  Thanks to Pocket Player, I was able to sell my Microsoft Zune and rely solely on the Tilt.  Find out more after the break.

Pocket Player is chock full of options and features.  Some features that I saw users complaining about and requesting on Zune forums I was able to obtain with the combination of the Tilt + Pocket Player.  Among them are bookmarking, an equalizer, DSP, plug-ins, and crossfade / gapless playback.  Pocket Player also includes Podcast and video support.  With the a data plan, you could take advantage of sites such as Stereogum or Fluxblog that offer free, legal MP3s and download them right to your Tilt (I did this over my most recent vacation; I racked up something like 490MB of data usage).  Thanks to the built-in Bluetooth support, I was able to purchase a set of Motorola HT820 Bluetooth stereo headphones and easily pair it up with the Tilt, and rock out to tunes through Pocket Player.  And with the most recent update to Pocket Player, the program will now take advantage of the existing AAC codec on the Tilt (iTunes Plus users can now rejoice).  Having support for MP3, WMA, and AAC helps put it on par with my old Zune.

But probably the biggest feature that I wasn’t expecting to love was SHOUTcast support. SHOUTcast is, at its most basic, Internet radio, with a ton of genres and stations to choose from.  I had some previous experience with XM online radio, so I expected something similar. And since I have the unlimited data plan for my Tilt, bandwidth / data was not an issue.

Oh. My. God.

SHOUTcast is awesome.

SHOUTcast takes what’s great about satellite radio, and then takes it to a whole new level. Why I never used this feature before (it was available on my old LifeDrive when I had Pocket Tunes) is beyond me.

I usually browse by genre. And there are a ton of them. By decade, language, and musical type. Under each genre are a number of stations. This plethora of choice is outstanding, and instantly makes my Tilt and Pocket Player even more valuable. I’ve been saying for a while now that Microsoft needs to add Internet radio as a feature on the Zune, for the simple sake that the Sansa Connect had it (both devices have Wi-Fi), and that struck me as a great and doable feature on the Zune platform. But having experienced it, I can say that it is not only a nice feature to have, it’s a must-have option. I want to switch it up on my Tilt? Just jump on over to the SHOUTcast list, and listen to what I fancy.

And that ultimately is what is making the Tilt more valuable than my Zune. I have absolutely the best of all worlds here. A lot of music on a memory card? Check. Subscription support? Check. Bluetooth headset support?  Internet radio support? CHECK. The fact that I don’t have as much memory as my Zune 80 is a trade off, but I can live with it since the Tilt + Pocket Player gives me a ton of options for my music fix.

That is my experience with my Tilt and music.  How about you?  Have you gone down this road?  Perhaps you use a different music program on your Tilt? Tell us about your setup!

Written by Doug Smith · Filed Under Fuzesite, Software 
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