The Whole iPod Thing

[AdirondacksRob]

Quote: Originally Posted by sibradbury

Go to 'PREFERENCES' and set your ipod sychronising to manual and not automatic and this won't happen.

Couldn't agree more! I accidently allowed iTunes to "keep my music organized" when connecting my iPod to a newly configured computer and WHAM! - 5 minutes later 27 Gb of music was gone from my iPod...thankfully it was easy enough to get it back on there, but what a pain!

**Beware the iTunes organizational functionality....BEWARE!**

[cct1]

PMB, I see your points, but you're in the minority. Itunes isn't perfect, but it works very well (Media Center gives you more bells and whistles, used to use it before Itunes was available for PC, but it's quite a bit buggier. Now I have an Imac, and life is great!).

As for not loading your particular concert, this has never happend to me, but then I use my own CD's primarily, and the Itunes music store occasionally. If you're using a variety of formats, ie Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc., the ipod isn't the way to go.

Not sure what you mean by "You can't get your songs off your ipod once they're on". They most certainly CAN be downloaded back to your computer. And very easily.

I do agree you do have to be very careful with Itunes when you set preferences--it's probably a good idea to delve into the ipodlounge, or at the very least, give it a trial run before putting your whole library in there, as there are pitfalls, and things that could be a bit clearer or come with a warning before you activate/deactivate them.

As for LP and cassettes--they still make those??


So you can by a minidisc recorder (perfect for the mini--there are lots of small places in a Mini one could easily lose a minidisc in), and constantly be fumbling for disc/ songs, or you can have everything organized, playlists, etc., at the touch of your finger. I know there are a few (probably about 47 or 48) minidisc die hards out there, but the ipod is still the way to go, IMHO. It wasn't that long ago Sony tried to go head to head against the ipod with their latest minidisc player. They didn't do so well, and are now looking at an ipod like player and service to compete.

[PMB]

Quote: Originally Posted by sibradbury

Annoying, but not a regular occurence. Its easy to convert to mp3 tho which itunes will happily accept. I think all legal downloads will go onto itunes (?)

Itunes only allows codecs approved by Microsoft. Microsoft is not God.

[PMB]

Quote: Originally Posted by sibradbury

Why does that make itunes crap? If you don't have a PC why would you want ANY mp3 player?

Itunes allows you to load music data onto the iPod but not extract it, enough said.

The point is you can ONLY load data to an ipod via a PC you cannot connect it directly to an optical or digital out of a CD player or analog out of an amplifier, etc.

[PMB]

Quote: Originally Posted by sibradbury

From experience? The ipod. Easily. It so nice not having tons of cd's in the car and much easier to search for the track/album/artist/playlist i want.

Thanks for putting your points across so calmly and eloquently tho PMT, sorry, PMB

Really? while you are searching for your track/album/artist/playlist, taking your mind off the road etc. even at 30MPH every second you travel 44 feet. At higher speed it is a lot more. Well, it is your car to crash!

[dashiel]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

Itunes only allows codecs approved by Microsoft. Microsoft is not God.

that's not true. microsoft doesn't approve of AAC for instance, preferring their own WMA format, or for that matter AIFF. fwiw, you can download additional itunes plug-ins, but as 95% of music these days is available in AAC, MP3 or WMA i don't bother.

here's info on ogg http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messa...79/138840.html
here's info on flac http://losslessaudio.blogspot.com/20...th-itunes.html

[dashiel]

Quote: Originally Posted by SteveM3

However quality is an issue. I had already tried various mp3 coders but the results were awful. So I swapped to iPod and while AAC was better it was still wasn't that good. I now use Apple Lossless and while better again it just isn't up to CD quality when played on my home system. It certainly isn't lossless!

i think you're misunderstanding the concept of lossless and perhaps attributing sonic issues to a format when it's more likely to be the method in which you're connecting to your home kit. there are two methodologies to compression - lossy and lossless. in a lossy compression scheme (e.g. mp3, aac, etc...) information at the high and low ends of the audio file are thrown out, never to return. in a lossless file the information is simply short-handed via run length encoding, when it is decoded the song appears identically to what it was before hand.

think of lossless as a way to store your CD collection for future codecs. so in say 2 years when they come out with some fancy new codec that will give you 10 to 1 compression, but sound sonically identical to the CD you don't have to go through the bother of re-ripping. you simply decode the lossless files to AIFF/WAV and then re-encode to brand new format.

though i must say as a personal preference 9 times out of 10 i can't tell the difference between the CD and lossless version of the song and that 1 time i can hear a difference it's just a difference not better or worse.

[Hat]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

Really? while you are searching for your track/album/artist/playlist, taking your mind off the road etc. even at 30MPH every second you travel 44 feet. At higher speed it is a lot more. Well, it is your car to crash!

you could just as easily do the same trying to juggle a CD out of its box & into the stereo, or re-tuning the radio

[dashiel]

oh yes and to answer the initial question.

i've had an ipod since the first weekend they were available. (i had been looking at HD solutions for sometime and unhappy with them all) in fact my original 5g ipod is sitting here and still fully functiona albeit looking a bit worse for wear. i still get 5-6 hour playback time on.

i also own a SLVR itunes phone and 30GB ipod video, on which i have transcoded my entire library from ALAC to 128kbps AAC. as someone mentioned previously the car is such a horrible place to listen to music that the inferior quality of 128kbs is fine.

i find the use of the smart playlists, ranking songs appropriately and proper use of the ID3 tags makes listening in the car a breeze. i have the following 4 playlists set up for use in the car.

1) 4 star and above
2) 3 star and above, not played in the last 6 months
3) added in the last 3 months
4) unrated songs not played in the last year

this gives me a nice simple way to vary my music, and not take my attention from the road. i also have a playlist set up in which i specifically add tracks i know i want to listen to.

as for durability - it's a mixed bag. none of my ipods have ever had a problem. my sister had a blue mini for 2 years; she spilled water on it a couple of weeks ago and it understandably blew up. my girlfriend had a pink mini and left it in her car overnight then went jogging; the hard drive was ruined. i can only assume that going from the very cold environment to jogging must have been bad. on the other hand, my sister found a 20GB ipod photo (yes, she posted signs) that looked like it had been thrown from a car moving speed; very scratched and chipped, yet it worked like a charm. and as i mentioned my first generation is working fine after 5 years of use.

i would say if you're looking for an ipod that will remain relatively stable (e.g. in the car, or in your pocket 95% of the time) and you have a large collection >1000 songs go with the HD ipod. if you're fairly active, like to go jogging, biking, etc... or have a small collection go with the nano or shuffle.

[cct1]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

Itunes allows you to load music data onto the iPod but not extract it, enough said.

.

True statement, but very misleading. There are several FREE third party applications that will allow you to do this--all small and very easy to use/download. And, if you're going to import your entire library from you ipod to your PC, you can do this without Itunes or a third party application--just like you would an external hard drive. So while Itunes won't allow you to do it directly, it's still a VERY easy thing to do.

[PMB]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hat

you could just as easily do the same trying to juggle a CD out of its box & into the stereo, or re-tuning the radio

Hat, that is why my suggestion is to use MP3 data CDs. All recent Mini Boost CD players play them and you can still store hundreds of songs on one CD. On your PC you store songs in directories (perhaps one album per directory) and each directory gets written to the cd. It starts to play just like any other CD and you can skip tracks just like any other CD. However, if you press the "M" button the HU displays "MAN" for about 10 seconds. Skipping forward and back during "M" skips from one directory to another. Pressing "M" again or waiting 10 seconds takes you back to normal track skip. You can also select random play etc..

So basically you are getting the the functionallity of hundreds worth of iPod for next to nothing. Judging by the eather today I would rather opt for aircon!

[cct1]

You are not getting the functionality of hundreds worth of ipods. Have you tried plugging earphones into a disc? I just did. I tried, but I couldn't get it to work. Maybe it's the battery, but I can't find a place to plug my earphones into.

Seriously, if you are JUST looking for a solution for your car, an mp3 disc would be OK--not great, but OK. You can get 100 songs, more or less, on a disc depending on your compression--but it's still not as easy to navigate as an ipod. I've done both; I thought I'd give it a try with the disc first--and finally broke down and put the aux/in into my car. I'm done with the discs now--the ipod is just that much more convienent, with that much more flexibility.

If you're going to use a player for uses other than just the car, the ipod just makes more sense.

Every one has different thoughts/needs/desires, and I'm not saying yours are wrong, but the majority of people will do better and be happier with an ipod than they will a disc player.

[Jaffa Racer]

anybody had experience with airport express for the house?

[dashiel]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jaffa Racer

anybody had experience with airport express for the house?

yes. it's acceptable, but far from perfect. the lack of remote and some sort of feedback is a pain. there were some initial problems with audio dropping, but the latest firmware updates seem to have fixed that. if you're okay with using itunes to set the music and then leave it playing as is the AEX is fine. the latest macs (imac, macbook pro and mac mini) do include both a remote and software (FrontRow) making the "10 foot" interface more palatable.

another nice new feature is the ability to stream to multiple units.

[SiBradbury]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

Really? while you are searching for your track/album/artist/playlist, taking your mind off the road etc. even at 30MPH every second you travel 44 feet. At higher speed it is a lot more. Well, it is your car to crash!

I didn't say while I was moving. Its easier to find than opening my glovebox and looking for the cd I want.