The Whole iPod Thing

[Hat]

is it really all its cracked up to be? i've resisted up to now but i would really like to know what the pros & cons are. i know you've got the obvious like being able to load your entire music collection & take it with you anywhere but so what? does anyone actually do that or do you just end up with a handful of albums on there & a load of unused memory?

what about the in-car experience - do you spend ages trying to find a decent album or something you like? does almost infinite choice mean you just browse & never listen to an album?

has anyone gone the full integration route in the home? i have CD's everywhere & am constantly being nagged about them - is a hifi link or airport the answer?

[frylock]

Most people just put a handful of albums on, and don't load their entire collection. That's why the nano can get by with just 2/4GB of space. I had a friend with a 30GB iPod--she was using less than 1GB.

In my opinion, the iPod is best used as a portable music player. It's interface and everything were designed for that purpose. There's really no good solution for hooking it up to your car/home stereo yet. Of course, if you're going to be one of those people who only use 1GB of your space, the 5 album (or whatever) limitation of the BMW iPod adapter might work for you.

Personally, I just made a bunch of mp3 CD's that I play in the stock CD player.

[Hat]

Quote: Originally Posted by frylock

Most people just put a handful of albums on, and don't load their entire collection. That's why the nano can get by with just 2/4GB of space. I had a friend with a 30GB iPod--she was using less than 1GB.

In my opinion, the iPod is best used as a portable music player. It's interface and everything were designed for that purpose. There's really no good solution for hooking it up to your car/home stereo yet. Of course, if you're going to be one of those people who only use 1GB of your space, the 5 album (or whatever) limitation of the BMW iPod adapter might work for you.

Personally, I just made a bunch of mp3 CD's that I play in the stock CD player.

thats pretty much what i do - i have a MP3 headunit & a cd changer which gives me both options currently.

[jd72277]

I LOVE my iPods! First, yes, my eitire music collection is loaded up in iTunes. Well, maybe not entire because I didn't load a few CDs I got by mistake or that I absolutely hate, but I have nearly 30GB loaded. I have the 40GB 3rd generation so there is still a little space on it. I use it all the time though, in the car when I am not listening to NPR, in the gym - I actually go to the gym now that I have an iPod... I have a closet full of CDs but typically only use them to load onto iTunes and then never listen to the actual disc. I think of them as a 3rd backup, if my computer and external hard drive both manage to die. I use a cable to my receiver that hooks into the CD inputs (or any RCA) and have a cable going from my AUX port in the MINI. It takes a while to load all your stuff onto the iTunes (and then sync with your iPod) but it is worth it. I enjoy having +7000 songs all playing on random. It's like my own radio station. I chose iPod since it was the "standard" in the industry. Others could very well be better players, but having an iPod makes it able for me to borrow iPod formatted music from friend's computers. Between my wife and I we have a 40GB G3, a 20GB G4, and a 2GB Nano (got that one free when we bought our 06 MCS). I hope this helps.

PS. No, I don't work for Apple (but wish I did!)
PPS. I am listening to it right now.

[laura f]

I love my ipod and hate driving without it now, partly as one car doesn't have a cd player I like the fact I have a lot of stuff on there, but also like the fact i can't get everything on it so rotation is great as i forget what i have sometimes

I could use airtunes at home (if i connected it up, haven't yet) also have a JBL ipod speaker thing and the new radio also has an ipod connection, I rarely use CD's these days and it keeps them nice & tidy (for a change)

[LMB]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hat

thats pretty much what i do - i have a MP3 headunit & a cd changer which gives me both options currently.

As soon as I buy a CD I covert it to MP3 as it's so much easier. I then up date the IPOD regularly so it's always fresh with new music. I've had a Rio, my g/f has the new Sony but for easy of use and accessories the IPOD is king.

[irrationalcat]

Personally, I have most of my music collection on my iPod. Well, the stuff I like anyway. I have found (and I know this dates me) that even going back to when I made mix cassette tapes from albums, that there is always a percentage of any album I am not overly fond of. So now, while I rip the whole CD onto my computer, I don't really want to listen to the whole thing anyway. So what I do listen to, goes onto my iPod.

And my iPod has been divided up into useable playlists. Some of them are dictated by genre like Celtic music, or (no gagging) Showtunes. Some of them by mood - like upbeat Rock n Roll, or Quiet and Ballady done-me-wrong tunes so that I can play any group depending on my mood when I hit the car. There is also a playlist of songs my husband and I can agree on so that when we are in the car together, we don't fight over the music. (He hates the Showtunes, but I am betting you guessed that). And the nice thing is - that any one playlist can have enough songs in it that if you hit a song that you don't particularly WANT to listen to right now - you can just skip to the next one - and never repeat songs on any given trip (and I have an hour commute to the office).

We have a nice tuner/speaker set up at home - not audiophile level but nice, and we hook our iPod right up to it. Works great. I have gotten to the point where I hate the CD clutter, and the act of physically changing them out in the car is painful and distracting.

My husband did not initially get why I wanted one and was totally disparaging of the whole idea. Now he has his own. He uses it completely differently from the way I use mine. And you would probably use your completely differently from the way either of us use ours. They are pretty flexible and you will find that you can make it do pretty much whatever works best for you.

Wow - that was a longer 2cents than I anticipated it to be. Hope this helps.

Teri

[Hat]

all great feedback. interesting to hear you had a rio first mo - which one did you have & why is the pod better? i've always thought the rio's look like great kit

[LMB]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hat

all great feedback. interesting to hear you had a rio first mo - which one did you have & why is the pod better? i've always thought the rio's look like great kit

I had the rio carbon. Great piece of kit but the lack of accessories was a big -ve. At the time you couldn't even buy a decent case for it. The IPOD is just so integrated into society you can buy anything for them.

[PMB]

I have an iPod 4g 20Gb that I bought last June. I hated it and regretted buying it within a couple of hours. iTunes is inflexible and the MP3 format leaves a lot to be desired from a high fidelity point of view. Even the Apple Lossless and other supposedly lossless formats are dynamically limited and have high distortion compared to CD. I tried it in with my stuff at home and it is easily bettered by any of my other sources, including cassette and FM. This is probably poor quality op amps in the iPod adding to the misery of the MP3. For cheap headphone use or in car ipod is acceptible.

The battery duration is claimed to be 7-8 hours. This may be possible on the very lowest resolution MP3s if you never skip tracks. You see the iPod reads as much as it can into memory and plays that. On low resolution MP3 it may read 20 minutes of data at a time. Once the resolution goes up it may only be able to store 1 minute or so. Therefore the disc is either constantly running or stopping and starting all the time. My best run time is about 5 hours. Battery life is also poor. I have not had to replace mine but I understand that after about 15-18 months the battery dies and has to be replaced, not cheap either! When my battery dies I will not bother to replace it I will just use the adaptors or maybe just use it as an external hard drive for backing up files.

I wish I had bought the latest minidisc recorder instead. The latest ATRAC versions are capable of recording at higher than CD quality. If MP3s are really your bag then each optical disc can store up to 1GB. Best of all it takes one standard "AA" battery, replaceable anywhere.

As for the Mini, I use MP3 discs. Cheap and simple to make and use and avoids the poor quality op amps of the iPod. If I could just plug my iPod straight into the car I would probably use it but I certainly would not pay more than beer money to have it installed. From a sound quality point of view it is just not worth it.

Of course this is just my view. If you really want the convienience and annoyance of trolling through so many songs to find the one you want (once you have 1000 songs on there it is not easy) then go for it.

[AMW]

I got an ipod (as a gift) and I love it. It's only 15 GB (it's 2 years old), but it's nearly full. I don't use it every day, but I did use it every day for about a year on my commute to work and listening at work. I have about one third of my music collection stored on itunes, which takes up about 20 GB on my computer. I often switch things off the ipod and every time I buy a new CD, I plug it straight into itunes. I don't buy anything from itunes as I like having the CDs, and itunes doesn't sell a lot of obscure indie-rock that I like to listen to. When I compare carrying the ipod around to carrying a discman around or even a CD wallet (you know, those carriers with CD sleeves for like 12 CDs), it's just incomparable. I have a gadget the size of my wallet (or a pack of cigs, if you will) in my hand that holds about...200+ CDs of music on it. I don't need to carry CDs around, worry about them skipping, etc. Up until now, I've used both the ipod cassette adaptor and the local radio transmitter to use the ipod in a car, and they both worked well.

As for playing it in the car, I don't know about that yet as my MINI is currently on its way here from England. But I'm getting the ipod adaptor installed. Having 1/3rd of my music collection in one small little gadget is about as good as it gets. And I can assure you that I will enjoy the ipod all year round, whereas the heated seats I got installed on my MINI (for about the same price as the ipod) can only be enjoyed half of the year. To me, it's a bargain.

The other thing is that I listen to books on tape and language training materials often when traveling (in cars or in public transit). I go to the library, take out the materials on CD, burn them onto itunes, voila! It's a hell of a lot easier to carry that ipod around than it is to carry around the 17-CD set for each Harry Potter books-on-CD or the latest PD James on CD.

As for sound quality in a car...usually the road noise is too loud for me to even bother with this. Listen to some Sigur Ros while driving and you'll realize that you can't hear half the song and then the other half is way too loud (though the mp3 compression kills it anyway, ipod or no ipod). So...I'm one of those that won't really care about maxing out sound quality in a car until car companies start putting in serious noise cancellation devices for the interiors.

[Rakey]

really surprised you haven't got one already Hat, knowing how important music is to you.

Mine is a 15gb, and I have about 35gb on the PC at home, so have to rotate it round.

I find having it fitting in the MINI is a real treasure and that I listen to stuff I haven't listened to for ages. The ipod for me opened up my music and increased my library as I tend to borrow friends cds stick them on itunes and save a bit of cost too

Oh and Jo loves having hers in the car, she is a big fan of podcasts.

I say get one and never look back mate

[jd72277]

I would recommend not getting the factory iPod adaptor and either going only with the aux port and a cable ($20 from Bestbuy) if you don't care about charging your iPod while driving, or getting the Dension Ice>Link, which you will find mentioned many times on this site. My problem with the factory adaptor is the playlist 1-5 thing. I don't want to have to create playlists prior to getting in the car and would rather be able to sort by artist/album/song, just like the iPod interfact allows. Dension allows this through the radio controls and it charges your unit as you go. For now I just use a cable from my AUX port and use that huge ugly cup holder that all newer MINIs come with as my iPod holder. I may get a Dension sometime, but with 3 iPods between my wife and I, there is no worry of not having a charged battery. As for quality of music playback, while I am no audiophile, I do choose to import my music at a higher rate than 128 which is the default on iTunes. It sounds fine to me with my stock audio system and I have no complaints.

* AMW - I know exactly what you mean with your Sigur Ros example. I also found that The Smiths and some Morrissey albums are mixed at much lower levels than most other albums in my collection, so when I have it on random I crank it up and then get blown away when a track from a different artist comes on.

[irrationalcat]

oooh- right - Podcasts.. Where would I be without WhiteRoofRadio??

[jd72277]

Quote: Originally Posted by irrationalcat

oooh- right - Podcasts.. Where would I be without WhiteRoofRadio??

Very true! WRR makes my workday go by so much faster. I recently was without a home computer for a few weeks and missed a few episodes. I had the pleasure of listening to 10 podcasts over 2 days and caught myself up.