iPod

[RacinM3]

Anyone use one? I'm thinking about getting one and adapting it in my car to replace the cd changer.

How is the sound quality compared to a real source cd in a changer/player?

I've heard that the compression of the iPod (or any mp3 player) causes a certain amount of degradation.

Any opinions are welcome.

[tllips]

I have had the 20G for about a year now. I love it! I put all of my CDs into it (about 200 or so) and it took up about 12G. I now have 4000 songs available at my fingertips and can randomly play them and not hear a repeat for two weeks.

I have not noticed any degradation compared to the CD when listening in the car. Of course there is quite a bit of background noise when driving anyway. It is still a million times better than a cassette.

The only issue I have had is that some scratches that the car player can play through fine are catastrophic to the song when the mac reads them. (i.e. no skips in the car, but the iTunes/iPod skips throught the whole song)

I would recommend it to anyone! :D

[Robstar]

^ word :thumbup:

Got one for my recent b'day - Can't sing anymore praise about 'em :cool:

Mac/PC, who cares - WAY Cool & lots of uses...

Do it - they rock... ;)

[indyfan31]

If you do get one, give serious consideration to the Apple Care Plan, insurance for your iPod; I believe it does cover the battery.

Also the price of the 20Gs has recently dropped quite a bit.

[SteveH]

Have a 10gb unit. I love it. I use a cassette adapter to play songs in my car with it. My son has a 20 gb unit and has it connected to his car's stereo. That maunfacturer has a plug that will allow it.

Sound quality is entriely up to you (assuming you rip your CDs to MP3s) You will determine the bit rate to use. The higher the bit rate the better the sound quality, but the files will be larger. I'd suggest nothing less than 128. You'll never hear the difference anyway, most cars provide a less than perfect acoustic atmosphere

[RacinM3]

Okay, I broke down and got one yesterday. This post was sort of a last ditch effort to get your input......thanks for responding. I ended up getting the 40GB version that just came out - the price was $100 less than the old 40GB version.

A couple of things.

I'm using 128 bit compression, and it sounds pretty good! I agree with the comment about not noticing it in a car environment. My car's not the quietest as it is, not it's even less of an issue. The car has a Becker stereo, and apparently they make a kit that takes advantage of the AUX setting so it can plug direct to an iPod. After that, my CD changer will still work, but I can't imagine I'll ever use it.

Dumping cd's into the computer sucks. It takes about 4-5 minutes per, and it's errored on a couple, so you have to reload those songs that errored. Sometimes it'll take 3 or 4 attempts before it works. I'm not sure why this is, as the CD's aren't scratched. Anyone?

I need to figure out if I want to partition my hard drive for my music files. Anyone else doing this?

I love how intuitive it is. It's very easy to use. I figure unless I'm in the mood for something specific, I'll just use it on shuffle play. I have 30 cd's loaded up in it, and have only used 0.2 of the 40GB on the disk. I'm blown away that I'll be able all of my 500 or so cd's in this little box, and still have room for a lot more.

I'm gonna try the books on tape option, too.

[JoeBob]

Check out the cover of this week's Newsweek. iPod got the cover, and a few stories inside too. http://newsweek.msnbc.com/

[oddlycalm]

I'm using 128 bit compression, and it sounds pretty good! I agree with the comment about not noticing it in a car environment.

Exactly. MP3 audio not only sounds great in cars, it sounds ok on the Japanese mid-fi home equipment the average person owns as well. The only place the compression becomes a real issue is on high resolution home systems. No shame in that as well over half the popular music CD's out there sound like junk on a really great system as well. The true price one pays for great audio isn't the outrageous system cost, it's that any source material not up to the task has it's deficiancies laid bare.

oc

[Dirty Sanchez]

I use 160bit compression level on both of my iPods. I can detect some differences in quality from cd to 128bit mp3... but this is only on my home system. I haven't really listened for differences in my car.

At 40gigs though you shouldn't have any issues with space...

I have had none of the problems you are describing about ripping cd's into mp3 format on my powerbook. What computer/drive are you using?

I rarely use the iPod in my car... usually XM or CDs. I do take it on long road trips because of the storage capabilities. Usually listen to it at work or on planes (with headphones... and not the little earbuds... bigguns)

[Nosuchsoul]

Don't flame me, but I did not want to pay over 350+ for the Ipod. (I would have to buy the USB adapter since I do not have a firewire port.) So I picked up the Dell Digital Jukebox and have liked it a lot. Battery life is about double the Ipod, the 15 gig version was only $200.00 when I bought it. It also comes with all the cables you need. Audio quality is great, and though I do not have an Ipod to compare it to, I found the interface to be very intuitive. The only thing that annoy's me with it is the music library takes about a minute to rebuild after you recharge it before you can use it. But I'll pay a 150.00 dollars less for that problem. ;)

Also, when I go jogging, even on concrete, the thing NEVER skips on me, and it feels really solid, no cheapo plastic to be seen. The headphones are the little earbud type that do not fit quite right in my ears, but they do sound good. The included software is not too good though, but I just use Windows Media Player instead. Ummmmmmm, bah! Wait a minute it sucks, just kidding, but it is a very good player even for $300. Give it a shot if you are on a budget.

Oh yeah, you can also use it as a removable hard drive to move any types of files around from computer to computer and you can also use it as a portable recorder. It does not have any PDA functions and there are no games on board like on the Ipod though.

[Brickman]

The Blue Devils like ipods (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1446864p-7571661c.html) too.

[CART License]

I'm gonna try the books on tape option, too.

My wife loves hers and so do I. BOOKS you say.. this is the place for books
http://www.audible.com

[RacinM3]

Cool, thanks for the link.

Okay, now I have a little problem. I've got a little over 2MB of songs loaded up so far (946 songs). I want to put my whole CD collection on the thing, which is no problem, I'm guessing it's going to be about 25MB on the iPod, which has 40MB (well, really like 37.5) available when empty.

Problem is, I only have about 8MB available on my computer's hard drive! They way iTunes works, all of the songs have to be in there so they stay in the iPod when I update. So, I need 25-40MB available on my computer's hard drive.

So, questions:

1. I assume I should get an external hard drive, since I don't want to deal with upgrading my internal hard drive. I don't have a fire wire card, should I get one and an external hard drive that functions with it? Is this the fastest combination possible? I don't want to slow down the loading of CD's, it's already slow (especially with 400+ CD's to go!). If not, what's the best combo?

2. As stated above, I already have 2+ MB of songs on my internal drive. I'll have to get them to the new drive. Once I get the new external hard drive, do I re-load iTunes onto it? What's the best way to get my existing music onto the new drive so I can keep adding to the library?

3. How are you guys backing up your music? I'd have to kill myself if I lost the files somehow, whether through hardware malfunction or brain fade.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Doh! Shoulda thought of that before getting the 40gig. :D

Gotta go external (they make em pretty cheap now I think)... or get a new puter. You will just copy your existing stuff onto the new drive. That should be easy.

I don't really backup my mp3 files... but I do have most of them on two separate machines (both macs) so I guess they are backed up that way.

Good luck.

[RacinM3]

Doh! Shoulda thought of that before getting the 40gig.

:thumbup: Ya you're right....I thought the same thing last night as I was checking my avail. hard drive space......I guess I got caught up in the excitement of having my CD's at my fingertips all the time.

Aside, I was thinking last night about the cost of the iPod, and how you can justify it. If you have 500 CD's, bought at an average of say $14.00, then you have $7,000 tied up in something that sits in a drawer, some of which you may not have listened to for years. So, if you take the cost of the new 40GB iPod at $432 (w.tax), and divide by the 500 CD's, its only $0.87 per CD to have them all available, all the time. Even though I'm only through the B's in my collection as far as downloading, I'm already rediscovering some really good music that I haven't listened to in quite a while. Very :cool:

[RichK]

Ha ha! This iPod is going to end up costing you $2000! :p

I agree with you about rediscovering old CDs. We bought a 300 CD carousel player for our house, and I always have it on "random shuffle". I hear songs from CDs that I would never think of playing again, and it's always fun to hear what's coming next (until my wife's Poison CD gets chosen....it's like russian roulette!)

[oddlycalm]

I don't have a fire wire card

If you don't want to have to think about any details, and you are anywhere near Union City, CA, you can have Granite Digital completely outfit you with Firewire storage. They are the best high performance storage house in the country IMO, and I've been using them for over 12yrs now for all my SCSI and Firewire gear. Nice people, and the fastest and most reliable parts anywhere. Their proprietary Firewire bridge boards give sustained transferes twice as fast as anything else I've seen.

If you want to go the low bucks way, generic Firewire cards are under $25 these days. All you need is the card, a cable, and an external drive. There many dozens of externals out there starting at around $100.

I back up files either to DVD or firewire hard drive, or both, depending on frequency of use and how critical they are. I have a Firewire DVD burner in a Granite Digital enclosure as well as a hard drive in a smaller version of the same. Fry's has some incredible specials on hard drives.

oc

[RacinM3]

Ha ha! This iPod is going to end up costing you $2000!

Yeah, no kidding.....

Let's break it down (note I'm not including $$ for fear of getting depressed - same reason RichK never totals his racing bills):

iPod for me.
External drive.
New Firewire card.
Car charger.
Cables to connect to car stereo.
2nd set of cables to connect to wife's car stereo.
Set of cables to connect to office stereo.
Set of cables to connect to home stereo.
Set of cables to connect to bedroom stereo.
Set of cables to connect to garage stereo.
Power cord for office (when I get tired of taking it from work to home).
2nd iPod for wife when she realizes how cool it is.
2nd car carger for wife's car.


Yep, Rich, $2,000 looks about right :saywhat:

[RichK]

Yeah, no kidding.....

Let's break it down (note I'm not including $$ for fear of getting depressed - same reason RichK never totals his racing bills):


PLEASE don't use the words "racing", "bills" and especially "total" in the same sentence! :laugh:


I'm on the fence with iPods, by the way. It's still a little too expensive for me, but I'm doing a long motorcycle trip soon......

[Wally]

A couple of guys in our group use them on the bikes.......even off-raod! They work great. I still struggle with the sound quality vs. CD or even my XM.........but I am sure thats coming though. :thumbup:

[dando]

Yeah, no kidding.....

Let's break it down (note I'm not including $$ for fear of getting depressed - same reason RichK never totals his racing bills):

iPod for me.
External drive.
New Firewire card.
Car charger.
Cables to connect to car stereo.
2nd set of cables to connect to wife's car stereo.
Set of cables to connect to office stereo.
Set of cables to connect to home stereo.
Set of cables to connect to bedroom stereo.
Set of cables to connect to garage stereo.
Power cord for office (when I get tired of taking it from work to home).
2nd iPod for wife when she realizes how cool it is.
2nd car carger for wife's car.


Yep, Rich, $2,000 looks about right :saywhat:


If want to get really serious, check out MP3car.com. There are some seriously sick folks out there. :eek:

-Kevin

[oddlycalm]

If want to get really serious, check out MP3car.com. There are some seriously sick folks out there.

Always easy to spot the geeks without wives or girlfriends, isn't it? Amazing what effect total abstinence has on project scale and time to completion... ;)

oc

[pfc_m_drake]

Cool, thanks for the link.

Okay, now I have a little problem. I've got a little over 2MB of songs loaded up so far (946 songs). I want to put my whole CD collection on the thing, which is no problem, I'm guessing it's going to be about 25MB on the iPod, which has 40MB (well, really like 37.5) available when empty.

Problem is, I only have about 8MB available on my computer's hard drive! They way iTunes works, all of the songs have to be in there so they stay in the iPod when I update. So, I need 25-40MB available on my computer's hard drive.

So, questions:

1. I assume I should get an external hard drive, since I don't want to deal with upgrading my internal hard drive. I don't have a fire wire card, should I get one and an external hard drive that functions with it? Is this the fastest combination possible? I don't want to slow down the loading of CD's, it's already slow (especially with 400+ CD's to go!). If not, what's the best combo?

2. As stated above, I already have 2+ MB of songs on my internal drive. I'll have to get them to the new drive. Once I get the new external hard drive, do I re-load iTunes onto it? What's the best way to get my existing music onto the new drive so I can keep adding to the library?

3. How are you guys backing up your music? I'd have to kill myself if I lost the files somehow, whether through hardware malfunction or brain fade.

I should say that I do not own an iPod, so I'm no expert. But it sounds like you're operating your iPod in some sort of synchronization mode. I'd wager that if you turned off that mode you'll be able to upload or download invidivual mp3s as you please (rather than requiring your entire collection to be in one place).

Indeed, according to the Apple website:


For finer control over your portable collection, you can turn off Auto-Sync and select your iPod’s contents manually.

http://www.apple.com/ipod/autosync.html

This will allow you to rip, say for example, 4 GB of songs onto the free space on your hard drive, upload to iPod, then delete songs from hard drive. Repeat until finished. As I said, since I don't own an iPod, I suggest reading the fine manual for the exact details on how to do this.

Alternatively, there's a company called Red Chair Software which writes 3rd party interface applications for portable mp3 players (iPod, iRiver, etc.) Their application for the iPod is called Anapod Explorer:

http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod

The advantage to the Red Chair applications is that they're very compact, and yet extremely feature packed. Anapod Explorer will give you a streamlined interface between Windows Explorer and your iPod. Then you can drag and drop mp3s back and forth between your computer and iPod rather than 'synchronizing'.

Either of these would seem to be easier (not to mention cheaper) than an external hard drive and Firewire card.

As a side note I'd like to put in a plug for the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. The 40 GB version is roughly $160 cheaper than the iPod.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=55-102-128&DEPA=0

I actually own the 30 GB version, and I'm very pleased with it. It can't do everything that the iPod can (you can't play games on it, for example), and it's slightly larger than the iPod. However, if your primary motivation is to listen to music, I don't know that the iPod has any advantages over the Nomad.

Personal preference I guess...YMMV, and be sure to do your research before buying.

[RacinM3]

3427 songs loaded to date. If I put it on 'shuffle' it would play for 8.5 straight days. :thumbup: