Detlef Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Looking around for Xmas presents, the Apple ipod seems pretty cool. Any opinions what I should get (or not)? I guess music downloads are not free anymore, or are there still free sites? Maybe offshore? How do I make my CD collection into mp3 files? Can iTunes do it? --Detlef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterLefty Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 According to their site, you can transfer music from your current CD's. However, you can choose to use different audio formats for any track that you import from CD. iTunes lets you convert your music to MP3s at high bit-rate for no additional charge. Using AAC or MP3, you can store more than 100 songs in the same amount of space as a single CD. Discerning customers and audiophiles want true CD audio, and now iTunes can give you that quality with the new Apple Lossless encoder. You’ll get the full quality of uncompressed CD audio using about half the storage space. You can copy music in this format onto your iPod or iPod mini, to take perfect audio wherever you go. Also you can transfer music from Media Player, if it is saved on your computer as unprotected format. My wife has been looking and comparing between sattelite radio and an Ipod for me as a christmas present. Kenny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Get the latest version available (4th generation) with the click wheel. If you want something a little different, get the U2 version. Go for a 20G... that's all you'll need. Limewire.com is a file-sharing place (you'll have to download a program)... not that you can get music there or anything. Yes, iTunes can do it quite easily. If you want to share, do 'em as mp3s, but if you don't care about sharing, do 'em as mp4s (m4as or whatever the hell you want to call 'em... smaller files with better sound). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynn jones Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 (edited) the 20gig is great, my son has a 10 gig and he hasn't filled it yet. he uses music match to convert his cd's to mp3's and drags them to the ipod. lynn Edited January 7, 2005 by lynn jones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 The iPod & iTunes are the best combo going for music on a computer and portable player. iTunes rips the CD’s into MP3 for you (Actually AAC/M4P is the new format) and lets you organize the collection and transfer playlists to the iPod. ITunes also lets you burn custom CD’s from your MP-3 collection (if you have the required CD burner). Runs on Window and Mac. You are best off buyng the iPod direct from the Apple Website store. iTunes is a free download from the Apple website. Nothing works better, or easier. Cullen s right about the click wheel, big bonus feature. If you are on a Mac OSX platform, look for a utility called iSwipe (go to www.versiontracker.com). It searches Carracho, Hotline, Gnutella, Limewire & Open Napster servers for whatever you want and then downloads it for you automatically. Great app. There are similar apps out there for Windows, once again use versiontracker.com and search in the PC software section. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 the 4g ipod verges on really good finally, except for codec support. If it weren't for reliability issues with the hitachi hard drive in the rio karma, I'd recommend it exclusively. It is also about to be replaced soon in theory, so it is also kind of hard to find. (it supports ogg vorbis which is probably one of if not the best sounding lossy codec, it supports FLAC for those of you who like to swap live recordings, it has a true 5 band parametric EQ for just plain old sounding good, and it has gapless playback for those of you who like listening to whole albums or live shows with out crossfading or a second or two of silence in between.) If you are running windows, the best thing out there for extracting from your CD collection is eaxact audio copy. If you have to put it into MP3 format, your best choice of encoder is LAME. If you want a more user friendly ripping experience with almost as good results, get CDEX and set it on full paranoid. Personally, I think MP3 sounds pretty bad, so the ipods have been out of the question for me. Other than the 4g, their battery life is attrocious as well. MP3 tends to have poor bass response at volume and pretty much all the players out there exacerbate the problem without the help of a decent eq or headphone pre-amp. If you are not terribly picky about how your music sounds and never play anything loud, the ipod should keep you pretty happy. [uhh, that's EXACT audio copy.. should you actually try and feed it to google or somesuch] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianH Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 Get the 40. It includes a $40 dock, so basically you're paying another $60 for double the cap. And you WILL use it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 Get the 40. It includes a $40 dock, so basically you're paying another $60 for double the cap. And you WILL use it up. They don't include the dock with the 20 anymore? Bah.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detlef Posted November 23, 2004 Author Share Posted November 23, 2004 thanks for the excellent information! Isn't this forum amazing? I'm not a purist, so mp3s are fine w/ me for now. iTunes does everything, plus it's a real nice player (in good apple tradition, I guess). 40G 4th generation ipod it is. Limewire no music? Riiiiight..... This stuff is amazing, the digital revolution has reached another dinosaur (me).... --Detlef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidwiz Posted November 25, 2004 Share Posted November 25, 2004 I just got the 20G 4th generation iPod. It rocks! (Not quite like Jim Shannahan, but it is still cool) Anyway, most of the music I put on it is from my CDs. iTunes (Apples' music store) works great, and a song is only $.99 Another way to download songs legally is via Napster (there might be others, but I'm not aware of them). Along with my iPod, I also got an aluminum case for it to protect it, from Matias. I ordered the case on Sunday, and it arrived on Wednesday. The iPod Lounge is a good place for all things iPod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJPoLo Posted November 25, 2004 Share Posted November 25, 2004 I'd also recommend the iTrip for listening to your iPod through your car's stereo. It rocks! -Chet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sterling White Posted November 25, 2004 Share Posted November 25, 2004 Ask about the battery life....rumors that it will last 18 mos. then your toast! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted November 29, 2004 Share Posted November 29, 2004 This is a great thread! Man do I love the Computer Forum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted November 30, 2004 Share Posted November 30, 2004 One more tip for iTunes users. If you don’t want me and 10,000 others like me grabbing tunes off your machine, go into iTunes pref’s and uncheck the “share my music” option. If you are on-line and without a firewall your music can be grabbed for the taking. If you are running OSX, make sure the built in firewall is on. Open “System Preferences“, select the Sharing pane and the Firewall tab then make sure the firewall is on. In the sharing tab make sure things like “FTP access“, “allow others to log in“ and personal file sharing are off unless you know what they are for. Lotsa‘ free stuff out there if you run across an open system ;-) -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Heiter Posted November 30, 2004 Share Posted November 30, 2004 I'm tempted by the I-pod because of all the nice add-on's available but the Zen players from Creative seem to offer some awfully nice features, especially if you're not on a Mac/Firewire platform. Does anyone have any experience using an I-pod for audiobooks? I'm primarily going to use it to carry my audiobook collection that I've been ripping from the original CD's and converting to MP3. A 6 hour long 5-6 CD audio book compresses to about 350 MB in MP3 format so I should be able to get a pretty nice selection (well over 100 titles on a 20GB player) to carry in the truck with me on road trips. I was wondering if the I-tunes audiobook library was as nice as it appears in the advertising. Anyone have any experience using it? Thanks, John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianH Posted November 30, 2004 Share Posted November 30, 2004 Just for reference: My wife's pod is at 1024 tunes, and 3.63 GB. I got the iTrip Saturday and it rocks! All your tunes wherever there's FM! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 (edited) Does anyone have any experience using an I-pod for audiobooks I haven’t ripped audio books, but I have ripped old vinyl and audio tapes that ran up to an hour apiece. The rub with vinyl and tape ripping is no chapter data because there is no meta info to fill in at the time of rip. Additional tip for ripping CD into iTunes, make sure you have internet connectivity when you rip and iTunes will auto-fill the meta-data from CDDB on the web. If you don’t allow CDDB access to iTunes at time of rip, you get “Track 1” instead of actual song titles and other similar generic defaults tagged into the MP3/M4P files. Another BTW, iTunes download for .99 a song sounds good until you come up against the Protected AAC format Apple uses for the songfile. You get 3 machine maximum concurrent usage and because it‘s network savvy, it know’s when you’ve been naughty and nice ;-) I much prefer to buy the CD and rip to an un-protected , non-uselimited format (MP3 at 192kbs, or AAC at 128kbs). That way I am not hassled for authorization and limited to no-one else being able to import and play MP3 from CD’s I make with protected AAC into their iTunes library without needing my mac.com password/username and the deathorization of one of my machines so the third party can enjoy the custom CD I sent them (yeah, I know that’s unlawful duplication, but....). As far as the concerns for MP3 audio quality, if you want to, all content from CD’s can be imported (ripped) into iTunes as AIFF at full CD fidelity with the small penalty of 10x the file size. You can then move the AIFF to archive storage after rip and re-import via AAC at highest quality which “should“ satisfy most of the hi-fidelity contingent and still keep file size in the 2-3mb per song range. Apples AAC format is much cleaner than any MP3 encoding I have tried and I believe the hue and cry against MP3 has another new chink in it’s armor (anyone remember the vinyl hi-fi diehards, or the tube amp is god crowd?). Mark my words, the CD will be the audio cassette/8 track/VHS of it’s day RSN (real soon now). If it be just one song you are looking for and you are Mac OSX, try (as I suggested earlier in this thread) iSwipe, which is to be found at http://www.versiontracker.com/ in the OSX software section. I have some OSX stuff stowed on a server and the iPod manual can be accessed there if anyone has up-front usage questions: http://www.glinder.com/files/macosx/ -- Regards, Edited December 1, 2004 by George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detlef Posted December 1, 2004 Author Share Posted December 1, 2004 users beware (my ipod just arrived): ipod software requires PCs with XP or Win2000 SP4 or higher (or Mac, of course...)! Mine is Win2000 SP3.... --Detlef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yardbird Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 If you buy some tunes from ITunes and burn it to a cd-rw and then rip that cd the tunes are not Apple protected. Then you can erase the disc and use it again next time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 users beware (my ipod just arrived): ipod software requires PCs with XP or Win2000 SP4 or higher (or Mac, of course...)! Mine is Win2000 SP3.... --Detlef http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downl...sp4/default.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 One more thing that really makes the iPod rock is aftermarket transducers to replace the so-so earphones Apple provides. The Shure in-ear personal monitors really rock the house. http://www.shure.com/psm/earphones/default.asp These in-ear monitors by Shure also really stay in place during vigorous physical activity because of the way they loop over-ear like professional in-ear system performers use nowadays. I wonder what it would be like to run them under earmuffs while competing ? (I don’t see anything in the rules about this as long as I can still hear and respond to RO commands). BTW, the E series ear buds supply almost enough isolation to shoot with all by themselves if the proper fitting adapter is chosen to fit snugly in the ear canal. The E2s are good, the E3s are great and the E5s are truly outstanding. I bought E2’s, gave them to my wife and now I have E3’s and a friend went all the way to the E5. The prosumer line is available only in white and the pro line only in black. No real difference unless you know someone who gets the pro line dealer discount. I have finally found a personal monitoring device in these that meets and exceeds my trusty old Sony MDR-V6 studio monitor headphones. http://latammsn.pricegrabber.com/rating_ge...1760/id_type=M/ One point I have proven to several MP3 pooh-pooh’ers is that most of the problems they hear in MP3’s (that are ripped at high enough quality) can be traced to the pitiful amplifiers in most computer and player headphone outs and internal gain stages. I have been using a little Radio Shack product for a few years now to solve drive shortcomings for my Sony headphones on puters’ and pods’ The device is a 3x headphone splitter with a built in fixed gain amplifier and it sells for about $16 at any local radio Shack. This then allows the equalizer in iTunes to have it’s gain reduced to one pip off the bottom and the iTunes and computer master audio gains set to their 50% ranges. This will work wonders for the THD component sent to your ears. It run’s for months on 2 AA batteries and allows up to three headsets to be driven at once. The next benefit is that I can apply a very large bass boost under 50hz in the iTunes EQ without overloading the internal gain stages because the gain is made after the headphone output and the impedance match at the headphone amp is much better (50-100ohm drive terminated in a 25k plus input impedance. Much better than the 50 ohm to <50 ohm match of the basic headset). Talk about personal bass response after these tweaks, whhoooeee :-) 5 stars for these earphones. They also acoustically isolate you to a point you have never experienced before which is a huge boon to rocking out in noisy ambient envionments. The audio image fielding of stereo material will blow many of the un-initiated away with it’s clarity. I am used to professional monitoring and reinforcement systems and it kinda took me by suprise at first. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 If you buy some tunes from ITunes and burn it to a cd-rw and then rip that cd the tunes are not Apple protected. Then you can erase the disc and use it again next time. That is true as long as you burn in “Audio CD“ format which only allows 70 minutes of music on a CD. If you make an MP3 CD that allows 150+ songs to fit per CD, the protection follows like white on rice. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diehli Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 I bought the Sony MDR-EX71 headphones in white with the short cord from some ebay store in Hong Kong, IIRC (oddly enough, in fashion-sensitive America they're only available in black, but in Asia they're available in white and black). I clip the remote to the back of my shirt collar (I'm in T-shirts most of the time) and plug the headphones in there... wear 'em behind the head. Good sound (some might say they're too bright), but they're about 10 times better than the Apple shite and comfortable enough for hours of wear. Also, you can use 'em on airplanes and actually HEAR the movie that's playing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yardbird Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 f you buy some tunes from ITunes and burn it to a cd-rw and then rip that cd the tunes are not Apple protected. Then you can erase the disc and use it again next time. That is true as long as you burn in “Audio CD“ format which only allows 70 minutes of music on a CD. If you make an MP3 CD that allows 150+ songs to fit per CD, the protection follows like white on rice. -- Regards, Yes but if you buy an album and burn and rip it you're good to go. If you have an Ipod why do you need an mp3 cd? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted December 1, 2004 Share Posted December 1, 2004 f you have an Ipod why do you need an mp3 cd? Because I can slap 150+ cuts to a single CD for transport to an event for on-site loading into digi-cart and Hard Drive playback systems. Sometimes a producer at an event will need a one time use of something in my collection for incidental music at the 11th hour. If it is protected AAC in my collection, then I have to get the actual playback ‘puter online to authorize it just to play a cut. Plus, the extra step of passing it through a machines digestive tract once to purge it takes time and time is money. If you don’t want to go to a music store, order the CD online and wait for it to arrive at your door. Then you don’t have to burn it back to CD just to get a backup copy because it’s already on a CD for you. I could go on, but then I will start to get into my “why try and protect it in the first place“ rant. -- Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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