To iPod or not to iPod, that is the question.

[topspeed]

My trusty portable Sony cd player gave up the ghost last week and now I'm forced to listen to whatever garbage they have playing at the gym. I'm considering getting an iPod or similar device as I'm guessing it won't skip like a cd player does and I like how small they are in comparison. My concerns are:
1) Cost; these little suckers aren't cheap. $250 seems to be the ballpark.
2) I never download music from the net. I'd only be burning from my cd's.
3) Sound quality. MP3's always sound like they are playing the music underwater to me. Will burning from my cd's give cd quality playback or MP3 quality?

I'm really only going to be using this for the gym. As I said, I hate MP3 quality playback so I definitely won't be hooking it up to my main rig and I doubt I'd use it in the car either. Sorry for my ignorance, but I'm guessing I'm the only person on the face of the Earth that doesn't have one of these things yet.

What's your take? Any suggestions?

[royphil345]

I have one of the little iriver mp3 players. No hard drive (so it's reliable), very, very small and lightweight. Not too expensive right now. Can get one with a respectable capicity and changing a few songs once in a while is quick and painless. Thing I like most about the iriver is it takes just 1 AA battery and it lasts for a very, very long time. I happen to have some NIMH batteries and a charger around for my digital camera, so it works out great.

I've found that not all programs that create mp3 files from wave/cd files are created equal. Many seem to sacrifice sound quality for speed. I am familiar with the "underwater sound" you speak of. Don't hear that on my mp3s. Even the Fraunhofer encoder that many people say is the best makes mp3s that sound a little bright for my taste. I use an old program called EZ CD-DA Extractor which has a built-in mp3 encoder called Blade to encode my mp3s. Anything over 128 usually sounds just fine. Don't know if either of these has a current version. I'd be willing to encode a sample song or share my software if it's no longer available. Don't know where I'd put it right now. Haven't had a web site for a while now. Should be able to find somewhere though if you want.

I did see a player at Best Buy that had a built-in RF transmitter so you could play it over your car radio with no extra wires. Looked pretty cool and not much larger than the other models. Stayed away because I was unable to find any reviews on it. Hate throwing money away on something that is a total lemon!!! Seems to happen to me all too often if I don't shop carefully.

[plextor guy]

Best of class sound quality, solid state, perfect form factor for the gym, fm tuner, drag and drop functionality (your computer will see it as an external hard drive - no annoying software needed).

[midfiguy]

Hey Top,

It looks like options from other companies such as Creative offer very similar products for much cheaper. IMO, the marginally better GUI in the IPOD is not worth paying the premium that they ask for over other MP3 players.

However, if you must have an IPOD and don't want to fork over retail, you can always go to www.craigslist.org and try to find a local seller of a used one, especially if you're not going to need like 40gb, etc.

[royphil345]

Only reason I bought the iriver instead was because the earbuds were a little better and the price was the same. Looks like now you can get a 512mb Creative player for about the same price as a 256mb iriver. They both are extremely small, have FM radio, recording capability, and fantastic sound.

[tictic]

I know they're no longer popular or trendy, but have you thought of a Minidisc ?

They're being repackaged with a hard drive to try to comptete with mp3 players in the overcompressed ultrastorage stakes. This means that the old style ones will be dropping in price. Mines has normal speed, double speed and 4x recording. I found that 4x loses the highs and lows and gives it the 'underwater' sound. Two of my friends never noticed the difference and use it on theirs to get just under five and a half hours recording time on a disc. Two hours and forty minutes on a double play recording is enough for me, especially as it retains the cd quality of sound. Recording cd to md is very easy, all you need is an optical out on your cd player and recording from computer is also easy.

[royphil345]

Just checked out the newest trial version of Easy CD-DA Extractor. It now uses an mp3 encoder called LAME. Sometimes a name tells the whole story!!! Seems like there were legal problems with Blade infringing on someone else's patent (Can still download Blade from third world countries, but it requires a front end program for easy use). Don't think the LAME sounds as good, although better than some encoders I've heard.

[topspeed]

Lemme get this straight, I need additional software just to transfer tracks from a cd to the mp3 player? Couldn't I just use Windows Media Player, EZ cd creator, or some such program? Are these programs non-compatible or just suck?

I saw the Creative Labs versions at Crutchfield and thought they were pretty cool, albeit twice as heavy as comparable iPod's with the same storage. The iPod shuffle looks interesting and I'm not too concerned with not being able to read what track I'm listening to. Again, it's for the gym.

Thanks for the great info and keep the tips coming.

[lowkey37]

First of all, its fun and really cool. Secondly, it sounds very good which of course is dependant upon what you r comparing it too. I prefer the itunes software over media player and rozio. Some dowloaded songs sound better than others but with all things being equal this player will surprise you not only with its sound but functionality and versatility as well. I HOPE I HAVE BEEN OF SOME HELP By the way my friends are jealous that I have one of these! lowkey

[royphil345]

Think he was talking about one of the super-small / inexpensive Creative models with flash memory as opposed to a hard drive. I would consider one of these models unless I really HAD to have a huge music collection with me everywhere. Alot of people are coming to the conclusion that hard drives just aren't ready to be carried around yet. (easy to damage) I like the super-long battery life (40 hours) on the iriver. It's like carrying nothing. I never used portable CD players because I felt "overburdened". The 512MB flash models hold about 4 hours of music at decent quality.(Easy to change music) Most also have built-in FM radios/recorders with mic (or record mp3s from FM) and are just a bit larger than a Bic lighter. Like the neck cord to keep the iriver handy. Both the Creative and iriver models are said to have sound quality better than the iPod.

Don't need software to put the mp3s onto most of the flash memory models now.

Do need software to rip the audio off of CDs and to create mp3 files from the CD quality wav files from the CD. Suitable software will come with the player and is built-in to many other apps/players like you said.

I simply use my old version of Easy CD-DA Extractor to extract and convert my CDs because it makes the best sounding mp3 files I've ever heard. You may like using the software that comes with the player or Windows Media Player etc...

[tictic]

I got my gf a Sharp minidisc last week. It's a model or two below mine, but, I got it new for £50, about $100. I got my friends in the shop to use their staff discount, but this was only a difference of £20/$40. They only use one AA battery and this will last an estimated 40 or so hours. Mines being a higher model has a rechargable battery, which is always good.

I also got the staff discount and got mine for £80/$160 instead of £120/$240. I used the money I saved to get a $100 pair of Sennheiser PMX60s for it. I've been using it for about 2 years now and still very happy. Very small and portable and with a remote on the headphone cable. They also have a mic input which is good for discretely recording gigs for future reference or conversations with friends and family for blackmail :-)

I've got more than enough music to fill a large capacity i-pod, but don't feel the need yet to have it all on me at all times. I may purchase one in the future if they add whistles and bells to them, but for the moment, MD is what I'm sticking with.

[topspeed]

tictic,

No offense, but I'm not real keen on investing in moribund technology. I don't care what marketing offensive Sony is going to put forth, the MD looks to be the next Beta tape.

Thanks for the input but I'm going to stay with either flash memory or hard drive based devices. These seem to have the brightest future.

ts

[Woochifer]

That would make two people on this planet who don't yet have portable MP3 players! I've ripped a good portion of my music collection and put the MP3 files on my laptop and work desktop computers. The iPod looks inviting, but I probably wouldn't use it much. When I'm on the BART train during my commute, I've got enough space to just break out my laptop if I want music (I usually work on the train anyway). I had a portable CD player until it got stolen out of my car, and I haven't missed it. I guess if I was still living in the city, I probably would have bought an iPod by now. It's not just the iPod that makes it particularly inviting, it's all of the third party accessories that have come out allowing you to plug it into your car or hook it up to a set of desktop speakers that make the iPod tempting. That, and having enough storage to put most of my CD collection onto a device that fits in my pocket!

MP3s do give you a noticeable dropoff in audio quality, but as someone else pointed out, it also depends on the program that you use to do the file conversions. I actually use the Real Player to create MP3s off my CDs. It's very fast and the quality of the audio files is decent, even with lower bitrates. But, the program is not good for file editing, or recording from analog sources, so I also use Cakewalk Pyro to do audio file editing (I like to crossfade songs whenever I put compilations together), analog recording, and CD burning. The MP3 encoder with Pyro sounds noticeably worse than the Real encoder. I hear that "underwater" sound that you describe pop up with some of the files that I encode using Pyro, while I don't hear it as often with the files created with Real.

If you get an iPod, you can also use it to play uncompressed WAV files, and with a 40 GB capacity, you can store about 60 CDs at a time at full resolution. Since you're only using it at the gym, you can pick out your playlist, load up whatever songs you intend to play, and listen to them at full resolution.

Another option is to just use one of the higher bitrates for MP3 encoding. 96k and 120k are the most frequently used bitrates, particularly with downloaders. Those bitrates do not sound transparent to the source by a long shot, though 120k can be decent for casual listening. 320k is almost indistinguishable from the CD (and saves you about 4x the disc space compared to uncompressed CD audio), and 192k is already close. Or you can try the AAC or Apple Lossless formats as well, since you're transferring the fles directly from your own CDs rather than downloads (which can have very inconsistent sound quality).

[hermann_giron]

Hello Topspeed.

I did a lot of research before purchasing my MP3 Hard Drive based player and ended up purchasing the IPOD 4th Generation in 40GB Capacity. The top competitors I evaluated were the Iriver IHP 140 and the Rio Karma.

The IHP had a few functions that were interesting, such as optical output, remote control included in package, and a few other gadgets. This is probably the unit most Apple Haters reccomended at the time when I was looking into my purchase.

Rio Karma supposedly had better sound quality and gapless playback (this seems to be hard to do with MP3, but they found a way to do it, it has value for people that listen to albums in order and where songs follow into each other, i would only use this function when listening to live music recordings, not frequent) I looked all over and found good sound quality reviews but terrible reliability issues with this unit and "dificult usability" concerns relating to menu structures and navigation of the unit.

In the end, IPOD 4th Generation has all I needed. 12 Hour battery life, 40 GB Capacity (enough for about 7,000 songs at a 192 Kbps sampling rate), a very intuitive user interfase (much better than any other i tried, better than 3rd generation by far), a good size and weight factor, good sound quality (once you change the headphones), works with firewire and USB 2.0 for fast downloads, and tons of accesories for any use you may want to give your unit, plus hundreds of webpages with information, tweaks and mods.

My only complaint is the way Itunes works, it is slow to rip MP3, requires tons of computer resources, doesnt have all the functionalities that I get with Windows Media Player. I have resorted to ripping my music to my PC with Media Player and then importing it into Itunes for synchronization with IPOD. (there is no need for a third party aplication for ripping if you have WMP 10.0)

Although MP3 or the other ripping formats may leave some sonics on the table in the hope of fitting more music per MB, remember you will use this device to listen at the gym, on a plane, or train, or while riding a bycicle... sound quality of these devices is better than you would imagine, and nothing is more convenient.

I would recommend purchasing another set of headphones when you buy whichever unit because the ones included sound bad, fit badly and hurt your ears.

Finally, the price difference is worth it... the navigation, battery life, user options, etc. on the Ipod 4th Generation unit are great.

[Lensman]

There are also the new iPod "Shuffle" players that might be just the ticket for your limited use. These don't have the beefy hard drive and LCD display for setting up playlists like their bigger counterparts. But with 512MB or 1GB, they certainly have ample storage for an evening at the gym. Both are also smaller - about the size of a stick of gum and a recent newspaper columnist reported getting close to 15 hours of continuous play off the batteries (officially rated at 12 hours). Best of all, they're cheaper: $99 for the 512K model, $149 for the 1GB unit. More info. is available at Apple's site here:

http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

[tictic]

Hehheh, message received. I'll stick with the MD, obviously some kind of personality defect, not wishing to take 7000 songs on 90 minute journeys :-)

Another good reason to lose the earplugs on the ipod is that they're being reported as mugging magnets here, but I think that's more for younger users.

[topspeed]

The Shuffle is really what put me on this path in the first place. I don't think I need anything as capable as the 40gb version because I'll never play it in anything but the gym so I really only need about an hour or two's worth of storage. I suppose there's always the potential for using it in the car, but considering I can't even get my bluetooth to work right now, it's not something I'll be exploring anytime soon.

I'm remarkeably computer illiterate so the difference between 512mb and 1 gig means nothing to me. I am encouraged by Wooch's statement that I can burn cd quality sound onto an iPod, even if it takes up more room. This may sound ridiculous, but even when I'm at the gym working out, bad sound drives me flippin' nuts! All of the MP3's I've heard sound like ca-ca, although they may have been at lower bit rates (didn't even know there was such a thing until this thread). I understand the new MP4 format cleans a lot of this up, but again, I'm not a techie.

Right now, the Shuffle sounds like the way to go but I'll definitely research the iriver and Creative products as well.

BTW:
tictic,
Who you callin' old?!? ;)

[tictic]

No offence, I meant more teenagers, they're the main targets here for muggings for i-pods and high end mobile phones.

The storage space is the thing that would actually sell me the idea of getting one, not for the use, but for the protection of irreplacable music, radio sessions I've recorded onto cd, etc. Had a house robbed of everything down to my shampoo and coffee a few years ago, luckily had entire music collection in someone elses house at the time. The idea of it happening again and losing the music isn't funny, thinking of just copying everything and burying the copies in the park across the road.

Apparently I-Pods and I-Rivers are far cheaper in the states than they are here in the UK. Was talking to someone today who was just back from the US and had bought some for his grandchildren. The cheapest you'll get a 20gb I-River here is $440 and that's in the one shop worth buying hifi here in, best prices and service.

[Lensman]

The Shuffle is really what put me on this path in the first place. I don't think I need anything as capable as the 40gb version because I'll never play it in anything but the gym so I really only need about an hour or two's worth of storage. I suppose there's always the potential for using it in the car, but considering I can't even get my bluetooth to work right now, it's not something I'll be exploring anytime soon.

I'm remarkeably computer illiterate so the difference between 512mb and 1 gig means nothing to me. I am encouraged by Wooch's statement that I can burn cd quality sound onto an iPod, even if it takes up more room. This may sound ridiculous, but even when I'm at the gym working out, bad sound drives me flippin' nuts! All of the MP3's I've heard sound like ca-ca, although they may have been at lower bit rates (didn't even know there was such a thing until this thread). I understand the new MP4 format cleans a lot of this up, but again, I'm not a techie.

Right now, the Shuffle sounds like the way to go but I'll definitely research the iriver and Creative products as well.

The capacity of a standard CD is 650-700MB and can hold about 70-80 minutes of uncompressed audio, so a 512MB Shuffle should hold right at an hour of uncompressed audio and a 1GB will store almost two.

Note that most MP3s are encoded at relatively low bit rates (such as 64 or 128Kbps), hence the awful sound. All MP3s lose something because the format works to squeeze the size of the file down by throwing away parts of the original signal. But the amount of compression is adjustable. Encoding your CDs to MP3 at the shuffle's highest readable bitrate of 320 may still sound lacking on your home system. But you might find it acceptable at the gym. This would extend your music time to about 3 hours with the 512MB Shuffle or 6 with the 1GB version.

These numbers will be the same for other players.

[Geoffcin]

My trusty portable Sony cd player gave up the ghost last week and now I'm forced to listen to whatever garbage they have playing at the gym. I'm considering getting an iPod or similar device as I'm guessing it won't skip like a cd player does and I like how small they are in comparison. My concerns are:
1) Cost; these little suckers aren't cheap. $250 seems to be the ballpark.
2) I never download music from the net. I'd only be burning from my cd's.
3) Sound quality. MP3's always sound like they are playing the music underwater to me. Will burning from my cd's give cd quality playback or MP3 quality?

I'm really only going to be using this for the gym. As I said, I hate MP3 quality playback so I definitely won't be hooking it up to my main rig and I doubt I'd use it in the car either. Sorry for my ignorance, but I'm guessing I'm the only person on the face of the Earth that doesn't have one of these things yet.

What's your take? Any suggestions?

The thing is slicker than ****. It's got one of the most intuitive interfaces I've seen in ANY piece of audio gear. It's not cheap, but I got hers for $284, and it can hold 20gig of memory.The Ipod came with pretty good ripping software, and if you rip your CD's at high quality it's going to be very hard to hear a difference. I've already had the Ipod hooked into my audio setup and it was pretty darn good.

[royphil345]

This post made me realize how long it's been since I compared some mp3 encoders.

Most encoders do a pretty good job at the higher bitrates. Tested a few at 128 kbps to see what I thought was the best encoder for packing alot of songs into my 512MB iriver.

My older version of Blade still sounded better to me than LAME. And strangely enough, better than the newest release of Blade before the project was abandoned.

My new favorite encoder is the newer Fraunhofer encoder used in the latest versions of Musicmatch Jukebox. Can get it for free if you don't want all the bells and whistles. One of the few limitations on the free version is a slower CD ripping speed which will likely IMPROVE quality.

One thing became quite clear. 128 kbps mp3s just aren't going to sound like the CD. The Musicmatch ones didn't sound terrible though. No detectable "swishy, phasey" noises. Last time I did this comparison, (a long, long time ago) think Musicmatch was one of the worst.

[Jack]

My .02....I have the Dell 20gb DJ and love it. I upload/download all my music at 320kbps and paired with Shure e3c ear buds, it sounds very good (I use WMP and have had no problems uploading or transferring). The higher bitrate doesn't affect my storage because I don't have 9,000 songs to put in there in the first place. I use mine at home but mainly in the car. Having all of my cd's with me all of the time is pretty cool. BUT, it is not light (not good with elastic banded shorts!). You pretty much need to wear the arm band attachment to work out and I find that uncomfortable. When I work out, I use my older Creative Labs with a 256kb Secure Digital card to listen to music (much easier on the shorts). Much lighter and plenty of storage space for a workout. Anyway, I love my DJ, but just for the gym I'd go with the lighter, less expensive Creative, I-River, etc and if you decide you really like it, you can always go bigger for car, home, etc (and keep the old one for the gym or resell it). Again, just my .02....Jack PS...I would recommend Audiograbber (freeware) for uploading music from cd to the computer. Very easy to use and works great.

[topspeed]

The capacity of a standard CD is 650-700MB and can hold about 70-80 minutes of uncompressed audio, so a 512MB Shuffle should hold right at an hour of uncompressed audio and a 1GB will store almost two.

Note that most MP3s are encoded at relatively low bit rates (such as 64 or 128Kbps), hence the awful sound. All MP3s lose something because the format works to squeeze the size of the file down by throwing away parts of the original signal. But the amount of compression is adjustable. Encoding your CDs to MP3 at the shuffle's highest readable bitrate of 320 may still sound lacking on your home system. But you might find it acceptable at the gym. This would extend your music time to about 3 hours with the 512MB Shuffle or 6 with the 1GB version.

These numbers will be the same for other players.Thanks for the clarification. 3 hours will be plenty. I went to BB last night to check them out and they didn't have the Shuffle or much of anything else for that matter. I have to admit, the iPod mini is pretty cool looking and very small. However, at $250 it's more than I want to spend for something of this nature. The iriver was cool as well but just as pricey.

Again, thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge. The search continues...

[sacred_audio]

I'm not really all into the MP3 craze as much as many, but I did get an ipod for Christmas (a mini) and figured what the hell. I've loaded a couple hundred songs on it and it's not all that bad. I like the fact that it's small and it's convenient when I'm running out of the house and want music with me. It is also easy to upload tunes to itunes and transfer them to the pod. I do still like my Sony discman better simly because I can choose to take any discs with me when on the move AND I can simply stop in a disc store, buy a disc and have access to the music immediately (you kinda have to "plan" to have certain tunes on the ipod to make sure they are on the ipod when you are on the go). Also the battery life on the mini is terribly short. I did see the Creative micro zen at the recent CES show and I liked the look of that.....and it did seem to have a few features that made it more user friendly (a better U.I. and a removable battery were 2 features that I can remember off the bat that made the micro zen more attractive to me VS. the ipod)

Hope this helps

[IsmaVA]

What about a cd-player with MP3 capabilities?

This is the one I have http://www.iriveramerica.com/images/prod/cd/slimx_450.jpg and I am pretty happy with it.

It has an FM tuner, battey life is really good (it'll go about three weeks worth of commutte before I need to recharge), if I buy a cd I can play it right away, and can play a couple of hours more than I really need . . .

For about $100 it is a no-brainer for what I wanted.

Plus, I have the remote control routed from my backpack to one of the shoulders strap, which is very convenient . . . the whole arrangement is very popular with all my son's friends.

[topspeed]

What about a cd-player with MP3 capabilities?

Thanks, but I'm trying to get something smaller that I won't have strapped around my waist like my previous cd player.

I just noticed the Dell Pocket DJ which is $199 and has a 5 gig memory. This looks interesting as well. The Shuffle isn't due to hit the stores for another month or two so if any of you have any experience or opinions on the Dell, please chime in.

[plextor guy]

I'd still go with a solid state player for what you want it for but if you're looking at the Dell, I'd recommend the Rio Carbon instead. You can get it for the same price as the Dell (Amazon has the Carbon right now for 188 after a rebate) but the form factor is much better for portable use. It uses the same (I'm guessing) Seagate 5GB, 1" hard drive from Seagate. The Seagate drive is significantly more robust than the Cornice drives in earlier players. Functionally, the Rio has everything you could want. Audible compatibility, voice recording, mp3/wma playback, you can set hard bookmarks (a Rio exclusive I think)) and astounding battery life. I'm getting very close to the advertised 20 hours. If you want something that will impress the vapid blonde on the treadmill next to you, the iPod mini is good and soon to be available with the 5GB Seagate drive. I'm not a big fan of the Apple Shuffle. I haven't tried one or even seen one yet but anything that doesn't let you control and view what your content is would be laughed out of the market place if it wasn't an Apple product.

[umapet97]

I have the IPOD 40 GB;and I absolutely love it.
Customizable bitrates,good battery life,very easy to use,ton of accessories,great support by Apple(havent needed for Pod,,done wonders for some Mac issues).
Paired with a set of Etymotics=bliss.
Love it playback in shuffle,making your own playlists on the fly are added benefits.
I do like ITunes as well,but I wont get into all that.

[BillB]

topspeed,

Hope you don't mind me chiming in but I've been wondering about whether I should iPod as well and this is a good thread because most people here do care about sound quality.

A question for those out there that topspeed might find meaningful as I'm in the same boat as him (as far as not downloading MP3's, only ripping from our CD collections):

How long does it take to rip the average CD to your hard drive, convert it to MP3, and download to a player?

I'm actually considering Slim Devices Squeezebox to use with a wireless network in my house to broadcast my 600+ CD collection to a secondary (background music) system. 128kps would suffice for this and it would then likely lead to purchasing poratble MP3 players for my wife and I to use at the gym, in the car, and at work.

The thought of transferring that many CDs to my computer is daunting and the only thing holding me back from the MP3 revolution.

BillB

[plextor guy]

you're going to pay about a buck a cd last time I checked. If you're going to do it yourself, it will take about 20 minutes per cd all things considered. 20 X 600 / 60= 200 hours or 8.3 days of your life. If 600 dollars is worth 8.3 days of time to do other things then it's a no brainer.

[umapet97]

I can burn straight off my ITunes playlist a cd of 16-18 songs at max rate in about 5 minutes;burning a song to the IPod is very instantaneous at max bit rate.
Burning your personal cds to ITunes personal list takes about 6-10 minutes at max rate.
Ive had no issues with quality playback sound,etc.