Help w/ I-Pod

[Mr MidFi]

I find myself wishing my 20-GB pod w/ monochrome screen would just up and die or something, so I could justify buying a new one. But no...I seem to have the most indestructable one ever built. Just my luck!

NP: "Satisfy My Soul" by Bob Marley

[ForeverAutumn]

That's how I feel. Although I'm starting to have some annoying little software glitches with mine. Like I'll choose an album to play and it will start playing something completely unrelated. Or it'll start playing all my songs in alphabetical order by artist, always starting with And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

But the damn thing won't just up and die on me.

[Troy]

I'm honored by your quote Slosh. I think.

Yes, I only use this and the movie forum here. My bookmarks drop me directly into each forum page.

Yeah, 3LB, it's a common misconception that iTunes requires you to repurchase your music when it's really great for simply ripping your CD collection too. It is simply the easiest, most elegant interface for working with music on your computer.

Dave, the thing about iPods is that you use the computer for compiling and organization of your music and then take the iPod and interface it with your car or your living room big rig system. Yeah, you use the computer for organization, but the iPod gives you the ability to use ALL your music anyplace.

3498 songs in mine, and I like every single one.

[3-LockBox]

Oh yeah, I'm figuring it out now, but its actually my son's I-Pod, not mine. I will say this for it, I like the sound quality of the I-pod compared to at least three other brands, namely Sandisk, Zen, and Philips. And I like the concept of a built-in battery (my Sandisk uses batteries).

And yes of course, I-pod has a vast array of accessories and compatibility, but for right now, they're just too damned expensive.

I'm liking what I'm seeing as far as flash memory goes, that is, its coming down in price. I wonder if they are all scarificing soemthing for all that extra storage space. Sandisk Sansa has a new one that came out that supposedly has better playback quality, 8 gig memory, with video capability and an expandible memory slot - it was on sale for $169.00 a few weeks ago.

Sounds like a lot of you have the mini hard drive type players (given the large capacities mentioned). How have they held up? I've heard not so good things about them.

[Troy]

Your son can afford an iPod but you can't? How's that work?

You guys with the oldfangled pods, my 1st gen wouldn't hold a charge anymore so I got a new 30GB for Xmas. Wow, what a vast improvement. You'll kick yourself for waiting so long when you finally do get the new one.

[3-LockBox]

Your son can afford an iPod but you can't? How's that work?

well, I see I mispelled gratis in my original post...

[Slosh]

I'm liking what I'm seeing as far as flash memory goes, that is, its coming down in price. I wonder if they are all scarificing soemthing for all that extra storage space. Sandisk Sansa has a new one that came out that supposedly has better playback quality, 8 gig memory, with video capability and an expandible memory slot - it was on sale for $169.00 a few weeks ago.

I got that one for my mother for her b-day and quite frankly it sounds awful, but she says it's fine. She pretty much only uses it at the gym so she's not focusing on the music, obviously. Also its interface is really slow.

My iPod (30GB 5th generation) was actually my daughter's. She somehow managed to break the HDD and Apple wanted $286 + $30ish to ship there and back. Yeah right. I got her a new one, only this time with a good protective skin. So the broken iPod sat in a drawer for about six months. I figured I'd use it for parts one day if necessary. I already had a Toshiba Gigabeat S30 for myself and it definitely sounds better than the iPod. Even mp3 on the Toshiba sounds better than lossless on the iPod. Of course lossless on the Toshiba sounds better still and unlike the iPod you can hear the difference. Also its interface is much quicker than the iPod. But . . . since I've pretty much only been putting lossless files on it I got to the point where I was running out of room and there's not much on there I want to delete off so I googled replacement iPod HDDs and came across www.ifixipodsfast.com and got a new one for $100 and installed it myself (very easy, BTW).

So since the iPod can't match the sonics of the Toshiba (still not too bad, though) I only put mp3s on and use it when quantity is more important than quality. Actually I find myself using the iPod more often thanks to its gapless playback and smart playlists.

[3-LockBox]

I got that one for my mother for her b-day and quite frankly it sounds awful, but she says it's fine. She pretty much only uses it at the gym so she's not focusing on the music, obviously. Also it's interface is really slow.

That sounds about right. I have a Sansa E140, w/ expandible memory and it has SRS WOW (just like Windows Media Player) and EQ. The ones that replaced it, the 230 and 240, do not have expandible memory and do not have the SRS WOW, and they sound like sh!t. Looks like I'll be hanging on to my E140.

Another thing that bugs me about the Sansa line (all of them, is that their random play feature is only semi random, I get repeats within a couple hours when I have at least 8 hours of music on board. And every time you turn the unit off, the random cycle starts all over again.

[Mike]

I had a 20gb ipod which gave up the ghost when my son very kindly stuck a dirty great big magnet on the back, I tried re-installing it and everything but it's totally shagged now.

So after Xmas I picked up a 4gb nano which suits my needs, it has a fantastic battery life compared to my previous one and so lightweight and slim it's a great piece of kit, it even doubles up as a portable flash card for files and photos. Other mp3 players might be cheaper, maybe better in sound quality I don't know but they all suffer poor software from what I hear from friends. I've never had any conflicting issues with Itunes and it's so easy to upload music, organise it, enhance it, tweek it, create playlists/albums etc.

A popular misconception is you have to buy your music from Apple, which is wrong you don't, mine all comes from my albums. But the added bonus is even if you don't have an ipod it's a great way of organising and playing your music on your pc.

Cheers
Mike

[ForeverAutumn]

No, you only need Gold to do the on-the-fly transcodes. For ripping the free version is all you need.

Just an FYI... Last night I tried to rip a disk to MP3 using MM. I got a message which basically said that my 30 day trial period was over and MM will no longer use MP3 encoding on the free version. Would I like to upgrade to Gold?

The upgrade is only $20, which is pretty reasonble for a decent piece of software, so I don't mind paying for it. There's probably ways around it, but I'm too lazy to find them.

....I'm still contemplating that iPod upgrade and now I'm questioning whether I really need an 80GB, or if I can get by with 30GB, since I've only used up half of that in two years. Has anyone downloaded TV shows or movies onto their iPod. How much space do they take?

[Slosh]

Just an FYI... Last night I tried to rip a disk to MP3 using MM. I got a message which basically said that my 30 day trial period was over and MM will no longer use MP3 encoding on the free version. Would I like to upgrade to Gold?

The upgrade is only $20, which is pretty reasonble for a decent piece of software, so I don't mind paying for it. There's probably ways around it, but I'm too lazy to find them.

....I'm still contemplating that iPod upgrade and now I'm questioning whether I really need an 80GB, or if I can get by with 30GB, since I've only used up half of that in two years. Has anyone downloaded TV shows or movies onto their iPod. How much space do they take?

I didn't know that because I'm using Gold. Check your PM

I never put video on mine (or my Toshiba which also does video). I don't even do pictures (except if you count album art).

My friend asked me if I could put some albums on my iPod that weren't on my PC (that I don't want permanently on my PC) so I ripped them to VO (I know how to transfer stuff from the iPod to other computers). Wow, it's slow. About five minutes per CD on my machine. Still worth it for the improved sound quality but it'll take forever if you're rebuilding your library. Best use it for new CDs only.

[Slosh]

I'm honored by your quote Slosh. I think.

My quote?

[Troy]

You know, that sig line . . .

[ForeverAutumn]

I didn't know that because I'm using Gold. Check your PM

I never put video on mine (or my Toshiba which also does video). I don't even do pictures (except if you count album art).

My friend asked me if I could put some albums on my iPod that weren't on my PC (that I don't want permanently on my PC) so I ripped them to VO (I know how to transfer stuff from the iPod to other computers). Wow, it's slow. About five minutes per CD on my machine. Still worth it for the improved sound quality but it'll take forever if you're rebuilding your library. Best use it for new CDs only.

There's a few disks where I definately notice the lost quality on MP3 so I'll replace those for sure, and then I'll slowly replace the rest of them. I usually rip a bunch of CDs at a time and read a book while I'm doing it, to pass the time. I'm interested in seeing how much larger the files are too.

I'll try the VO over the weekend and let you know how I fare. Thanks for your help!