Ipods and Itunes

[dboat]

I just got back from Vegas and used my Ipod (30Gig video) going out and back on the plane.. I thought I would start a thread on it and see what others are doing with theirs..
I use my Ipod in my truck, I have a connection and control it thru the stereo to listen to over 1800 MP3's. But I have downloaded some podcasts and found them to be pretty good.. was wondering if anyone else has done that. Kim, my wife, has uploaded, Kill Bill vol 1 and 2, plus some other movie to her Ipod and watched them on the plane out and back as well.
I have one complaint and that is the battery only lasts about 2 hours with video going, if its only music then the life is much better.

I watch podcasts from:
beer.com
podcasts on itunes
Blue Man Group (self explanatory)
Filter - nice host (Howard Sterns new squeeze, plus cool little vids)
French Maid TV (they teach you how to do computer kind of things)
GeekBriefTV (cute hostess that gives you the latest computer news)
VodCars - this one if really cool.. on one of the vids, you are on board with Michael Schumacher while he does a couple of laps at Monaco.

Anyway, dont know if any of you are Ipod junkies or not. But if you are using yours, post up what you do with it, what sites you go to.. and if you are downloading podcasts, where you get them from.

Dana

[Silver_2000]

When on long trips I listen to podcasts.
Leo Laporte has a quite a few tech podcasts (http://www.leoville.com/). Including Security Now and some others that I listen to .. Lots of good tech podcasts out there.

You can dload some R rated ones as well - the problem I have is that the ipods DONT separate the podcasts from the music- if you set your ipod on shuffle it will play a podcast right after a classic rock song...

The podcast subscription features have some problems as well -

[dboat]

When on long trips I listen to podcasts.
Leo Laporte has a quite a few tech podcasts (http://www.leoville.com/). Including Security Now and some others that I listen to .. Lots of good tech podcasts out there.

You can dload some R rated ones as well - the problem I have is that the ipods DONT separate the podcasts from the music- if you set your ipod on shuffle it will play a podcast right after a classic rock song...

The podcast subscription features have some problems as well -


I havent run into the subscription issues yet.

what other sites do you download from? the ones I listed are all listed on the itunes site except for beer.com
I'll check out Leo's site for content there..

Dana

[Lyfisin]

French Maid TV (they teach you how to do computer kind of things)

Sure they do... :tongue:



On topic, I have no iPod. I keep thinking about it, but just never pulled the trigger. I'm usually good with whatever's on the radio still so I don't have Sirius or anything like that either.

If I did get an iPod, my interest would be more around podcasting than mp3s.

[dboat]

Sure they do... :tongue:

in between the pillow fights///:evil

[Tex Arcana]

What I would like is either a "keg" for the truck, or a carputer with a huge hard drive. I've got about 30 gigs of music, in MP3 and .ogg format, but I would like to re-rip the CDs to FLAC, and then somehow use them in a keg thru the stereo. MP3 isn't the best of compressions; OGG is better, but very processor-intensive when ripping songs, and they don't compress as well as MP3. FLAC is lossless and high-quality, but beyond that I don't know it's compression rates.

[dboat]

What I would like is either a "keg" for the truck, or a carputer with a huge hard drive. I've got about 30 gigs of music, in MP3 and .ogg format, but I would like to re-rip the CDs to FLAC, and then somehow use them in a keg thru the stereo. MP3 isn't the best of compressions; OGG is better, but very processor-intensive when ripping songs, and they don't compress as well as MP3. FLAC is lossless and high-quality, but beyond that I don't know it's compression rates.


ok, Tex, like you are really going to be able to tell the difference in sound quality in your truck. Between the inferior system, speakers, road noise and whatnot.. you wont be able to tell the difference.. you can get a 30Gig Ipod for $250.. and its a lot more portable and user friendly than a "keg".. if that isnt enough room, then get the 60 Gig one.. these things are great and easy to use.. plus you can put videos and such on them..

Dana

[Tex Arcana]

ok, Tex, like you are really going to be able to tell the difference in sound quality in your truck. Between the inferior system, speakers, road noise and whatnot.. you wont be able to tell the difference.. you can get a 30Gig Ipod for $250.. and its a lot more portable and user friendly than a "keg".. if that isnt enough room, then get the 60 Gig one.. these things are great and easy to use.. plus you can put videos and such on them..

Dana

You'd be surprised, because I *can* hear the difference. MP3s basically "cut off" a portion of the actual signal to render the compression, and in this case it's the highs above a certain frequency, which typically leaves them sounding muddied and heavily-bass-biased (hence the term "lossy" compression). Ogg is more faithful, but still lossy, so something it being taken away. FLAC is lossless, so will sound the best.

Heck, just occurred to me that, with a 250MB+ hd, a "keg" could hold UNCOMPRESSED CDs quite easily... :burnout:

[Silver_2000]

If it sounds 10% better is it worth ot taking up 10X the space ?

Meaning that you can only store 1 cd rather than 10 cds worth of songs ??

http://www.digitalprosound.com/Htm/WebAudio/2000/Oct/MP3bitrates2.htm

[jcblack]

I love my ipod. I bought the 60 gig about three months ago, which sucks because the 80 is out now. I listen to music day in and day out and I don't think that you will be sacrificing any quality using mp3 format on a ipod. Like the link that Doug posted stated, you don't want to go below 128 or the quality will suck. You would have to have some pretty good listeners on the side of your face to hear the difference. My only complaint is exactly what Dana said, the battery life when watching videos sucks. The music will last all day long on a single charge.

[dboat]

You'd be surprised, because I *can* hear the difference. MP3s basically "cut off" a portion of the actual signal to render the compression, and in this case it's the highs above a certain frequency, which typically leaves them sounding muddied and heavily-bass-biased (hence the term "lossy" compression). Ogg is more faithful, but still lossy, so something it being taken away. FLAC is lossless, so will sound the best.

Heck, just occurred to me that, with a 250MB+ hd, a "keg" could hold UNCOMPRESSED CDs quite easily... :burnout:

Tex, I "hear" ya.. but for me, the difference inside my truck isnt really that much different for me.. between the whine of the blower and the exhaust, well it works for me.
Now, inside the house, I have the Bang and Olufsen stereo and thats a whole 'nother issue..
I dont think you can beat them, for price, and convenience.. I did step way up and get a set of Bang and Olufsen earsets for the Ipod.. yes pricey but quality is way high, and so is the sound quality..

Dana

[Tex Arcana]

If it sounds 10% better is it worth ot taking up 10X the space ?

Meaning that you can only store 1 cd rather than 10 cds worth of songs ??

http://www.digitalprosound.com/Htm/WebAudio/2000/Oct/MP3bitrates2.htm

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC :


FLAC is for efficient packing of audio data, unlike general lossless algorithms such as ZIP and gzip. While ZIP may compress a CD-quality audio file by 10–20%, FLAC achieves compression rates of 30–50%.

Lossy codecs can achieve ratios of 80% or more by discarding data from the original stream. FLAC uses linear prediction to convert the audio samples to a series of small, uncorrelated numbers (known as the residual), which are stored efficiently using Golomb-Rice coding. It also uses run-length encoding for blocks of identical samples, such as silent passages. The technical strengths of FLAC compared to other lossless codecs lie in its ability to be streamed and in a fast decode time, which is independent of compression level.

from http://mp3.radified.com/lossless.htm:


You will find that most encoding decisions boil down to a trade off between file size and audio quality. Everybody seeks maximum fidelity with minimum file sizes [bit-rate]. You should read that last sentence again, because it represents the crux of the encoding issue.

This guide [and most audio enthusiats] are more concerned with maximizing audio fidelity .. than minimizing files size [bit-rates] .. especially since hard drive space became so cheap. For example, you can purchase a 500-GB drive for ~US$275.

A 120-gig drive will store over 300 CDs encoded with lossless compression. That's ~40-cents per CD. You could even get a 750-GB drive, and prices continue to drop. The popularity of lossless compression has been growing with the hard drive capacities.

An ideal encoder would yield perfect transparency at the tiniest bit-rate possible, and it would encode very quickly. Unfortunately, such an encoder does not [yet] exist. Today, if you want quality audio, you have to pay with bits [requires more hard drive space].

All things being equal, more bits = greater audio fidelity. Only you can decide how much audio quality you want/need, and how much you're willing to pay for this quality in terms of file sizes.

Bottom line: it all depends on what YOU want. *I* want lossless, archival-quality rips. On a computer or an iPod with earbuds or mini-speakers, an MP3 will sound fine; however, put burned MP3s on a good car stereo or home stereo system, and the quality compromises become VERY obvious, and (to me) annoying.

Since hard drives are basically dead-cheap these days, I'd rather rip my CDs in a format which won't be compromised if I when I have to replace a CD or the entire collection (as in, someone stealing them, or one getting damaged). Otherwise, I'm stuck with a poor-quality burn, which'll just p!ss me off.

Dana, this answered your reply to my post as well. :tu:

[Silver_2000]

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC :



from http://mp3.radified.com/lossless.htm:



Bottom line: it all depends on what YOU want. *I* want lossless, archival-quality rips. On a computer or an iPod with earbuds or mini-speakers, an MP3 will sound fine; however, put burned MP3s on a good car stereo or home stereo system, and the quality compromises become VERY obvious, and (to me) annoying.

Since hard drives are basically dead-cheap these days, I'd rather rip my CDs in a format which won't be compromised if I when I have to replace a CD or the entire collection (as in, someone stealing them, or one getting damaged). Otherwise, I'm stuck with a poor-quality burn, which'll just p!ss me off.

Dana, this answered your reply to my post as well. :tu:

If you want best quality then replace the CD player and speakers in your truck with decent $3000 -$5000 system and park it in the garage, plya the original CDs carefully and you will get decent quality - But we are talking here about portable music - devices specifically like ipods - the typical ipod is now 80gb and can hold thousands of mp3s. the bitrate you rip them at is your business. heck the act of putting the music on the CD causes sound quality problems.

But once again the topic here is ipods in F150s.
Ipods and Itunes
In my truck the sound of horsepower would drown out the subtle differences :nana2 - and I would bet that same would be true for every F150 ever made -
But Im sure you can hear the difference in your truck :rolleyes: -
If you have the $$ to save the files at 10 x the size - its your $$ - have fun with it

Another way to look at it is I would rather have 200 songs at decent quailty to listen to on my ipod than 20 songs at great quality. No matter how much I like those 20 the sound quality wont keep me from getting sick of them

[Logan]

You're all dumb.

[Silver_2000]

You're all dumb.

Thanks for that ...

[Tex Arcana]

You're all dumb.
My mother wears combat boots! :tongue:

[Logan]

Thanks for that ...

Hey man... You know me, I'm here to help. :tu:

[aliekitn99]

You're all dumb.

:rll: :rll: :rll: :rll: :rll: