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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Portable music / voice recording device recommendations?
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Brian Michael Weidemann
Expert cat molester
Posts: 944
From: Costa Mesa, CA United States
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted 09-01-2005 01:51 AM
I have heard before that this is how iTunes, iPods, and Macs try to operate. If you have a bunch of infrared Mac laptops in a room, they'll start copying and transfering files between them, so that everyone has the same stuff. Well, that's what I heard, anyway.
I refuse to have anything to do with iPods or iTunes. WinAmp v2.80 is PERFECT! I can open any number of instances of it, each with different playlists, it NEVER tries to search my directories or make its own playlists or "libraries". And no matter what skin you load to it, ALL the buttons are ALWAYS in the same spot. Intuitive, no hazzle functionality!
I use WinAmp to play files, and NOTHING else. I use MusicMatch to rip CD's, and NOTHING else. I use Nero to burn CD's, and NOTHING else. I use my iRiver portable mp3 player software to transfer to my iRiver portable mp3 player, and NOTHING else.
Who ever told these companies that we want ONE program to do it all? I have more advanced features in many SPECIALIZED programs than I do in one Does-It-All program that does more things you DON'T want it to than things you DO.
I still love my iRiver portable. It records great, plays great, and has no hard drive with moving parts that'll wear out!
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 09-01-2005 04:06 AM
quote: Brian Michael Weidemann
I have heard before that this is how iTunes, iPods, and Macs try to operate. If you have a bunch of infrared Mac laptops in a room, they'll start copying and transfering files between them, so that everyone has the same stuff. Well, that's what I heard, anyway.
Not the way it works; at least not with what's available today. I suppose it's possible that there may have been versions in the past that behaved in a strange way.
To take iPods first, they talk USB 2.0 or Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394a), older ones were Firewire only. They do not have IRDA, Bluetooth etc., so they won't sync with anything unless you plug them in. Nor do they talk to each other, only to iTunes. I believe there are now third-party products which can be used instead of iTunes, but you have to use something like that, you can't just drag a .mp3 or.aac file to the iPod; that will copy the file to the iPods disk, but you won't be able to play it.
ITunes will talk to other copies of itself running on other machines over a network. If you have chosen to share your music library, or any part of it, then people on those other machines will be able to play your music on their machine (assuming that it is not protected content, (see later), but not copy it to their machines, delete it, or do anything else. By default sharing is turned off.
When an iPod syncs to iTunes the the iPod content is changed (files added or deleted) to match the copy on iTunes; the copy on the computer is not changed. The iPod disk can be formatted for pc (FAT32) or Mac. Apple say that it must be formatted for the machine type you are going to use, but a FAT 32 iPod will work with iTunes on a Mac, I have my one done that way.
An iPod can be set to sync automatically as soon as it connects, or only when you tell it to. This setting is stored on the iPod, not the computer, which can cause problems if you are not careful. If you have auto sync turned on, and you connect your iPod to another machine (Quite a useful thing to do, as it can be used as a USB or Firewire portable hard disk for just moving files around) and that other computer has iTunes installed then your music on the iPod will be deleted and replaced by that from the other computer; there is no warning. You cannot choose to just add any extra 'songs' which are found on the other machine, everything will be replaced. I always keep sync turned off on my iPod, except when I actually intend to update it. It's all a bit quirky, but you get used to it. If you want to move a music library from one computer to another it's just a matter of moving one folder to the other machine by any means you choose. You can do this between a Mac and pc; the files are compatible.
The music files are stored in a strange way on the iPod; tunes from the same album will be stored in different folders, but the same folder will contain tunes from several albums, and the files are given meaningless names; I don't know why.
On the iPod Photo, which I have, pictures sync to iPhoto in a similar way to songs sync to iTunes, but there are separate settings for each. The way that contacts and calendar items sync is different in system 10.4, where it is done through iTunes, and earlier versions, where it was done through iSync. In 10.4 it is no longer possible to use isync to do this. Contacts and calendars cannot be synced directly with a pc, there are ways of doing it, but it's messy.
The iPod will not handle e-mail as such, but it can store, and display, text files, so if there's a message which you need to carry with you then you can paste the contents into a text file.
Music download from the iTunes Store is in AAC format, and is protected. You can authorise several, think it's five, computers to play this material; after this you have to de-authorise one before you can add another. This works for all music that you have downloaded on your account; you cannot authorise some music on different computers to others. IPods do not need to be authorised, and you can make multiple CDs from a playlist; there is a limit to the number, but I can't remember what it is. It really is a pretty good system, and doesn't stop you doing anything that you might reasonably want to do. If you want to de-authorise a computer, but cannot get into iTunes on that machine, e.g. if it has died and you are replacing it with a new one, then you have to contact Apple; I've never had to do this, so I don't know how easy it is to do.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 02-07-2007 02:14 PM
I've been looking at iPods and their competitors quite a bit lately.
I have a Sandisk M240, which is a very basic 1GB player with no video capability. The battery life on a single AAA is great, because there's no huge LCD, no hard drive, and no video. Sound quality is also very good, even with the included earbuds. I bought it for a good deal at the time ($80), and they can be found now for $40-$60 depending on sales.
Last April, I wanted to buy my Mom a portable music player for her birthday. At the time, the Sandisk was still around $100, and sync'ing to it with Windows Media Player isn't as brain dead simple as it is was with the iPod Nano and iTunes.
Since she doesn't live nearby, I wanted brain dead simple to cut down on her frustration and the inevitable tech support calls.
I bought her a 1GB iPod Nano, and she's been very happy with it. It's very slim, almost too much so for my taste, and the display is nice for displaying cover art. She is now outgrowing the 1GB of space, so in retrospect, I guess I should have sprung for the 2GB model.
As for me, I know that I want much more storage than 1GB. I'd like to have a wide variety of music available on the device without having to think too much about it, so right now, the 8GB flash-based models are in my radar. Another alternative is going hard-drive based, and having the luxury of storing all my music, plus videos, plus data, etc. The cost of 30GB hard drive based models is similar to 8GB flash-based models. This is true whether you are talking iPod or non-iPod, as long as you compare the two models from the same side of the fence.
Whether you choose an iPod or a non-iPod (basically, there are two camps, with the Zune trying to carve out a third and will fail in my estimation), might have more to do with the entire system surrounding the choice than the player itself. I'm not in love with the iPod, but I'm not a hater of it either.
The first thing to look at is the player/sync software you are going to use. iTunes is simple and straightforward, but definitely lacking as a player and organizer of media. I like that it has podcasting support built-in; shame on WMP for not including it yet!
I have never bought music online, and don't have any plans to, so the music stores behind these services hold little sway with me. I like having CD's and ripping them myself, thanks. I'll admit that what Apple is doing with TV shows and even movies on the iTunes store is very intriguing, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Apple says that it doesn't believe in subscription services, but I believe that in this day and age of DRM taking away your ability to really own downloaded music, subscription services are the way to go. This is where non-iPods have the leg up. Services like Rhapsody, MusicMatch and Yahoo Music to Go, etc. offer access to a wide variety of music for a monthly fee. Non-iPods definitely have the advantage when it comes to choices, both in players used to sync, and in music purchase/subscription services.
If all you ever plan to do is listen to music on the portable player and via the computer-based player, this is as far as you need to go to determine which way to go.
The next part to look at is where it gets complicated. The path you choose will dictate what you are able to do in addition to simply listening to music on a portable.
I have a music player in my entertainment rack (AudioTron) that accesses the music files on my server and plays them through my whole house. It has a front panel, a remote, and even a web-based interface to control it. Very cool, and I would never, ever go back to shuffling CD's, ever again.
The modern-day equivalents to the now-extinct AudioTron is the Slim Devices Squeezebox on the non-iPod side, and the iPod side of things offers the AirPort Express Base Station with AirTunes, which is more of a hack than anything, but they are just coming out with the Apple TV product, which has a lot of potential.
The integration that products like the Squeezebox and AppleTV offer take a simple music player to the next level of functionality. The portable device is just one element in a larger system, and choosing which player to buy may be dictated by these larger issues.
The biggest issue I have with my AudioTron is that I am not able to see its display on my TV screen or modulate its output so that I can see it on any of the TV's in my home. I would also like the ability to play lossless files, and it doesn't do that.
The Squeezebox doesn't offer on-screen display, but it does offer a great reputation for audio quality, and its integration with the Pandora and Rhapsody music services is a definitely plus.
The Apple TV product is very intriguing to me. Apple is poised to hit the living room like they have everyone's shirt pocket. They are putting the pieces in place that could eventually replace network television as the primary method by which we watch TV shows in the same way that downloaded and ripped music is replacing broadcast radio.
It's all exciting to a gadget-hound like me, and the only regrets I have is that I don't have unlimited amounts of money to play with everything, and lacking unlimited wealth, that a choice has to be made about going the Apple/iPod route or the non-Apple route. For the most part, they aren't interoperable beyond core functions, and by doing so, you lose the advantages that the homogenous system provides.
Here's a short list of the portable music players that I'm considering:
- Flash-based: Sandisk e280R 8GB ($190)
- Flash-based: Apple iPod Nano 8GB ($235)
- Hard drive based: Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB ($190)
- Hard drive based: Apple iPod 30GB ($245)
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-08-2007 12:35 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
I have a music player in my entertainment rack (AudioTron) that accesses the music files on my server and plays them through my whole house. It has a front panel, a remote, and even a web-based interface to control it. Very cool, and I would never, ever go back to shuffling CD's, ever again.
Are you ripping LPCM quality .WAV files to the server? If you're lossy compressing the music files what are you giving up to have the data placed in a centralized location?
As gigantic (and affordable) as hard discs have become, I see less and less relevance for severe compression formats like MP3 -at least in terms of in-the-home use.
A single 300GB 7200rpm external hard disc can be purchased for as little as $80 and can hold over 400 uncompressed LPCM music CDs. The actual number is probably quite a bit higher considering lots of pre-recorded music CDs don't completely fill up the 74-80 minutes of CD data capacity.
Flash based portable music players have much smaller levels of capacity. Even still, a 4GB iPod Nano (or similar device) has more than enough space to hold several uncompressed or lossless compressed music CDs.
I've never gotten into the iPod thing largely because of the constraints in such a very closed music purchasing and playback system. The DRM in each iTunes file makes the setup even more of a pain. The small 128kb/s AAC data rate on the music files seems even more punishing. It would seem like, for all the compromises and freedoms you must sacrifice to use iTunes, that there would be some kind of high quality pay off to make the system worth it. Too much is given up just to make things easy.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 02-09-2007 11:42 AM
Bobby,
I agree with your sentiments.
When I went through my CD collection and ripped every one of them to MP3, I did so at 128kbps. At the time, I couldn't tell a substantial difference, and disc space wasn't as easy to come by as it is today. Over the years, I've inched that up to 192kbps, and I've been happy with the results so far. The ideal, however, is to go lossless, since I have the hard drive space to do so (or can buy more for a little $$).
Keeping the tracks in uncompressed PCM (.wav) format is not practical, as WAV files do not support tagging, which is required to keep a large music collection organized and to be able to select music based on more than just the album directory to which it was ripped.
My perfect world, and one I'm still trying to find, is to have my entire collection ripped to a lossless format (Apple Lossless, Windows Media Lossless, or FLAC, doesn't much matter to me). That's the archive.
The whole house music source would draw from the archive directly and supply me with music as good as the source. My AudioTron is too old to support any lossless format besides WAV, so that's currently not possible until I replace it with something new (Squeezebox or AppleTV).
My desktop PC can play any of the lossless formats, so I'm good there.
The difficulty comes in when the portable is introduced into the system. In an ideal world, when I sync'd the portable with the music I wanted to fill it with, the music would be transferred as-is (if there's room) or converted down to a lower bitrate in order to fit onto the player.
A hard drive based player in the range of 30-60GB would allow me to transfer quite a bit of music in lossless format, but the 8GB flash-based players don't have enough room to enjoy that luxury.
Windows Media Player does support converting music to a lower bitrate when transferring to a portable, and I'm investigating that option now. Unfortunately, my current MP3 player doesn't support any lossless format.
I can't tell if iTunes supports that feature, so I guess I need to find someone who has an iPod and try it.
This is what I mean by looking at music as a larger system than just downloading to a portable. Maybe I'm just strange and overthinking things (which I'm apt to do), but I want things to work for me in multiple ways, and I don't like jumping through hoops all the time to get things to work.
Apple has a possible hit on their hands with the AppleTV product. It has a few issues which will prevent its wide adoption right away (having to be hooked up to an HDTV is a big one), but it has the potential to be a huge factor in the living room.
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