I am currently in the market for a digital audio player. I have begun to download a lot of music in mp3 format from e-music.com as well as converting CD's to mp3. I currently own a Mac Quicksilver G4 and really like iTunes. I am thinking about purchasing a new iPod 15GB. The only thing holding me back is the cost of around $400. The main advantage would be to have all my collection of music in one place. I can connect it to my home stereo. I very seldom travel or listen to music while exercising so the portability factor is not that important. My other option would be to purchase a CD player that also plays CD's encoded in mp3 format. I would be able to burn a lot of music on one CD. The cost of the player would be a lot less. Have any of you been in a similar situation. Do you think the iPod is a better option considering the difference in price. Also have any of you used the iPod as a PDA. This extra feature might justify the price. Thanks

Welcome to Head-Fi, sorry about your wallet.

I used the PDA features for awhile and would probably still if my cell phone didn't do the same.

They're sort of different beasts, but one question I'd ask if have any albums at time do you need to carry around with you. I actually have a 5 gig iPod, but realistically I'm not "into" more than what it holds. 40+ albums are never in heavy rotation. If you are in a similar boat, you may be able to get an older smaller iPod. If that applies that may be an argument for the CD player. Maybe you're only into 10 albums at a time. And as you've notice they can be bought cheap.

I love my iPod and feel like I can't be without it, but if money is an issue a CD/great headphones for the same price is maybe a better combo.

I like my 10gb iPod for the very reason that I can carry all of my music around with me. For years I had many, many cd's collecting dust because I was never in quite the right mood to listen to them. I always picked a newer one, even if I had listened to it recently. Basically, I would only listen to maybe the 10 newest discs [and a few old favorites] and the others got ignored. It had to do with mood, maybe not liking the whole disc, or just not wanting to constantly change discs/carry a bunch around.

Anyway, I love the iPod because I now listen to everything I own. I know this for a fact because I set a smart playlist that contains anything I haven't listened to in X number of days. I currently have it set at 45. So, within about 45 days or so, I listen to every song I own! As I add more music, I bump it up by a day or so.

I use the shuffle setting almost exclusively, whether in my "Not Recent" playlist or any other. Even when playing some albums. It keeps me out of the "same old stuff" rut and makes for some rather interesting transitions.

I highly recommend any iPod over an mp3 cd player. The effort of burning cd's gets old. CD players don't have nearly the interface of the iPod for sorting through songs. And since you already have a Mac and iTunes, you're all set to use the iPod right out of the box.

The way I see it: cds are for home [when I want the higher quality]and the iPod is for mobile. [walking, travelling, driving, and for me- at work]

http://www.powermax.com

This site has a full range of new and used iPods starting at $180. My girlfriend just got her 5gb iPod from them and its great.

If cost is a real issue- save until you can afford and iPod.

This is very subjective, so perhaps my experience will help you to consider what is important to *you* (as opposed to what's important to everyone else who may respond to you)...

I have a RioVolt mp3cd player and about 50Gigs of mp3s (mostly what I've ripped from my own cd collection as well as downloads and rips of borrowed cds). I was constantly burning CDRW with new rips/dls as well as old faves and carried several discs with me to and from work as well as when I travel. This got very cumbersome and it took a while to erase the CDRW and burn with new music. I also burned CDRs.

I got a 10Gig iPod (2nd gen with touchwheel and buttons around wheel) several months ago and will never go back to mp3cds. I use it every day. I've installed an AUX connection for my car stereo and have 10Gigs of music on hand in my car. I also take it with me to work every day. I routinely swap about 10 albums on it weekly (or more) and the firewire makes transfers happen in literally a couple of minutes. It is VERY convenient.

A larger capacity iPod would be nice as it affords you the luxury of having whatever music you want based on your mood. Its not about having several thousand songs in heavy rotation - its about having any song available to fit your mood at that moment with instant access and no disc swapping or bags to lug around.

If this sounds like it might fit your style, then consider getting a 2nd gen iPod at discount prices - why pay for the latest technology if you don't need all of the newest features?

Lineout is not crucial for good sound. I have my headphone output going into my car stereo and also into my home stereo without distortion and my amps are hefty enough to give me good sound. MP3 encoding will impact your sound quality the most and I strongly recommend encoding your own rips at 192VBR or higher (I prefer 256VBR via EAC rip, LAME encoding with -alt-preset standard or extreme on Windows PC platform).

If the newer iPod's features are definitely what you want - then be prepared to pay for them.

If you decide to go with an MP3CD player, then I can recommend the RioVolt or iRiver - excellent user interface and good performance though the RioVolt is somewhat fragile in build quality.

Comparing my RioVolt to my iPod in terms of sound quality - there is no comparison - iPod sounds much better to me. I use them both with koss ksc35, portapros, as well as beyerdynamic dt250-80 headphones. All of these cans are easily driven by both sources.

Hope this helps!

Thanks to all for your comments, you have brought up some great points. I forgot to mention that I have a very large CD collection, around 300 CDs as well as music I have downloaded in mp3 format. As you have mentioned it would enable me to listen to more music instead of my most recent downloads. Also the ability to change playlists is a nice feature. I have a 6 CD changer in my car and I am always having to change out and record new CD's which is time consuming. My car has a stock CD player which does not play mp3 CDs. This brings up another question. My car radio does not have an auxiliary input. I have heard that the cassette adaptors and FM transmitters do not provide the best sound quality. I had read in some forums that there is an adaptor that allows you to wire an auxiliary connector between the CD changer and radio. Have any of you had experience with this. If I can use the iPod in my car this would be a great benefit. As far as using the iPod for home use it would be nice to have all my music connected to my stereo. I have a single CD player which is not very convenient.
How is the sound quality using the line output of the new iPods and what bit rate should I use to transfer my CDs to mp3 in order to get the best possible sound. My last question is how does the iPod work as a PDA. I do not own a PDA and my cell phone does not have this function. I have decided to purchase the new generation 15 GB iPod due to the new features, dock, and line output. Thanks to your comments I can justify the price over a CD mp3 player especially using the Mac OS and iTunes. I also want to comment on this message board. It is great for people interested in portable audio. Thanks again for all the help.

The PDA is pretty basic. Your contacts can be exported as a vCard from Mail, Entourage, etc. and dragged over to the iPod. Your iPod can either automatically update its music with iTunes or you can manually move stuff over. The latter displays the iPod as a firewire drive and you can drag other files (like the vCards) to it. Text files, reminders etc. can also be moved over. The new iPods have (I believe) an alarm feature based I assume on the calendar which is included (also on old).

As for encoding you have three options on a Mac- MP3, AAC, or AIFF. If you want the absolute best go AIFF, but this is zero compression. A 650 meg album will take up 650 megs. Your iPod will fill up quickly. Next in line is generally considered MP3 320kps. The thing about MP3's is you can use various encoders and the FhG iTunes encoder is not the best. Download the iTunes-LAME app to encode with LAME instead. Then go over to Hydrogen Audio and surf their MP3 forum. Generally the three settings you want to pay attention to are --alt-preset standard, --alt-preset extreme, and --alt-preset insane (put "fast" after "preset" to increase speed). The latter is basically 320. Their quality is insane to standard and their size is in reverse. For portable situations with portable phones --aps is usually good enough. For home use you MAY want better, but I'll get to that later. There's also AAC. I did a small comparison and believe 160 AAC is very good, until you get to the MP3 presets. Here the iTunes/Quicktime encorder is very good, but there are ways to make Quicktime produce higher quality files like AACelerator or MakeMineMPEG-4. You may want to try these out.

Lastly you have the option of encoding for your iPod "on the go" and using your desktop/laptop as a home source. In this case the iPod could be filled with 160 AAC's or LAME --APS, and your deskop/laptop could be filled with FLAC files. This is what I'm currently experimenting with. FLAC is a free lossless compression format so you're getting quality as good as it's going to get. Your CD will compress about 50%. Unfortunely Apple doesn't support this, so it won't end up in iTunes or your iPod. You'll need to download MacFlac or Flacer off VersionTracker to encode, the download MacAmp X or VLC (or use XMMS and X11) to play.

Okay, got that?

Or you can just encode --aps.

Hey, any links for that program that does smart playlists?

the only one i know of is itunes and that's mac only for now. apple should have a windows version by the year's end though.