[ReD sKyE]

BTW, how bad is itunes as an audio player anyway? It sounds fine to me.....
And, personally, I think the databasing in it is irreproachable.

 

[blessingx]

Arguably, there's no good or bad 'players', just decoders.

I think iTunes is fine. It's got a decent EQ, you can hijack the signal to add DSPs if you want, etc. Upsampling is a little more difficult, but I do that completely on the soundcard side anyway. If you like it, use it. Foobar does have some nice features though.

And horrible iPod sound quality is not what I'd call it. Comparing to a hotrodded Sony deck a few months ago, I was surprised how well it held up its side.

Also keep in mind Apple and Expercom have refurbs on sale. Some nice (like Karma) other players though too.

 

[ReD sKyE]

I'm lookin for a 60gb player though.....

And, is there anyway to update/customize the firmware on ipods like you can with archos products?

Thanks for the help

Adam

 

[blessingx]

You can update firmware (Apple's pretty good about updating their current lines), but I don't know what you mean about customizing it.

The Archos has some third party firmware, because the first party support wasn't felt to be there. That hasn't really been the case with Apple, iRiver, Creative, etc.

Some boot their OS X machines off the iPod, and a project called Linux-on-iPod, obviously has some plans, put otherwise the big deal (besides music) is using the PDA features. I read movie listings, contacts, NYTimes/Wired headlines, etc. off the iPod.

 

[remilard]

If transcoding is the solution at least don't use the itunes mp3 encoder. Getting lame and dbpoweramp would not be a large effort for the difference in quality.

 

[ReD sKyE]

No transcoding in my future.... I'll just wait for the next gen ipods to come out...

Thanks again guys

 

[rwooda]

Re-ripping is a total pain, I agree. That is why I went with FLAC so I can just convert the music to whatever format I want in the future without having to re-rip.

 

[Oddball]

Hmm...I've ripped my CD collection (no less than 50 CDs at any time, now in the 70s) to 128 kbps, 192 kpbs, APS, APX, and FLAC. Going lossless is definitely best since it allows for good transcoding. Ugh, if only i could have my time back.

I wonder how expensive a 60 GB iPod would be. I think it would be the largest capacity, so I suppose $500 is a good guess.

 

[br--]

It probably would have been wise to research this before ripping all of your music to AAC.

 

[remilard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by br-- It probably would have been wise to research this before ripping all of your music to AAC.

This is true, but I think a lot of us have probably made similar mistakes. Obviously lossless archiving is the best choice for almost everyone but most people figure that out after encoding everything as some lossy format, and then deciding they need something else or better quality.

 

[ReD sKyE]

Well, considering I have 300 or so cds, encoding is no easy task.
I ripped to aac because, from the beginning, I was convinced I would get an ipod. Now I'm just second guessing myself. I guess it's easier just to stick to the original plan.....

 

[rwooda]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oddball Going lossless is definitely best since it allows for good transcoding.

Not just "good" transcoding, but no transcoding!

I know I'm a pedant -- (which I defend because I think it is important to be precise) -- but, converting from a lossless format (like FLAC) allows you to completely avoid transcoding.

In this context, transcoding is decoding a compressed format back to a PCM stream (say, WAV) and then re-compressing it into another format. Because the decoding step cannot produce a replica of the original file a degradation in quality is nearly gauranteed.

In other words by converting from lossless formats, every compressed version of a track can be the highest quality desired for its application.

 

[blessingx]

Ahhh... well as long as we're nitpicking

as far as I know transcoding is usually in reference to any compression, not inherently connected to lossy, degradation or artifacts, so it seems going .APE to .FLAC is just as much transcoding as .MP3 to .OGG. There's just zero data loss in the former (an exact replica of the original file). Both may require an uncompressed middle state. Though as you mentioned, you have the option of requiring it.

Then there's the confusion between the terms 'uncompressed' and 'lossless' people make often (though they may be referring to the process).

 

[rwooda]

It hurts being pedantic and then being corrected!

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx Ahhh... well as long as we're nitpicking as far as I know transcoding is usually in reference to any compression, . . .

I was really reacting to the statement "good transcoding" which is a bit of a weak statement as one side of the transcoding is "perfect" and the other is as good as you want and the format allows.

Thanks for correcting me!

Cheers!

 

[Leoml88]

Why don't you just do a system restore to before you converted your files to AAC? I had iTunes, but I did a system restore and then reripped my cds with a 3rd party software that I found at download.com