[fullnine]

Hello to all...this is my first post on Head-fi. I just discovered this forum a couple of days ago, and I've been mesmerised by the "show us your gear" threads. I thought I was alone in being a 'portable' nutcase! Anyway, here is my problem. I have a 60gb iPod photo hooked up to a Musical Fidelity X-Can V3 through the line out/dock and headphones are Sennheiser HD-650 or Sony MDR-7509. All files are full rez AIFF. No EQ is used.
On about one third of my tunes I'm getting noticable distortion, almost like clipping. The distortion is not present on the original CD. The other two thirds of the files sound just great so I'm a little lost.
Is there a way of controling the gain of full rez files while ripping them...or am I completely off base here?

Any advice would be muchly appreciated!

Chris

 

[bigshot]

Try the same song ripped as an MP3 or AAC. Huge filesizes can choke the iPod. It supports the format, but it's not designed to be used exclusively with AIFF. You won't have a significant amount of sound quality loss if you encode in AAC 256 VBR, it most likely won't even be noticeable, and your iPod will perform a LOT better.

See ya
Steve

 

[The_Duke_Of_Eli]

I concur. The digital processor in the 4th gen ipod is running at about 20 mhz I beleive. That's fine for most compression formats, but if you're going crazy it'll hickup because it cannot output as fast becasue it has to process. Supposedly the 5th gen ipod has a stronger processor because it also decodes video.

 

[fullnine]

...I guess being an 'audiofool' I want the highest rez possible, and that was the reason for me to buy in to the iPod way of doing things. What about Apple lossless or 320 VBR...will these also limit the performance?

Thanks again

Chris

P.S. I guess I'll have to try a little "trial and error" and see for myself, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[fullnine]

I have experienced momentary drop-outs from time to time, but they are rare and i'm more concerned about the clipping-like distortion on some files. The confusing part is that most of the files sound great!

Thanks

Chris

 

[bigshot]

The best way to determine the proper way to encode is to experiment. If you just go for the biggest numbers, you will eliminate some of the most compelling advantages of the iPod. I'd suggest comparing the same track in 192 AAC, 256 AAC, 256 LAME MP3 and 320 LAME MP3 and Apple Lossless. Don't tag the bitrates- test them blind. (You can always check the bitrate by doing a get info on the file in iTunes.) Listen to them carefully, and use the star rating system to mark the one that sounds worst and best. But be prepared... there won't be a great deal of difference between them, if any at all. I could only tell the difference between 192 AAC and the rest on certain songs. 256 AAC up all sounds the same to me. If you do a blind test, I bet you'll find the same.

The 5g 60 gig has twice the RAM of the 30 gig, so it's best for playing huge sound files and videos.

See ya
Steve