[markychas]

I'm seriously considering getting an ipod and was wondering about importing classical albums. My main query is; I want to be able to recall a complete cd on the ipod while maintaining the cd's original order and also having the ability to have internal track access to the album like I do on a pcdp. Is this possible?

 

[dwchin]

You can certainly do this on iPod. It gives you several browsing menus to choose from, such as by Artist, Album title, Genre, Composer, etc. For my classical, I tend to use the Composer menu, since I like to list the performers in the Artist field. Submenus once you go into Composer will list albums by title, from which you can choose an entire album to play, and tracks will be in their original order as long as you tag them properly with track numbers.

You can also browse and choose individual tracks from each of these albums and play them, or you can select them to add to an on the go playlist. You also have the option of creating pre-arranged playlists on iTunes and importing them to the iPod for later use. You will need to make sure your mp3s are properly tagged to make browsing easy, but I assume you'd want to do that anyway.

 

[blessingx]

markychas, I'm a little confused by your question (it's probably me). Are you asking to have album grouping, individual track playback and movement within a track (rev/ff)? If so the question is yes. You have the option of encoding per track or all tracks 'joined' for a single track (for gapless). You can also have the songs be bookmarkable (one bookmark is always there, but per track...) of you encode in ALAC or AAC and change the extension to .m4b.

Also iTunes graps info upon CD insertion (including composer if included on CDDB) and 'names' tracks and album. iTunes uses an artist/album/track ID3 structure by default. You can also sort by composer or genre or grouping.

Many of these traits are not unique to the iPod/iTunes combo so their are other players worth considering, but all the above is only available on the combo.

When it comes to playback and/or tagging/info possibilities, DAPs have it over CDPs.

Hope this helps.

 

[bigshot]

If you have a Mac, there are Applescripts that make playing classical music in the right order a breeze. You'll probably want to rip a movement as a single track though to avoid the gap.

See ya
Steve

 

[Spad]

The iPod is great for classical listening, particularly the photo models which scroll the long file names common to classical works. Tagging presents a problem to classical listeners that other genres mostly dodge: extremely inaccurate tags. Here's an article you may find somewhat useful. But let me warn you, I've been grappling with this issue from the gitgo and I've yet to find an real solution.

 

[EdipisReks]

i retag everything by hand, classical or not. i have a special method i use for symphonics; i put the symphony number and movement number before the name. [4:1] is symphony 4, movement 1, [4:2] is symphony 4, movement 2, and etc. i find that doing this makes it very easy and quick for me to get specific movements on the fly using my ipod, especially when i'm scrolling through a composer's complete symphonic works.

 

[Beethovenian]

You have to consider that the iPod is not gapless. The pause it produces between tracks is extremely irritating, especially when you're listening to a piece like Beethoven's Fifth or Sixth Symphonies, Stravinsly's Petrushka or almost any opera. I'd suggest you to go with a Sony player and use the Atrac format. Though it limits your tagging options for lack of search by composer, you won't have to transform all your pieces into single big files and lose the ability to go to a specific movement. If you don't mind the size, the Vaio Pocket is an excellent option. Its navigation is as good as the iPod's, and since you can browse by genre>artist>album>track, you can conceivably use the genre field to put the composer's name.

 

[Jmmmmm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beethovenian You have to consider that the iPod is not gapless. The pause it produces between tracks is extremely irritating, especially when you're listening to a piece like Beethoven's Fifth or Sixth Symphonies, Stravinsly's Petrushka or almost any opera. I'd suggest you to go with a Sony player and use the Atrac format. Though it limits your tagging options for lack of search by composer, you won't have to transform all your pieces into single big files and lose the ability to go to a specific movement. If you don't mind the size, the Vaio Pocket is an excellent option. Its navigation is as good as the iPod's, and since you can browse by genre>artist>album>track, you can conceivably use the genre field to put the composer's name.

the karma also has gapless playback, all of those features and more, and with it you aren't limited to sony atrac and whatever the sony software is that everyone hates (sonicstage ?). there's nothing wrong with the ipod, but if you need gapless playback, the karma is the obvious choice, imo.

 

[DigDub]

minidisc sounds like a good format.

gapless playback on atrac and allows searching by artists or tracks initials.

 

[Spad]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would one want gapless playback of classical music? If I had a gapless formatted symphony I would be doing everything possible to insert pauses between movements.

 

[Beethovenian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spad Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would one want gapless playback of classical music? If I had a gapless formatted symphony I would be doing everything possible to insert pauses between movements.

Now I'm the one missing something. Why would you want to go against the composer's intention and insert pauses where there shouldn't be any? If Beethoven crafted the scherzo in his Fifth Symphony to finish in a buildup to the triumphant finale, why would you break his dramatic arc?
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jmmmmm the karma also has gapless playback, all of those features and more, and with it you aren't limited to sony atrac and whatever the sony software is that everyone hates (sonicstage ?). there's nothing wrong with the ipod, but if you need gapless playback, the karma is the obvious choice, imo.

The Karma is a good player, but its navigation scheme is not well suited to classical music. The problem is that you can't start playback from any track in an album. You either select "play all" or a single track. Of course, you can select play all and go down to the track you want to start with, but the player will send you back to the starting point after about three seconds. That's not time enough for the title to scroll in certain circunstances, particularly when you have more than one work in the same album, leaving track names very long (for instance, if you have an album with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Petrushka and you want to start playback from Petrushka's Dance of the Nursemaids).

As for tagging, my suggestion is to use the abbreviations adopted by magazines like Gramophone or by the Penguin Guide. A symphony is sym, a concerto is conc, a string quartet is strg qt, piano is pf, violin is vn, cello is vc etc.

 

[DigDub]

Code:

[left]gapless is definitely quite good for some songs. because as you can see, sometimes it is better without gaps.[/left]

 

[Spad]

Apparently I really did miss something. I took gapless to mean that some wanted, for example, an entire symphonic piece to be played with no discernible breaks between movements.

 

[bigshot]

Some symphonies, particularly those by Mahler and Beethoven sometimes have no discernable break between movements. One movement transitions right into the next with no pause.

See ya
Steve

 

[PSmith08]

I can attest to classical on an iPod, as that's all that I have on mine. The menus make complete albums, tracks, and the like easy. In fact, I tend to run my operas together so I can listen straight through. This becomes nice with stuff like Der Ring des Nibelungen (both as a whole and as separate pieces). As for gaps, they are not terrible on purely instrumental pieces, but they can be distracting with vocal works. Very distracting to me, anyway. However, the iPod is great for classical as it can hold an enormous amount of high quality stuff.