[decesaro]

I just bought a new computer and was about to buy an mp3 player ,but I cant decide between the ipod,rio,or the zen ,
As far as importing my cds to hd, should I use itunes ( seems to be pretty user friendly ) or wait till I purchase the mp3 player for there software. or will I not have a choice and will have to use what they give me . please keep it as simple as possible,Im not computer savey .
Thanks

 

[blessingx]

Well between those two, iTunes wins on almost every account. They have the same MP3 encoder and iTunes has a very good AAC encoder if you go the iPod route. Also I give iTunes the hands down win for organizion, simplicity, and its GUI. If you stick with MP3 (which any portable will handle), download one of the free programs that use the usually superior LAME MP3 encoder. Many use the "--alt-preset fast standard" encoding setting. Just copy and paste or type that in.

The advantage of not waiting is you can get your music ready for your player. The advantage of waiting if finding out what file types the player supports and researching what's best for you. That could be MP3, or the above mentioned AAC, or a third option, Ogg. No player currently supports all three though.

 

[decesaro]

Quote:

Originally posted by blessingx Well between those two, iTunes wins on almost every account. They have the same MP3 encoder and iTunes has a very good AAC encoder if you go the iPod route. Also I give iTunes the hands down win for organizion, simplicity, and its GUI. If you stick with MP3 (which any portable will handle), download one of the free programs that use the usually superior LAME MP3 encoder. Many use the "--alt-preset fast standard" encoding setting. Just copy and paste or type that in. The advantage of not waiting is you can get your music ready for your player. The advantage of waiting if finding out what file types the player supports and researching what's best for you. That could be MP3, or the above mentioned AAC, or a third option, Ogg. No player currently supports all three though.

Whats the best sound as far as the ones mentioned ? Ive used mp3's and didnt think it sounded all that good , Ive heard a burned acc the other day and it sounded alot better than the mp3 ,but thats all that Ive heard .
As far as space goes, will I be able to carry alot of music down loaded to the ipod using acc on a 10 or 20 gig ipod ?
Also if I went with a zen xtra is there any other way of making an mp3 that sounds better ,sorry for so many question .
Thanks

 

[blessingx]

Check out Hydrogen Audio for lots of compression info.

Generally the LAME encoder is best for MP3. See the recommended settings here. MP3 can sound pretty good (not sure the encoder & bitrate you heard). It can still compete favorably with AAC and Ogg. The LAME presets are very well tuned.

Also if you're interested about the files sizes in comparison see this example.

 

[T07]

I tunes is a brilliant piece of software if you intend to use it with a MAC, unfortunately the PC version is still very buggy, still better than Music munch though.

As a Euro owner I had to return my ipod because of the volume cap that Apple place on it (renders it a paperweight), so bought a Zen instead.

The software supplied is rubbish. Bur the good news is you can download Ephpod which is excellent and for ripping use EAC with the LAME encoder. Absolutely fantastic quality, on a moble unit the sound is as good as CD.

I've not heard it yet but Archos is selling like wildfire in the UK, seems to beat everything hands down except the ipod for size. I'm going to buy one in Hong Kong next week.

http://www.archos.com/