[tigger]

Perhaps there is an obvious answer but anyway here goes. Is it possible to load uncompressed audio data to a HD player like an iPod or Zen?
If possible, How many CD's could say a 40gig player hold?
I just don't think I could tollerate a reduction in sound quality versus a CD but I would like the convenience/cool factor of an iPod or Zen.

 

[Cyanide]

I know that a full 74 min audio cd holds about 650 meg of data wich is 8.783 Mb of data a minute. This equates to 0.146396 Mb a second. This all equals a hell of alot of music on say a 40gig Zen. actualy...... its about 455 minutes of music approx.

As for how your gonna get it there , i havent got a clue. I do know that .wav files arent too compressed ,however i could be wrong here.

Anyone else wanna chime in?

 

[Taphil]

Wav files are uncompressed. So you could put them on the iPod or Zen (both support wav). The battery life would suck horribly though. Maybe 3 hours or so, then you have to recharge. I'd stick to a PCDP if you want to play uncompressed audio. A 20GB player could store about 30 CD's as wav files.

 

[MacDEF]

Yep, both WAV and AIFF files are uncompressed audio. However, as Taphil said, the problem is that hard drive-based players get their long battery life by caching data to a RAM buffer. The lower the bitrate you use, the longer your battery life, because the more music can be loaded into the cache at once. Conversely, the higher the bitrate, the shorter the battery life, because the cache has to be filled -- spinning up the hard drive to do so -- more often. Using uncompressed audio drastically cuts down on battery life. The iPod is the best at this since (correct me if I'm wrong) it has the largest RAM cache right now, but even it isn't very good.

 

[lan]

Ok let's calculate the space.

44,100 x 16bit x 2 channels = 1,411,200 bits/sec (or 10.336MB/minute)

40GB (base 10) = 39GB real usable space (base 2)

So you have 3773 minutes of playtime or about <63 hours of music.

Indeed WAV files are uncompressed.

 

[Taphil]

Quote:

Originally posted by MacDEF Using uncompressed audio drastically cuts down on battery life. The iPod is the best at this since (correct me if I'm wrong) it has the largest RAM cache right now, but even it isn't very good.

For skip protection, the iPod would perfrom better. But not for battery life. The Zen and iPod would actually perform similarly. Think of playing a single wav file as playing several mp3 files in a row. Both players play mp3's similarly, so it would be the same as playing wav files. The Zen has a 16MB buffer (I don't know what is actually usable, but probably around 14MB), so the hard drive spins up more often anyway when playing mp3's. The iPod has a 32MB buffer (only about 22MB is acutally used for buffering) so it spins up less, but still has the same playtime as the Zen. So the iPod drive spins up less but it has a less powerful battery, while on the Zen the drive spins up more often but it has a stonger battery. It works out to be the same.

 

[Cyanide]

lan: its is interesting how yours and my calculations are a bit different. Could you explain to me how @10.336Mb a minute fits onto a 74 minute cd-r? if you work it out @10.336Mb/minute , theoreticaly you would be able to fit 764.864 MB onto a standard 74 min cd-r. Now i know this to be possible with overburning , but not to this extreme and oveburning simply adds a few more minutes to the cd. What I mean is that even an 80min cd-r only fits 700Mb.
Thanx