[KellDammit]

anytime

i'm a pc user, and my laptop firewire doesn't supply power, so i can tell you that just sending a fair amount of material (a couple gigs) to the ipod would kill the battery very quickly.
apparently the new ipods don't have quite the battery life that the older ones did. i believe the 160k/4 min songs at around 50% volume (i'm assuming no eq, etc) are supposed to get you around 8 hours of battery, according to apple. i've heard higher and lower...so ymmv.
another couple tips...
1. try to keep your backlight useage minimal.
2. try to keep the volume at or below 50%.
3. don't use eq, shuffle, etc...basically anything it has to think about other than playback will cause more drain.
4. don't skip around a lot (causes disk spinnage/rebuffering).

at 192k, i'm still showing 4 "bars" of battery after 2-3 hours of continuous use, so i'm happy. i havn't really had much more time than that in one stretch to see how long the battery will actually hold out.

enjoy!

kell

 

[blessingx]

What some call "mud", I call warmth. Certainly haven't found any less clarity with good MP3's (--aps and above) compared to AAC's, but have found the warmth/atmosphere missing. MP3's do often fall apart ~160 CBR, but above I think it beats AAC. AAC (at least QT which I tested) does an amazing job at 128 and 160. Just doesn't get much better after that.

 

[wallijonn]

Quote:

Originally posted by aphex Damn - now I have to encode my CD's once again

I rest my case.

 

[hazmat]

Richard is absolutely right. Set up a blind test and have someone else control them.

Opinions are subjective, and here's mine. I also run a Mac and have a 20-gig iPod with ER-4Ps. MP3 I encoded at 192. Sounds awesome to me. Since AAC came out I have been comparing the MP3 192 and AAC 128. They always sounded different, but I could never tell exactly what. I have more opinions now. What you need to do is not compare the MP3 and AAC, but to compare each to the uncompressed source. What I have concluded is that AAC sounds closer to the source. MP3 seems slightly enhanced or colored to me. I also tried an AAC 160 and couldn't tell the difference from the 128. So, since then I have been encoding everything in AAC 128 and am happy. I hope this helps. But in the end, encode the same song in everything suggested and put on your ER-4's and have someone switch back and forth between them so you can blindly choose which you like best.

Let us know what you come up with.

 

[KellDammit]

man, i love this place!
richard, your suggestion is absolutely THE thing to do.

blessing, i don't disagree. i thought --aps sounded better than 128k QT aac. then i switched to nero and 160k aac was better still...enough to convince me to blow $70, rerip everything (ack!) and learn to live/cope without tags (oof!).
the differences were a LOT more subtle between 160-192k. it reminds me of the difference between 20 & 24 bit wav (160-192k). it's not remotely as pronounced as the difference between 16 & 20 bit (qt 128-nero160)...i guess it's kinda apples and oranges, tho, as in this case, not only did i up the bitrate, but i switched encoders, which may have made a lot more difference. again, i'd have to test and see what's what there.

either way, things sure are better than when mp3@128 was IT ("underwater cymbals" and all!), but i have yet to hear any compressed format that isn't "veiled" and irritating to at least *some* degree.

kell