Got ipod for bday, have questions...

[Me Loves Khorns]

Got an new ipod for my bday the other day.

I have never had one before and have some questions.

If I take a cd and put it on itunes and therefore the ipod, is it being put on there uncompressed so to speak?

And, how do you download the uncompompressed songs of off itunes, I cannot seem to figure it out by looking around on itunes itself. It is a 120 gig one, so plenty of storage room, would like to have the best quality possible.

Thanks for the help

[Me Loves Khorns]

So, does anyone have any experiences in using these different formats?

I know they should sound fairly similar when listened to on a set of ear buds, but when used with a large system, I don't really like the sound of the basic settings that my wife's ipod is set at. There is a noticable difference between it and a cd.

The one they got me has 120 GB, so it should have plenty of storage room I would suppose. I dont need 8000000000 or so songs on it anyway. Would rather have my favorites in a better setting.

And, once it is encoded in one way or another onto the computer, can the bit rate then be changed, or is it locked into whatever it is originally set at?

[Cody_Mack]

No experience with Apple or its compatible storage formats, but you definitely want to shoot for the highest quality. We are audiophiles, by the way. And a plus is that hard drive space is cheap!

I live in the Windows world, so I have chosen to compress and store files using FLAC, which is lossless in audio quality. I get away with a file size that is a moderate percentage (half?) of the full-sized file (WAV). I have ripped about three hundred CDs to FLAC and I am still coming in at much less that 100GB on my storage drive.

Not sure of your total setup, but sounds as if you are taking the next step into digital audio. Digital music servers are here, and the available equipment to take advantage of that is improving everyday. Way too much to expand on here, but as you mentioned you are not going to be happy with the compressed digital files, you should at least be aware of your long-term options. And you should probably make that decision before ripping hundreds of CDs.

Rick

[InnerTuber]

With iTunes on an Apple computer it's a bit easier to get bit perfect good reproduction than on Windows. Not that that is the end all, but it's a hurdle.

If you are using Windows try this -

Under preferences set import format to AIFF and turn error correction on. Rip a CD. It should be an exact copy at that point.

Set iTunes playback volume to maximum using the slider. Turn all the track equalization stuff off. Under Windows you get the same copy, but depending upon your sound card etc it might resample for playback. This would all be done to allow you to hear a CD playback on your stereo. Listen to your rip versus the original and see how you like it. Beyond this you get into soundcards, ASIO and DACs.

Then you can try different rip algorithms. I'd try lossless and stop there myself. Personally I use AIFF. But it's fun to fiddle with the compressed stuff too. Let your ears be your guide to what sounds good for you.

For the iPod, I would try AIFF and Apple lossless. The former is a copy and the latter is a smaller file similar to FLAC. Both should give good quality on the iPod. It's just about space basically. I don't mean playback using the iPod to feed a stereo, I mean using your headphones/earbuds/etc.

Good luck.

[Imitation]

Innertuber makes some great points here. Lossless is definitely the minimum you'll want to encode in if you're looking for the absolute best quality as at that point you lose NONE of the audio when pulling it off the CD whereas MP3 or AAC is a lossy encode. A lossy encode uses an algorithm to cut out portions of the audio that your ear "can't" hear, but the more you compress the more it cuts out, and even though its designed not to sound different, most people can tell a difference, esp as you compress it heavily. On my mp3 player and using some fairly cheapo earbuds I can tell a difference between lower quality mp3 rips(128, 160, and 192kbps) and a 256kbps rip. 256kbps is pretty good compromise for me and is what I use on my mp3 player as mine is only 20gigs and I like to carry all my music around. But for playing music in my living room I've ripped all my music lossless as I can tell a difference between it and any type of mp3. So essentially i've got 2 copies of my collection on the same pc, but that's not a big deal for me and hard drive space is so cheap these days.

I'd also like to point out that your ipod isn't the best source for playing music on real speakers. The DAC's and processing hardware in the ipod isn't going to be nearly as high of quality as most higher quality PC soundcards or a universal disc player. I'd say its average at best, but if you can't tell a difference, then it would work great for you. It's decent enough for any type of normal headphones or earbuds though.

So, like InnerTuber said, play around with it and see what you like. I'd go with one of your favorite CD's and rip it a couple of different ways, AIFF, lossless, maybe a 256kbps mp3, and a smaller one like 192 or 160. If you can't tell a diff between any of them on the ipod, then you might as well rip it all in 192 as it saves the most space. To me, mp3 players are all about compromises, so you have to decide on where yours should utimately be.

Hope that helps!

[Me Loves Khorns]

Can you go "out" of the ipod with a cord into an external DAC? then on to the rest of the home setup?

[Guest " "]

Can you go "out" of the ipod with a cord into an external DAC? then on to the rest of the home setup?

fron the head phone jack - no since it's anolog.

but from the interface slot, one company makes a ditigal transport....if you want to spring 379.....the transport will bypass the ipod's internal processor.

http://www.musicdirect.com/product/82178

[Hifi jim]

Can you go "out" of the ipod with a cord into an external DAC? then on to the rest of the home setup?

 

An Apple Express Airport ($100) can be used with Apple iPhones and Apple Touch iPods, or it can be used in an existing WiFi network to stream digital (via an optical cable) to your DA. I use it in the latter scenario with great success.

[kaiser SET say]

Hey Paul, I have a love hate with my 3 iPod's[] Love the device/players but hate the proprietary software[+o(] You might want to check into something like anapod which is a whole new operating system which actually replaces iTunes on your pod but is far more flexible outside the Apple world for some.

[longwing]

I don't think that the iPhone/Touch can speak directly to Airport Express. It can only be used as a wifi remote with iTunes running on a computer. A distinction not without a difference. I hope that someday the Touch will communicate with Airport Express. That would be a great improvement.

[Me Loves Khorns]

I realize that the when it will be used with headphones, the sound can only get so good.

I was really excited about being able to put most if not all of my cd's along with songs from itunes on it. Then would like to use it sometimes as a player source with the big sound rig. Just want it to sound good. This may not be realistic, I realize, just wondering what would be the best way to go with that.

Is anyone out there using it on their big systems, not just on the headphones?

Paul

[InnerTuber]

I use my iPod a lot on the big system. I just run a split cord off the headphone jack. Best to get a cord with the miniplug one one end and L and R RCA jacks on the other. It works fine until you decide you want "better". The easiest way to get better is to buy a Mac, but you can get there via PC too.

Then you are looking at modifying your PC or getting the device mentioned earlier which I assume is the Wadia Transport.

There are some differences between the Airport Express and Extreme so do your homework if you go down that road.

[skonopa]

So, does anyone have any experiences in using these different formats?

I know they should sound fairly similar when listened to on a set of ear buds, but when used with a large system, I don't really like the sound of the basic settings that my wife's ipod is set at. There is a noticable difference between it and a cd.

The one they got me has 120 GB, so it should have plenty of storage room I would suppose. I dont need 8000000000 or so songs on it anyway. Would rather have my favorites in a better setting.

And, once it is encoded in one way or another onto the computer, can the bit rate then be changed, or is it locked into whatever it is originally set at?

I have two iPods (a 160 gig Classic and a 32 gig Touch) as well as an 8-gig Creative Zen, that I use at the gym while working out.

I found in my own playing around that 256 bit MP3 is the best compromise in sound quality and space for my needs. I am not all that anal that I need to have everything in full lossless quality (plus while working out at the gym or listening to it in the car, I could not tell a difference anyway, despite using good quality earphones as well as have a very nice car audio setup). I also opted to use MP3 instead of the AAC format as I found MP3 to be much more universal and more likely to actually work in any device I am likely to encouter or play these on (for example, I also still have my old Creative MuVo Slim, which is friggan ancient by today's standards, with only 512 megs, but the darn thing does sound very good though, and comes in handy as a "backup").

Not only that the files I get off of eMusic come in high quality VBR, and, assuming the encoding does not go sour (I've encoutered an occasional corrupt file I got off of there), they have actually sounded quite good on nearly everything that I've personally tried. Of course, whenever possible, I do prefer to listen to the actual CD, especially on the big home stereo, but there is no denying the shear convienience of all that music easily available at my fingertips, especially while driving or working out.

[colterphoto1]

Use Apple Lossless for anything you plan on burning CD's to (from home computer) or listen to on high quality system. For general use I used to use 160 bit, 128 for cheap 'I don't care about quality' rips.