New 160GB iPod...

[mjzee]

I went through the same considerations. I settled on ripping at 192 kbps, because it's a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, digitizing your collection. If at some point in the future, some new combination of hardware allowed you to hear the difference, it's a daunting task to re-rip everything, At 192, I figured I built in some cushion for the future.

[Jim R]

I went through the same considerations. I settled on ripping at 192 kbps, because it's a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, digitizing your collection. If at some point in the future, some new combination of hardware allowed you to hear the difference, it's a daunting task to re-rip everything, At 192, I figured I built in some cushion for the future.

Interesting... I think my "greed for space" may push me to go with 128, unless I learn something new here pretty soon, but I do see your logic. Thanks for sharing the idea.

Anybody else have any insights?

[Quincy]

I tend to view iPod listening as something different. I mean I used to listen to music through a little transistor radio, then later cassette on a boom(less) box and enjoyed it. Music at 128 on an iPod sounds better than both. If the convenience of listening to music on the iPod leads you to be knocked out by hearing something again, you can always break out the CD/LP and play it again on the stereo to enjoy it in its full glory. Assuming you can hear the difference.

Edited April 20, 2009 by Quincy

[ejp626]

I generally rip jazz CDs at 224 and classical at 256. But I also am not as constrained by space considerations as I actually mostly listen while at work off of a laptop. I've been debating getting one of the really cheap players (not iPod) for listening on the train but haven't gotten to it.

[John L]

I went through the same considerations. I settled on ripping at 192 kbps, because it's a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, digitizing your collection. If at some point in the future, some new combination of hardware allowed you to hear the difference, it's a daunting task to re-rip everything, At 192, I figured I built in some cushion for the future.

Interesting... I think my "greed for space" may push me to go with 128, unless I learn something new here pretty soon, but I do see your logic. Thanks for sharing the idea.

Anybody else have any insights?

Jim - I'm with you. I think that 128 AAC sound good on iPods. When they don't sound good, it is usually due to the source rather than the bit rate. I have almost my entire CD collection ripped at that rate for the same reasons that you note. Another interesting fact is that the battery power needed to play MP3s on an iPod is an increasing function of the bit rate. So playing lossless on an iPod will drain the battery much faster.

I am planning to rip my CD collection only one more time, and that will be to lossless. But I am in no rush. I plan to wait until the capacity of computers is such that we can treat wave files like we do now 128 bit MP3s. Until that time, I will enjoy what I have.

[sidewinder]

I am currently surrounded by women at work who natter away like turkeys for most of the day talking about hot dates, X-Factor and their forthcoming holidays so the IPod 160 GB loaded with the Miles Davis Columbia box sets comes into its own.

Edited April 20, 2009 by sidewinder

[A Lark Ascending]

I am currently surrounded by women at work who natter away like turkeys for most of the day talking about hot dates, X-Factor and their forthcoming holidays so the IPod 160 GB loaded with the Miles Davis Columbia box sets comes into its own.

Not the way to become a target for one of their hot dates!

[sidewinder]

I am currently surrounded by women at work who natter away like turkeys for most of the day talking about hot dates, X-Factor and their forthcoming holidays so the IPod 160 GB loaded with the Miles Davis Columbia box sets comes into its own.

Not the way to become a target for one of their hot dates!

Heck - I don't think they are into dating guys their father's age. I would also need to become a fan of Boyzone or whoever is currently 'in' - instead of Grachan Moncur III

[Jim R]

Jim - I'm with you. I think that 128 AAC sound good on iPods. When they don't sound good, it is usually due to the source rather than the bit rate. I have almost my entire CD collection ripped at that rate for the same reasons that you note. Another interesting fact is that the battery power needed to play MP3s on an iPod is an increasing function of the bit rate. So playing lossless on an iPod will drain the battery much faster.

I did NOT know that!

Thanks, John.

[neveronfriday]

I got mine this week as well. Currently doing the tedious "move" of music from the 20 to the 160. Unfortunately my laptop only has about 2 gigs of free space so I am doing it in installments.

To enjoy all of this new space, I am re-encoding my music in 192. No clue if I'll be able to hear a difference on my $15 headphones...

Guy

Saw an interesting article in Maximum PC, where they performed a blind listening test comparing 128 to 256, using both the Apple earbuds and $400 headphones. The quality of the headphones mattered far more than the encoding rate.

At the risk of putting my tech ignorance on public display, I'm bringing this back up to see if I can get some feedback. I just did a little experiment myself, and the result seems to match up with the aforementioned Maximum PC test.

After nearly filling up my first iPod with downloads, curiosities, selected videos from Youtube, and music from a variety of genres other than jazz (generally everything BUT the music I love the most- all the classic jazz in my CD collection), I opted to buy another iPod and start ripping my jazz CD's so that I'll be more inclined to actually listen to them again. I know, I know. Everybody's got their own way of surviving in this cruel world. So anyway, with the price having dropped drastically since my original ipod purchase, I just bought another 160 GB model, and began pondering whether I can actually get most (all?) of my roughly 2600 CD's onto this thing. Apple's general guideline suggests 30,000 songs (4 min. per song; encoded at 128 kbps). Okay, so the first thing I realized is that I've never bothered to change the default (128 kbps mono, 256 kbps stereo) setting in iTunes. Oddly enough, one of the first CD's I've just experimented with ("Presenting Cannonball Adderley", on Savoy/Denon) is a mono recording, but iTunes is telling me that it was in fact encoded at 256 (and indicates "stereo") when used the 256 setting. Anyway, that's not what's puzzling me. I ripped "Kind Of Blue" three times, at 128, 256, and also in lossless. After ripping to iTunes, I synched all three versions to my new iPod. I listened carefully to all three in iTunes (using two different pairs of earbuds), and I literally could not detect any difference in sound quality- even playing the same tune in the 128 version followed immediately by the same tune in lossless. I tried the same experiment on the iPod, and the result was the same. The sound quality differs considerably in terms of comparing the earbud sound (and I already knew that), but comparing the three different bit rates on the same earbuds leaves me puzzled. Could there be some technical factor here that I'm overlooking?

At any rate, I'm not very picky about sound quality anyway, and I'm leaning toward going with 128 kbps and maximizing my storage space, but if there's something I'm overlooking here and I can figure out how to get improved sound via lossless, I might rip some discs at that higher quality rate. Btw, I understand that a pair of high quality headphones might make me see (hear) things differently, but I'm not sure about that option yet, for a variety of reasons which I'll set aside for now.

Interested in hearing about the experiences and points of view of some of our ipod veterans...

Thanks.

JimR,

let me pull a quick brownie (Yo! Guy!) here and appear for a single post.

Don't make the same mistake(s) I made if you are considering ripping your entire collection.

My suggestion, very briefly (and it comes from years of having done things wrong) outlined below, does demand more work and you will probably have to invest into at least (!) two external HDs (1TB * 2):

Rip all your CDs to FLAC, a lossless format (you'll find tons of info around the Net on how to do that). I use EAC for that (difficult to set up perfectly, but also lots of guides available), but there are lots of other programs. I'm sure people here can advise you.

Why?

Without wanting to start a discussion on the various formats here, FLAC is a universally accepted lossless format which is even supported by many mobile players, streaming servers, etc. (increasingly so).

What's the benefit?

It's future-proof!

Plus (and that's the beauty of it all):

Once you have all of your CDs ripped to FLAC and stored somewhere, you can

a) burn a CD from a rip at any time you please (I use Burrrn, the simplest of programs),

b) transcode your FLAC rip into any format any time you like (and as many times as you like),

c) and, because of the huge following of that format, you'll probably be able to transcode to any other future format as well.

In addition, if you buy yourself some machine (streaming clients, etc.) in the future, you can just hit your rips again and generate anything you need from those (much, MUCH quicker and basically an automated process if set up properly).

Downside:

a) FLACS are a lot bigger than most other formats. Example: The Japanese "Chet Baker: Chet (+1)" (51 minutes, 10 tracks) eats 259 MB of HD space!

b) You need external storage solutions (I use 1TB USB HDs, one set for rips and another set for backups) ... which have come down considerably in price these past months (mine cost below $100 each and I bought one every two months for a while, spreading out the costs).

c) You need extra time for i) ripping to flac and ii) converting to another format (and reading up on everything).

With a smart setup (I use a player called foobar to convert FLAC files to just about anything), you can transcode one CD into, say, 320 kbps MP3s in about a minute (or two) and have foobar tag your stuff properly.

Summary: More reading, work (and more cash) at first, pure pleasure thereafter.

I'm a totally happy camper today with my collection (10.000+) securely ripped (and completely "mirrored" once on an equal number of drives) and am absolutely sure I won't have to do all of that work again (unless my house burns down [i do keep my backups elsewhere and check them once in a while, so even that won't kill me]).

Believe me, if you want your entire collection digitalized, this is the only sensible way of doing it, IMHO.

Over and ... out again.

[John L]

Interesting comments, Neveronfriday. One question: How in the world could you possibly fit 10,000 ripped CDs in lossless on a 1TB drive. I would expect that you would need 5TB or so for all of that.

[neveronfriday]

Interesting comments, Neveronfriday. One question: How in the world could you possibly fit 10,000 ripped CDs in lossless on a 1TB drive. I would expect that you would need 5TB or so for all of that.

Oh, I myself have a lot (!) more drives. I also know it's not exactly the safest backup solution (although I have two complete sets of rips), but a decent NAS server in the (minimum) 8TB range is far too expensive. The way I do things, I probably have to replace a drive here or there from now on and the way prices have been dropping, that won't really be an issue.

BTW: I was lucky enough to get a 1/2-price offer on 6 (!) Toshiba Stor-E Alu 1TB drives a few weeks back and paid 260 Euro for them. The shop wanted to clear them out for new models. I didn't complain. Try getting any sort of network storage for that amount of money. I think a power plug for that would probably cost more.

I've had some drives fail on me these past years, but if they don't burn-out within the first few weeks, you can usually assume that they will last up to 3-5 years (a conservative estimate). They need to be attached to a PC regularly (so I have been told), so every 4 weeks or so I check the whole set. Bit of a nuisance, but other solutions which can hold as much as I have are simply unaffordable.

The goal is to go completely digital once mass storage solutions have become much more affordable. I estimate that for what I have (films, etc.) I need a minimum of 10TB (mirrored) and I guess it will take a few years until we have solutions which are hot-swappable (take out a broken HD without losing any data) and in a consumer price-range.

No matter what, considering that many of my burnables (CD-R and DVD, Taiyo Yuden or not) did not last all that long, this USB external-drive-solution is best for what I wanted to do.

YMMV

Cheers!

[neveronfriday]

proof of concept

[John L]

Thanks for the explanation, Neveronfriday. That is impressive. As I wrote, I am planning to do the same thing as you, but plan to wait until advances in technology make it a bit more convenient.

[neveronfriday]

[...] but plan to wait until advances in technology make it a bit more convenient.

Yep, I wanted to do that too, ever since the middle 90s. When I had some money left over last year I just said "screw it" and got started. I waited 10 years ... and that's enough.

Although the kids today collect unbelievable amounts of data files and storage solutions are becoming cheaper by the minute, I think the more professional market that could cater to us few freaks (I'm not counting all the mediocre home server solutions available already) is going to keep prices out of reach for the average consumer long enough for me to die before things become available.

If you want to go digital with a 10.000+ collection and are talking about investing less than a thousand dollars, I think external drives will also be the only affordable solutions in the near and further future.

If you consider what a professional replacement would have to offer, we're talking huge network server here that you would have to store away from the living room (try cooling 10-20TB of drives!).

The alternative that I am eying are audiophile products like from NAIM (etc.) that are becoming more commonplace now: something you can integrate into a better hifi system and which allows you to attach up to 4 external drives. The biggest problem all these solutions (in the price range of $2000 - $9000) have is that they cannot cope with mile-long folder structures and literally a 6-or easily 7-digit number of files. Many recent models can read 1TB drives (or others), but they can't hold the CD info in memory ... turn the machine off and the info is gone and has to be re-read.

I've been in touch with a few developers and they assure me that in that market segment (which caters to us freaks), that problem is one of the major ones that needs to be solved. That means, you need internal memory that "remembers" perhaps up to 20.000 and more CDs, with tag info and covers.

Not enough time to write more.

Need to work.

Cheers!

Edited April 21, 2009 by neveronfriday

[rockefeller center]

something you can integrate into a better hifi system and which allows you to attach up to 4 external drives.

I'm quite happy with Ampache.

http://www.ampache.org/

It is also written to accommodate music collections in excess of 2 Terabytes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampache#Development_Goals

[jazzbo]

Well, I have different needs for the iPod and I do things differently than most here.

Ever since I "retired" I've only used my iPod in a bedroom system and when I travel on the road.

I now use a Wadia iTransport and a Peachtree Audio Decco DAC/integrated amplifier in the bedroom system. The iTransport is the only item that allows you to extract digital files from the iPod, so you can essentially get nearly identical sound from the source if you use lossless formats. So I have all my files in Apple lossless and they sound fantastic run through the Scott Nixon-designed DAC in the Decco integrated amplifier. These same files also sound very nice when I use the iPod with my B&O A8 headphones. . . better than MP3 versions of the files did. So because I use the iPod to hold mostly material my girlfriend and I want to listen to in playlists in the bedroom, and aren't trying to keep multitudes of cds in digital file format, I cand hold quite enough on the iPod in lossless form.

I still do most of my listening through speakers on two great sound systems. . . . I love listening this way, certainly enjoy it about ten times more than through headphones, and so I have no real desire to go digital with hard drives etc.

[Jim R]

I tend to view iPod listening as something different. I mean I used to listen to music through a little transistor radio, then later cassette on a boom(less) box and enjoyed it. Music at 128 on an iPod sounds better than both. If the convenience of listening to music on the iPod leads you to be knocked out by hearing something again, you can always break out the CD/LP and play it again on the stereo to enjoy it in its full glory. Assuming you can hear the difference.

While I truly appreciate that there are folks with a different perspective, different desires and different needs (and I thank you, neveronfriday, for the effort that you obviously put into your posts), I think this may sum it up best for me. I'm sure there may be portable devices developed in the future that will offer significantly improved audio quality options, but (speaking of waiting for years to take action) I've already waited a long time to get my favorite jazz recordings ripped for convenience and portability.

[neveronfriday]

I tend to view iPod listening as something different. I mean I used to listen to music through a little transistor radio, then later cassette on a boom(less) box and enjoyed it. Music at 128 on an iPod sounds better than both. If the convenience of listening to music on the iPod leads you to be knocked out by hearing something again, you can always break out the CD/LP and play it again on the stereo to enjoy it in its full glory. Assuming you can hear the difference.

While I truly appreciate that there are folks with a different perspective, different desires and different needs (and I thank you, neveronfriday, for the effort that you obviously put into your posts), I think this may sum it up best for me. I'm sure there may be portable devices developed in the future that will offer significantly improved audio quality options, but (speaking of waiting for years to take action) I've already waited a long time to get my favorite jazz recordings ripped for convenience and portability.

No problem, Jim.

Consider it to have been food for thought, also for others who are thinking of ripping large parts (or all) of their collection and who might chance upon this thread in the future.

Cheers!

[Soulstation1]

Íf your ipod was lost\ stolen would you be able to redownload your apps and music you purchased for free to a new ipod?

[mjzee]

Íf your ipod was lost\ stolen would you be able to redownload your apps and music you purchased for free to a new ipod?

I can't speak to your iPhone apps, but, assuming your music is on your computer, they would transfer to a new iPod.

[ejp626]

Íf your ipod was lost\ stolen would you be able to redownload your apps and music you purchased for free to a new ipod?

I can't speak to your iPhone apps, but, assuming your music is on your computer, they would transfer to a new iPod.

Though if you had a fatal hard drive error and lost your iPod, I think you are out of luck. Certainly one thing I like about emusic is how easy it is to download everything all over again.

A bit off the subject, but I just found out that a guy I went to high school with and was reasonably good friends with (at the time) did a lot of the work for the operating system that drives the iPod.

[mjzee]

I have had a fatal hard drive error on my iPod. I exchanged it (luckily it was still under warranty), connected it to my computer, and everything sync'd to the new iPod.

Now if you lost your computer hard drive...but that's why you back up regularly, right?

[BruceH]

I'll wait for the terabyte i-pod.