iPod 80 gig

[mjzee]

OK, it has jazz uses too. For instance, I just dubbed from LP the Oscar Peterson Jam from Montreux '77: The Art of the Jam Session. Since I want to put the set in the Oscar Peterson folder, and not create a separate Oscar Peterson Jam folder, the Artist is Oscar Peterson, and the Album Artist is Oscar Peterson Jam.

That's what I figured; thanks for the confirmation, rostasi.

[John L]

I thought I had turned the auto-sync off, but it still erased the corresponding album from the iPod after I deleted it from iTunes. I will have to check that and try it again. Thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, I think that you still must have it in automatic synch. You know when it is in manually synch by the fact that no files are added or deleted from your iPod automatically.

Edited December 29, 2006 by John L

[Tjazz]

ipod calculator

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod/calculator/

[king ubu]

So if a CD gets ripped to MP3 by iTunes (I never do it that way, but I just wonder), it gets encoded at a crappy 128 kbps? Is that just an unchangeable truth, or are there possibilities to set up how the MP3s will be created?

[Jay]

So if a CD gets ripped to MP3 by iTunes (I never do it that way, but I just wonder), it gets encoded at a crappy 128 kbps? Is that just an unchangeable truth, or are there possibilities to set up how the MP3s will be created?

Many possibilities abound - not just 128.

I rip mine lossless - but yes, many choices abound.

[md655321]

if you buy from itunes, however, 128 is your only option.

[mjzee]

I rip mine at 192 kbps.

[GregK]

256 kbps here

[Uncle Skid]

Exact Audio Copy, with Lame Version 3.97, "-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d".

From what I can gather from here, this is a variable bit rate (VBR) encoding with a target of 190 kbps, and ranges from 170…210 kbps.

[md655321]

I use V0, which is around 245. I have, many times, tried blind testing and i cant really tell much of a difference. 128 will do perfectly fine with most setups, depending on the heaphones/speakers.

[John L]

Exact Audio Copy, with Lame Version 3.97, "-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d".

From what I can gather from here, this is a variable bit rate (VBR) encoding with a target of 190 kbps, and ranges from 170…210 kbps.

I actually rip mostly at 128. Otherwise, I wouldn't have enough room and time for my music. When I download MP3s, I try to get better quality. The logic is this: I am keeping my CD collection until the next generation of technology will make ripping and storing in lossless cheap and easy. Until that time, 128 will do.

[Uncle Skid]

Exact Audio Copy, with Lame Version 3.97, "-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d".

From what I can gather from here, this is a variable bit rate (VBR) encoding with a target of 190 kbps, and ranges from 170…210 kbps.

I actually rip mostly at 128. Otherwise, I wouldn't have enough room and time for my music. When I download MP3s, I try to get better quality. The logic is this: I am keeping my CD collection until the next generation of technology will make ripping and storing in lossless cheap and easy. Until that time, 128 will do.

Hmmm... I (think) I can hear the difference between 128k and VBR (170-210), even on my (factory) car stereo. It's much more noticable on my home system, and with headphones.

Lately, I've been doing things the old fashioned (!) way: I've been playing the actual CD!

This brings up an interesting question: can iPods handle lossless format(s), other than "Apple lossless"? I've used FLAC, but not the Apple format.

[Brad]

Here's a question. I had an ipod that I got about two years ago and loaded up 3,000 tunes. To make a long story short, the computer at some point wiped the hard drive from the ipod. End of ipod. But I still had itunes and my son used it for his music.

We got him a new one this year and I thought I manually synced it but didn't so everything loaded up, which I later fixed so it just has his stuff. Anyway, when I went to play my stuff, it wouldn't play the jazz. You'd choose an album, then pick a song and it would randomly pick a song or not at all. Anyone ever heard of something like that? I'm just assuming that because the songs were loaded on an old version of itunes that somehow those files became corrupted. I can play the songs in itunes and can burn them but just couldn't play them on the ipod.

[John L]

Here's a question. I had an ipod that I got about two years ago and loaded up 3,000 tunes. To make a long story short, the computer at some point wiped the hard drive from the ipod. End of ipod. But I still had itunes and my son used it for his music.

We got him a new one this year and I thought I manually synced it but didn't so everything loaded up, which I later fixed so it just has his stuff. Anyway, when I went to play my stuff, it wouldn't play the jazz. You'd choose an album, then pick a song and it would randomly pick a song or not at all. Anyone ever heard of something like that? I'm just assuming that because the songs were loaded on an old version of itunes that somehow those files became corrupted. I can play the songs in itunes and can burn them but just couldn't play them on the ipod.

That does sound strange, beginning from how your computer destroyed your iPod by "wiping" its hard drive. How did that happen? If I understand you correctly, the music plays OK in iTunes, but not when it is on the iPod.

I imagine that there could be some problem with how the MP3s are formatted. As an experiment, you might try deleting an album from your library without removing the MP3 files, and then adding it back with the new version of iTunes. That should get the bugs out.

[Brad]

What happened originally with the first ipod is that as I was waiting for the computer to download songs to the ipod, I became impatient and opened up my browser, aol. The computer froze and when I turned it off and restarted it, it had wiped the ipod harddrive clean.

On the new ipod, you're correct. Itunes is fine and I can burn it to a cd but when I play it on the ipod, it does some weird things.

[John L]

A complete erasing is a good thing occasionally methinks

(with an external backup of course).

I do this with my internal drive every once-in-a-while.

As soon as I finish up with a few things here, I'm gonna do just that

in the next couple of days.

What is the advantage of re-ripping? Can MP3 files get damaged just sitting in a hard drive?

[Brad]

So you think that the itunes files were also damaged? That might explain things. I had about 3000 songs on there and I've started to get rid of all of 'em. I'll just start again, except for some cds I no longer have.

What I'll probably do in that case is download those to a cd and then upload back into itunes to see if that works.

Edited January 5, 2007 by Brad

[tonym]

ipod calculator

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod/calculator/

This is nice to see this. Since it may be difficult to estimate what your average song duration is,

you can put in "1 minute" and the numbers become the total minutes you can store.

Probably obvious, but thought I'd point that out in case it was missed.

I did it this way;

Click on the time tab so all tracks are listed downwards in order of time, then scroll to the halfway point: so if you have 2000 tracks go to 1000th on the list. That time in my case was 5'04" and many tracks shared that same time.

Not a 'true' average but the median and given that most tracks increase in quite small increments between 1min and 30mins there's not that much variation over a few thousand.

[tonym]

Good idea! Yeah, it's a median, but it works for most folks. Thanks!

My last iTunes collection of tracks went from 0:00 to a track that was

many days in length, so I'm not sure if it would've worked for me.

been listening to John Cage's Organ piece again have we?

[king ubu]

So if a CD gets ripped to MP3 by iTunes (I never do it that way, but I just wonder), it gets encoded at a crappy 128 kbps? Is that just an unchangeable truth, or are there possibilities to set up how the MP3s will be created?

Many possibilities abound - not just 128.

I rip mine lossless - but yes, many choices abound.

I know there are many options, but is there an option to adjust the bitrate in iTunes? And if so, is iTunes a good programme to encode WAVs or CD-tracks to MP3?

I use CDex at the moment, usually at 320 kbs.

[md655321]

Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Importing.

There you can set the bitrate and choose lossless/AAC/MP3.

EAC is considering the gold standard for importing though.

[king ubu]

Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Importing.

There you can set the bitrate and choose lossless/AAC/MP3.

EAC is considering the gold standard for importing though.

Thank you, I guess I should have taken a closer look at the menues!

How do you set-up EAC to create MP3s? I always used CDex so far...

[Uncle Skid]

I just recently switched from CDex to EAC for ripping MP3s.

I found this guide very helpful in figuring out how to set all of the various options.

[Kari S]

Tip: Let's say you want to remove an album from your iPod, but not from your computers hard drive. Delete the album in iTunes, but answer to the following questions that you want it removed from your library but KEEP the files. Then do 'Sync'; it doesn't show it, but it removes the album from your iPod along with the rest of your new adds or changes you made before syncing.

...

I believe the problems with my configuration of an external HDD and iTunes freezing were caused by these things. First of all, I think iTunes (and/or my laptop) thinks that my hard drive and iPod should be connected to specific USB ports. If I connect them wrong, when iTunes tries to find the files in my library to sync iPod (which are on my external disc) it freezes the iPod. I think the same happens if the external hard disk isn't "ON". This is with autosyncing on.

Edited January 16, 2007 by Kari S

[king ubu]

I just recently switched from CDex to EAC for ripping MP3s.

I found this guide very helpful in figuring out how to set all of the various options.

Thanks a lot, I'll have a look at this!