sparkyclarky
Platinum Member
You should go lossless for your tunes🙂
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MAN, no one has any interest in 4th gen 20gig ipods??
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You should go lossless for your tunes🙂
DaveSimmons
Elite Member
Definitely, I just transcode to 192kbsp LAME MP3 for the Zen. In my home office I have a music server box with 2 x 250 GB data drives and use lossless FLAC ripped with EAC.
sparkyclarky
Platinum Member
You're a wise man! That's the one thing I don't like about my mac mini - the overall lack of audio programs. Itunes is nice, but I wish it had a more secure ripper. It's not bad by any means, but it's no EAC either. I do run Apple Lossless though (had a bunch that I transcoded from monkey's audio).
Lol, I have to do this every time 😛
- It doesn't play ogg, flac or wma
- It measures at 0.42% THD (vs the iriver at 0.03% - the commonly accepted audible threshold is 0.1%), attenuates bass to save on battery life and has a simplistic & ineffective EQ, all of which contribute to its low sound quality
- It makes managing music you own difficult in the name of copy protection
- It has none of the features common to better sounding, less expensive players; FM tuner, voice & radio recording, drag & drop music support. It's easy to use in large part because it has no features. No extra button for recording, no extra button for the radio, no tuning dial or buttons, etc.
No it's not. Per gb, it gets no more expensive than the ipod hdd players.
iaudio 20gb m3 is smaller, 40gb m3 & 20gb m3L are the same size.
With other players you're paying less and getting R&D & quality components. With Apple you're paying more for the image, the massive TV ad campaign and Bono.
mrSHEiK124
Lifer
Reason no one has any interest in 'em is because of the recent price drop on iPod minis and the fact that a 30 GB iPod Photo isn't much more
then I'm an idiot 😛
you need to lighten up dude, not everyone focuses on price/sound quality/storage ratio, some people buy it because they think it looks nice, some people don't have the super-human ears and 200 dollar Shure's to detect the difference in SQ. what, does it make your e-penis smaller everytime someone buys an iPod or something?
then I'm an idiot 😛
you need to lighten up dude, not everyone focuses on price/sound quality/storage ratio, some people buy it because they think it looks nice, some people don't have the super-human ears and 200 dollar Shure's to detect the difference in SQ. what, does it make your e-penis smaller everytime someone buys an iPod or something?
Who needs to lighten up? You're the one who started this 😛 I only stated that people of higher intelligence tend to do a little bit of research so as to base purchases on value & quality while those of lower intelligence tend to go by trendiness and advertising, and did so in offering possible answers to the OP's question.
mrSHEiK124
Lifer
then I'm going to whine the same way people do about the iPod Shuffle, "It has no screen" (I wouldn't carry a remote around for an MP3 player if you payed me)
R&D? don't care. Quality components? I've dropped my iPod multiple times onto CONCRETE from 4ft upward, works like a charm. On the other hand, a 2ft drop onto carpet caused my buddy's "superior" Zen Xtra to bite the dust. I have facts to back up what I say, I want YOU to prove to me that the iPod isn't/isn't made of a quality component, as in, something you witnessed first-hand.
I don't mind paying for Bono, I'm a U2 fan, sue me. And I like seeing iPod commercials, they're rather amusing. And I'm paying for the image of an MP3 player that doesn't look like a brick (Insert H120/H320/random Creative MP3 player here)
piroroadkill
Senior member
A: It's an iPod
B: You're trying to sell it. iPod fanboys would wonder why you'd sell it unless it was utterly wrecked/broken
C: Lesson learnt? Don't buy an iPod. Try and get hold of an iRiver H140 (iHP-140) and forget about the iPod.
D: Don't listen to me. I've lost my iRiver. I fail it.
B: You're trying to sell it. iPod fanboys would wonder why you'd sell it unless it was utterly wrecked/broken
C: Lesson learnt? Don't buy an iPod. Try and get hold of an iRiver H140 (iHP-140) and forget about the iPod.
D: Don't listen to me. I've lost my iRiver. I fail it.
mrSHEiK124
Lifer
BTW, thats a bit high asking price for a used 4G 20gig iPod, they can be easily found on eBay brand new for 250-ish
EDIT: intogamer's deal looks a bit better, but I already have an iPod
EDIT: intogamer's deal looks a bit better, but I already have an iPod
Flash players don't interest me and so I haven't looked into the shuffle debate at all (Paging Ornery, Ornery you're wanted in off-topic). My only comment on it on this board (or anywhere) has been that 'it might not be a bad deal, as I've seen flash players over $200'.
:roll:
I'm referring to sound quality.
Exactly 🙂
Philippine Mango
Diamond Member
I like gurck.
mrSHEiK124
Lifer
Well, looks like you got the picture with my last sentence 😀
I've already mentioned many times, sound quality really is subjective, and my ears aren't sensitive enough to notice difference on FLAT EQ settings between MP3 players (using the same source file and same headphones mind you)
mrSHEiK124
Lifer
because they don't give a crap about it, my music sounds crisp through my Sony MDR-EX51's, and I didn't notice 100 dollars worth a difference between them and some Shure's
newbiepcuser
Diamond Member
$269 if you can buy it thru Apple's academic store if your school qualifies. Free shipping but you gotta pay uncle sam.
mrSHEiK124
Lifer
don't call me "kid"
sparkyclarky
Platinum Member
It plays apple lossless and aac, which no other players play. So you can toss out the flac argument, as lossless is lossless and transcoding is easy, and ogg doesn't have nearly the market share that aac does. I'll give you wma, but why be concerned with wma as only a small fraction of people actually store wma vs. mp3, and you already have expressed your displeasure with copy protection (and thus presumably all online music stores) in the lower part of your post. So we're left with negating wma, aac, and ogg as 'great' features, while lossless is lossless. So your format support argument is irrelevant.
Simplistic and ineffective EQ is irrelevant, as if you want to truly measure sound quality, you'd do so at a flat setting anyways, as that will be the most 'accurate'. I will however give you THD, but the value of that in a mobile listening environment can be debated.
It does not in any way make managing of music difficult. Itunes generally works, and works well. And if you don't like it there are numerous other free programs to put music on the iPod with.
No, it doesn't have an FM tuner. If you want this feature, buy a player with it (but it doesn't appear that anywhere near a majority of the market is clamoring for one either, especially given how radio stations have taken a dive in recent years thanks to Clear Channel and its ilk). It has voice recording, in the form of add on devices (and you can get it for free via a linux install on the ipod, but that isn't easy to do for most folks, so I won't count it). Again, the value of voice recording just isn't there for most people, as most people are buying an mp3 player to play mp3s....
Drag and drop music support, while nice, is certainly not a deal breaker, given the fact that you can download and use free transfer programs easy enough.
It's ease of use is due to the interface, not the lack of features. Other players are in the stone age on the interface dept. For instance, adding voice recording to the iPod hardly screws up the great interface. You're starting to grasp at straws here.
You have failed to address price effectively, as there is much more to price than simple price/capacity issues (as flash players demonstrate).
Nice to know that others are starting to get the size thing down.
I'd argue that Apple has put far more R&D into the iPod than competitors. They have made an mp3 player that is easy for everyone to use. Your quality components argument is rubbish (save perhaps for a DAC).
I will not argue that many people buy iPods based on image. That is the initial draw for quite a few folks. But beyond that, they get to love the devices thanks to the overall package that they provide. Otherwise you'd see people jumping ship like mad if the product simply was trash.
Transcoding isn't difficult, but it's simply not necessary with any of the many players which support flac. Ogg sounds better than aac and also enjoys far wider support. Aac and apple lossless are pimped out by Apple so that the naive who purchase in / encode to them will be stuck with their ipods.
Portable players can't be used at home or in otherwise noise-free environments? Phones with good isolation don't exist? 😕
Say I buy an iriver/iaudio. I fill it with lossless music, then decide I want to record something - but I'm at a friend's house. Without Apple's copy protection stuff, I can copy some lossless files to his PC, encode them to a lossy format, put them back on the player, and be free to record. With an ipod though, even if it were capable of recording (without an overpriced accessory to buy on top of the already highest price of any player), I'm risking having the copy protection delete the entire device because I'm trying to use it with a different computer. Just one example of many I can think of. Not allowing access with a file manager is an awful thing, but at least many other players which do this, such as the Dells, and especially the Creatives, are very nicely priced.
And you're making excuses for it. If you don't want a player with these features, why not save $100-$200 and get another playre without them, such as the Zen Xtra? At $200, the 40gb model does, with higher sound quality & better battery life, what the 40gb ipod does for $400.
:laugh: Your entire argument is to excuse it; "so what if it sucks in every way imaginable, that's not a deal breaker!"
You've failed to read my post then.
The simple fact of the matter, something which flies far over the heads of most of the 15-20 year old kids here on ATOT, is that money does not, in fact, grow on trees. Apple pays a LOT for TV ads. This is recouped by overpricing the ipod, not by the Dollar Fairy 😉
sparkyclarky
Platinum Member
Ogg and aac are roughly equivalent in sound quality actually. Both are improvements on mp3. AAC has far greater support than ogg, as far as actual use amongst people. Ogg remains in a small portion of the market, which is primarily 'techy' while AAC is making huge inroads, thanks to Apple's pushing of the format and the music industry's acceptance of it as a medium for digital distribution.
The same argument about transcoding not being necessary flows against all of your players which support FLAC but not ALAC (a list about as small as Apple's list of players that support ALAC but not FLAC). The point remains that transcoding is easy to do, and not worth arguing about.
Oh, and btw, Apple didn't pimp ALAC as a simple means to lock people into iPods. It was most likely created in order to enable some form of controlled lossless distribution of music online in the future.
Portable players can be listened to in the home, but if you're going to do that, why the hell wouldn't you run your cans/speakers through better equipment than a portable. Chances are that if you are that concerned with sound quality, no portable is going to be sufficient compared to a decent receiver/separates/good PC soundcard such as a Revo/etc. Phones with good isolation exist, but in reality, a mobile environment is far from ideal for shooting for truly outstanding audio quality, as there are most likely many external noises intefering with the sound (I even notice this on my e3cs, which have damn good isolation).
I'll give you the tansferring files off of the player argument, but there are cracks out there. Your argument about running out of space and having to copy and transcode is far fetched at best. I can think of other equally unlikely examples to argue against any product I so choose. The fact remains that it is highly unlikely that anything of that sort would ever pop up. More likely would be the desire to give a friend your entire music collection by simply copying stuff off of the device. Which would be illegal....
Doing something and doing something well are entirely different. Two players may both play tunes with fairly similar sound quality. But if one has an unnecessarily complicated menu and button system to do it, I'll take the easier to use device (something which I find matters in a mobile, quick access to tunes type of situation).
Saying that the iPod sucks in every way imaginable only goes to show how completely biased you are.
And yes, Apple's ad campaign costs a fair bit. But you continue to imply that that campaign is the sole reason for their success with the product, without actually looking at how the product functions as a complete package for listening to music.
The undeniable fact is that the iPod does one thing well, arguably better than most mobile audio players - it makes listening to music on the fly convenient and easy.
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