MP3

I am a complete novice in these things but the following worked like a dream for me. Here goes (assuming an entirely Gatesian universe):

Open Windows Music Player
Go to the "Copy from CD" page
Insert CD in drive
(Optional) If the album/track titles aren't shown, hit the "Find Album Info" button
Unhide the menu bar if it's not visible
Select Tools > Options and then the "Copy Music" tab. Here:
- select the format. WMA is entirely fine if your phone plays it. If not, select MP3 – you may have to download a plug-in by hitting the "Learn more about MP3 formats" link
- select the bitrate you want to use (maybe experiment with different rates) – with WMA and a portable device, 128 or 160 seems fine to me. For MP3, many go for 192.
- choose where in your C drive you want to save the music
Back in the "Copy from CD" page, hit the "Copy Music" button.

Then plug in your usb/SD card reader and follow the instructions to copy your music to the card. If you are lucky, the card should simply show up as a further drive in Explorer - just drag and drop (or copy and paste) music from the C drive location to the SD card.

FWIW

Timo

Even in the Gatesian universe, I've found that Apple's i-Tunes free download does pretty much everything I want, in a far clearer and more intuitive way than WMP. You don't even have to buy an MP3 codec, & the one included sounds perfectly reasonable to me. The only caveat being that you have to check out Preferences and go for better quality than the default [I mean, who wants 'joint stereo' excpt someone intent on demonstrating the superiority of Apple's preferred ACC?]. Ideal for the casual user, I'd say - I was quite surprised at how good the XP implementation is. I was researching this a while back, & haven't found anything better so far.

throb

I was wondering on itunes what is the best quality MP3 or AAc and could someone explain the difference.
Thanks
Spence

AAC, like Microsoft's WMA, or for that matter Sony's Atrac is a more modern compression system than MP3. All seem to perform well at high bitrates, and the newcomers promise better quality at lower ones [with proportionately smaller file sizes]. Lots of commercial axes to grind, but MP3 seems to be good enough for most people's purposes. Oh yes, WMA, AAC & Atrac are all designed to encompass various forms of digital rights management, unlike MP3, - which may have something to do with its continuing popularity.

throb

<Awaits Matthew Robinson's mention of $5 output stages and busy, loud listening environments>



My advice is to play around a bit with the different file formats and compression settings to see if you can hear differences with the same track. If that leads you down a path of geekdom, try some of this but ignore the "audiophile" commentary.

thanks guys - isn't the web and particularly the Naim forum a wonderful thing. I'll play around a bit and let you know how it goes.

You might also want to look around the Hydrogen forums, although I have to admit that I often don't understand what anyone's talking about!

Thanks for the itunes recommendation, it worked a treat. I just selected the middle quality MP3 setting and off it went. The phone only came with a 16mb SD card so if I want to use it this way I'll need to get a 128 or 256 version. (I only managed to squeeze 3 tracks into the 16mb). The sound was a bit 'hard' but perfectly OK for standing on noisy railway platforms. Of course that could be the crummy headphones, although because they've got a microphone on them I don't think I'd bother to change them.

Generally quite impressed with the mpx200 phone - it's significantly smaller than the Sony p800 alternative, and it's great to have all the details (address as well) of the 500 or so contacts in my outlook. the diary is useful too, although because the screen is small you can only display one day at a time, no 7-day option like on my pocket pc

One thing I haven't got to work properly though is the email sync. I can set activesync to transfer say the last 5 days of emails from my pc and I thought it'd be useful to read these on the train and either delete or reply to them. I can send an item on the phone and when I sync with the PC it does actually go correctly, however it doesn't seem to save a copy of the sent item anywhere. I've set the 'save copy' to yes on the phone, but this doesn't seem to help. Also although I've set Active Sync to sync just the last 5 days worth, it doesn't seem to be getting rid of the older items on the phone - so my phone inbox is getting too big already. Anyone come across anything like this with smartphones or pocket pcs?

Phil