Is it time for classical fans to consider an iPod?

quote:

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Originally posted by Nick Lees:
I work close to the River Medway in Kent. Within 2 minutes of leaving the office I can be walking along its' banks, amongst woods and pretty much away from the world.

Since receiving my Christmas iPod Vaughan Williams, Respighi et al have on occasion accompanied me (though Phish and The Bays have too) and it's utterly blissful. Listening to Palestrina whilst sitting on top of the ruined motte of Tonbridge Castle takes some beating too.

The quality is much much more than adequate too.

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Perfectly put Nick, old son.

10-dollars seems expensive for what I assume
is compressed audio [i.e. MP3 like]....

Also you have to pay for download time, you
don't get a booklet, art-work, cd-case and you
end up with a fragile cd-r if you burn it to cd.

Better to buy the cd from the internet and then
load it onto the iPod ...

quote:

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Originally posted by James Hamilton:
10-dollars seems expensive for what I assume
is compressed audio [i.e. MP3 like]....

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I believe you can download WAV files, so compression and sound quality is not an issue - if the files can be burned to regular CD-Rs, that is.

I'm not sure how a CD-R is particularly "fragile." Care to elaborate?


"The universe is change, life is opinion." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Well, the iPod isn't fragile. I just dropped mine off the desk. Slightly scrathed, but playing away fine. Quality with AIFF is wonderful. ACC is pretty good too - definitly better than MP3. And transferring an album from the Mac to th iPod is a couple of seconds wait.

Two days old - typical! Better than my new car though which I managed to scratch in one day.



Regards

Stephen

By iPod I presume you mean "an iPod like device with similar if not better functionality in a less attractive box but 30% cheaper"

Matthew

quote ...
"I believe you can download WAV files, so compression and sound quality is not an issue - if the files can be burned to regular CD-Rs, that is."

Only really practical with broadband. I just have 56k !!

quote ...
"I'm not sure how a CD-R is particularly "fragile." Care to elaborate?"

There are various brands of CD-R and one particular Philips brand boasted that it was less sensitive to UV than most [This was an Audio CD-R rather than a data CD-R] and they advised me in the shop that ordinary CD-R's [e.g. left in a car] could be erased by UV in sunlight. I have never heard of UV problems with pressed CD's.

Sorry R.d.S.,

Folks round these part are generally pretty friendly. I suspect that no one answered your question because they thought that you were making a statement. That's what I thought anyway.

An iPod is a small (pack of cards size) silver and white object made by Apple that is essentially a hard drive with an operating system in a case with a screen, controls, inputs (for charging and managing data via PC/MAC software and for a remote control) and output (mini headphone socket). It offers a bunch of peripheral functionality (alarm clock, games, contact lists etc etc) and one main purpose : to store data, both as an external hard-drive and (and this is what it's really for) for storing music. The 40GB drive can store up to 10,000 songs depending on how compressed they are.

I have one which I use every day. Having hundreds of your favourite CDs in your pocket is fantastically liberating.

quote:

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Originally posted by J. A. Toon:
The battery life of the iPod is deeply unimpressive. 8 hours? I expect more from a £400 portable music source.

In the meantime, I notice that you can buy the MP3 compatible Sony Discman's for around £70 now. Bulkier, admittedly, but a huge battery life and infinite storage by using a CD-Rs or CD-RWs.

John.

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I found that using the 'anti skip' on my walkman reduces the battery life to considerably less than 8 hours on my CD walkman. And having to carry 8 hours worth of CDs around and changing the bloody things all the time and making CDR backups, meant that I wasn't using the thing. With the iPod I just listen to music.

Regards

Stephen

RDS, check out www.apple.com/ipod

This product has revolutionised the market, Mathhew will no doubt instill the virtues of such like the Roxio, which frankly is a laughable attempt at the ipod, I believe that Sony will be having a go in the near future as well.

The long and short of it is that the ipod has a 31% market share of the entire portable music storage business, by that I mean both harddrive and card format, as well as diskmans etc, they are out front in a big way and for good reason.

They got there through a fantastic product which is well built and above all DESIRABLE, I have one many others have one and the reason is its intergration with the itunes software, ease of use, inteligent display and overall sexiness.

By all means get a cheaper product.

Very true, Gary. I remember when it was first announced, and Steve Jobs had said that a revolutionary product was about to be introduced that would change the way.. etc., and all those Appleista journos were so disappointed - just another bloody MP3 player etc. As revolutionary as the original iMac, and sadly probably more significant to Apple's revenue stream than the current iteration. You never can tell, can you - similar in a way to SMS on mobiles - something that seems quite ho-hum suddenly becomes hotter than hot things. At the moment, there is no competition - anything else is an also ran, but Sony do have a knack for this desirability thing, so Apple better watch out. More than likely, any offering from that quarter will be hobbled by bizarre ATRAC checking in/out [NetMD would have left Apple for dust, otherwise] so I'm not holding my breath.

Having said this, I do feel that blind devotion to international multi-million industrial companies, no matter how well designed their products may be, is a Bit Sad. Other organisations [we can all think of them]perhaps need our emotional investment rather more.

throb

Todd,


Can you plug the Ipod on your HIFI system and for example listen to La Traviata for three hours without interruption.

I run an iPAQ h2210, running GSPlayer (plays MP3, OGGVorbis, & WAV). When I get the extended battery, it will play for 28 hours on a single charge. Add the fact that I can use AVANTGO (cached webpage service), play games, and browse the net (albeit only when in range of a hotspot) whilst listening to music, the ipod seems like a much less interesting option for me.

By all means get the cheaper option.

quote:

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Originally posted by throbnorth:
Sony do have a knack for this desirability thing, so Apple better watch out.

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Sony's PSP due this xmas looks killer for games, music, and video:



Proposed specs can be found here (though I doubt the MS and 802.11 bits).

[This message was edited by Ludwig on TUESDAY 27 January 2004 at 22:13.]

Mekon,

By all means get the cheaper option, but how many CD's can you get on your iPAQ ?

I am looking foward to the time when the next generation of memory devices will allow huge (many GB) amounts of data to be stored in cheap solid-state. Then cost, battery life and weight won't be a factor.

A dumb question maybe abot the iPod. You spend hours loading it with 5000 songs, then the hard drive packs in and you lose the lot. How do you back these things up?

Good question. Ideal solution would be to have a huge HDD, or a second HDD dedicated to storing your library. iTunes automatically syncs your iPod to your library (if you want it to). If you lose the lot in this scenario your new/repaired iPod automatically rebuilds when you dock it.

My problem is that I only have one 40GB HDD and I have a SFF Compaq that doesn't have a spare internal bay for a second one. If I lose the lot I start again. I had a scare a few months ago when I removed my iPod without undocking it first and when I tried to use it it was "empty". When I got home I docked and undocked properly and it all came back. The FAT must get scrubbed on docking and then rewritten during undocking. The prospect of starting again was not nice.

Indeed the itunes software has the option to back up data CDs or DVDs depending on the drive you are using, as such it will back up to disks in the itunes library format.

Like the iphoto software this is handy, if for instance you want to back up music you arn't listening to. These can be backed up in playlist format onto CD, when you insert this CD itunes automatically loads and transfers it all back into itunes for you, because its a data CD you arn't restricted by track runnning times, so if your music is encoded in AAC for instance you can fitting 700megs worth of 4 meg files.

Minky -- You want something like this

Matthew

Matthew,

For someone who spends all day programming computers I find myself bewilderingly technophobic at times. I didn't even know such things existed. Do you know how big/heavy these things are ? I assume they connect via a USB cable rather than directly (like USB RAM). How does the "button" backup work - do you store the directories you want to transfer on the beast and does it then "pull" them across ?

I really COULD want something like this.

They connect via USB2 and often have a Firewire option as well (which is why they are relatively new things as although they existed before large capacities were kind of pointless with USB1.1).

I think the One Touch is just a Maxtor gimic rather than a usual feature -- I just picked that model more or less at random. I would probably go for a Maxtor fo Western Digitial though as its basically a HDD in a box so you want a good brand.

I don't think they are particularly heavy. Lots of people use them as portable storage (e.g. between home and work computers).

Matthew

As Nick Lees said at the top of this thread :

quote:

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The quality is much much more than adequate.

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The main reason I got an iPod is that it easily interfaces with my PowerBook without any external software (I don't need to worry about 3rd party upgrades.). I download radio programs and rip my CDs and the iPod is automatically updated when I plug it in.

Quality with AIFF files through the Naim is pretty good too.

And I've listened to more music in te last 2 weekd than in te last 2 months bacause I can listen anywhere.

I love these things!

Regards

Stephen

PS Of course, what I really want is a PDA with music (and video) playback, camera (still & video, microphone and audio line in, a huge memory (say > 300GB, preferably solid state) , 24bit performance, proper quality line outs, phone, GPS and wireless net connection. Oh and easy connection to then Mac. And pen size with a pull-out wobble screen.

Not too much to ask is it?

Anyone needed a new iPod battery yet

A.

quote:

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Originally posted by Nick Lees:
It is if you're a shiftless bloody musician who promised us an album (and a double at that!) in the summer. Can we have an update please

nick.lees at btinternet.com

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Nick

Er, oh, er (Hoon-like avoiding the question...)

We've done all the henry fool studio sessions and are working hard on finishing the album (which is veering between all instrumental, a mix like the debut, or a double of both stuff.) However, Tim and I have been sidetracked onto doing a Bowness solo project for a 'major' record label - and you know what they are like, want want want for their meagre payments.....

But there will be another henry fool album - honest, guv...

So, where's me PDA?



Regards

Stephen

" ..... PS Of course, what I really want is a PDA with music (and video) playback, camera (still & video, microphone and audio line in, a huge memory (say > 300GB, preferably solid state) , 24bit performance, proper quality line outs, phone, GPS and wireless net connection. Oh and easy connection to then Mac. And pen size with a pull-out wobble screen.

Not too much to ask is it? ..... "

Hello Stephen,

I used a computer in 1975 or so which was about the fastest in the world [if not the fastest then within the top few] and had a memory of 1 [one] megabyte. I was allowed a few hours per week [it was shared]. My current PC has 392 megabytes.

So what you ask will come and it won't take that long [10 years or less I suspect].

James

The computer was an IBM 360/195 [The other contender for fastest was the CDC 7600 ... but then the Cray-1 arrived].

It was a 360/195 not a 370/195 [it did not have virtual memory].

ends==