Of Ipods & mp3 players?

C

citizen arcane

New member
My grown daughter wants an Ipod for xmas and me fill it w/ music. My portable players are of the non - fruit variety as I enjoy drag & drop operations through my Windows based machine. Having no experience at all w/ Ipods I have a few questions - my understanding is Ipods have to sync w/ Itunes, no? If so, is Itunes D&D and do mp3s and wavs go through a conversion process to AAC, AIFF or whatever Apple supports?
 
My sons got me an Ipod Nano for Christmas and since one was out here this week they already gave it to me. You do have to do all the loading via iTunes. So far, all I have done is rip a CD into my iTune and transfered it to the iPod. Not too difficult to do. I don't know if you can pull stuff from an MP3 player to an iPod though.
 
You tell itunes where to find music and it will copy it over to the ipod BUT the whole point of an Ipod is that your music on your PC and portable player are in sync. So if you load it up and she installs Itunes on her PC, she won't see the music on her PC. Yes there are ways around loading through itunes and moving music off an ipod, they aren't for everyone. Something else you really want to warn her about is buying music through itunes. If Apple ever goes away, you essentially lose the ability to move the music to a newer player. I always recommend people buy music from a DRM free site like amazon. It ensures portable music forever.
 
So by using Itunes when it copies it over does that mean it's transcoding? Also she's not too computer savvy (so no complicated software so she can sync up to her computer for her), she lives away and I don't want to try to trouble shoot over the phone.



I think with Apple's proprietary format and DRM management I may well go elsewhere.
 
As long as it is in MP3 format itunes will not do any conversion. I believe it does do conversion if it is in WMA. By default, all CDs are ripped into MP4, however you can change that in the settings to MP3. When looking for alternative music sources for her, make sure they include an app that will automatically update itunes. The amazon downloader does. Otherwise she will have to find the track/album and tell itunes about it.
 
I don't care for Apple and the itunes concept either, but she would have to be in an isolated part of Greenland to not have someone else with an iPod willing to help her out. I think most babies born in the US are now issued an iPod aren't they?



The wife was asking me about portable MP3 players and I was explaining why I like the non-proprietary formats over Apple. Anyway the three kids, who have iPods glued to their ears, went together and bought her an iPod Nano for Christmas. Since she was going on a business trip they gave it to her early and set itunes up on her computer.



I guess my point is if someone bought an iPod they could get almost any neighbor kid or relative to help get itunes all set-up. While I love being able to D&D, set my own bit-rates, make my own playlists, etc., I think it'd be harder for someone to find help on one of the non-apple players. As much as I hate to say it, if she is going to be living away from you I think an iPod is the better choice since that is what most of her friends will probably have. Just my 2 cents....
 
I for one hate Ipods and think they should all be burned.. I love creatives they are drag and drop and best part... NO I TUNES!! I also have a sandisk and I could not be happier with it.
 
I for one only have an iPod because my headunit in my car came with the cable for it and I can control the iPod through the headunit. If that wasn't the case I'd go with a Zune. Bigger, better looking screen, which is a bonus for me because I do use my iPod to watch a lot of movies on planes and such, but the Zune is also easier to use.



A good thing about the iPod though is it will take a licking and keep on ticking. My 1st iPod slipped out of my hand and fell down 2 stories onto concrete and still worked perfectly, but did die a few months later.
 
Devilsown said:
I for one hate Ipods and think they should all be burned.. I love creatives they are drag and drop and best part... NO I TUNES!! I also have a sandisk and I could not be happier with it.
Click to expand...



Itunes is a good music management system. You can create intelligent playlists based on a ton of criteria. I used to do the drag and drop thing ages ago, what a mess that was. Now I use music bridge and have my music organized between WMP and Itunes so my ipod (only used in the car with the stock system integration) and my phone (Windows Mobile) all have the same music, playlists, artwork, etc.
 
Basically, rip music from CD or download it (not from Itunes) and you'll always be able to play the mp3 on any device. The single best approach is to use LAME with EAC (Exact Audio Copy) do the compression.



If you use Apple Itunes store to buy mp3's or use Itunes to rip your CD of music, then you'll only be able to play it on an Apple device (i don't believe that has changed recently). Their compression is actually pretty good but i hate the fact that if you buy from Itunes, you don't have universal access of where to play the mp3.



One other key point to remember that a lot of iPod owners don't realize. Be very very careful about how you manage your mp3's within iTunes and your iPod. Unless you get a 3rd party software, you can't backup the music on your iPod. Never delete a song on your iPod. And if you want to delete it within iTunes, then make sure you've copied it to a backup folder so you can always add it back later.



During the sync process (everytime you connect your ipod to your computer), careful not to delete the song from you iPod as it may delete from itunes as well, and then you've lost the song entirely.



Paco
 
After a little research and finding this forum : Anything But iPod - MP3 Player Reviews & News



I decided on a Creative Zen. The selling point was it's expandiblility (I can buy sdhc cards on the cheap and fill 'em up for her) and after playing with it a while :drool: before sending it to the kid I found very few drawbacks. One revelation was using Mediamonkey as a possible interface that would replace Zen's and countless others, it seems to be value - rich.
 
paco said:
The single best approach is to use LAME with EAC (Exact Audio Copy) do the compression.
Click to expand...



Good advice. I've been ripping CDs for prolly 10 yrs. now and cleaning up LPs (remember them - did one last night) for as long, EAC is definitely the way to go but I pair it w/ Fraunhofer IIs encoding at 320 VBR.
 
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