IPods and You

Found myself in a new situation in the last few months - I got a maintenance job at a local factory with a grand total of 7 workers on the shift. Lousy FM reception inside the building. We're talking quiet environment where I'm moving around a lot, and not a lot of conversation among the employees, so I broke down and bought a 160GB iPod Classic which I've been pairing with my Sennheiser PX100 portable headphones. LOTS of space and I'm not at all unhappy with the sound of the little beast.

I'd given thought to going with a 120GB Zune, but I have a lot of music ripped in Apple Lossless format and really didn't want to deal with re-ripping just to accommodate a portable device. I also picked up a 5 dollar boombox at the local Goodwill with a line in jack for times when I don't have to move about and I'm working on a project in my maintenance area....it works, but I'm starting to keep my eye open for a dock myself!

 

I've read lots of pros and cons about IPods. I'm an old schooler. I've been through all forms of the media from 78s to MP3. I love my IPods!!! I now have two 160GB Classics with various sorting of 15500 songs from Classical to Hard Rock. The collection is still growing. I plug them DIRECTLY into 1960s Tube Amplifiers and play them through 1950s Speaker Systems. They don't even require a PreAmp, because they ARE a preamp! I will always prefer the sound of a really good clean vinyl recording but this is a VERY close second, and the concenience is really hard to beat.

As for ITunes, it has gradually gone from being a POS to being somewhat useful. Once I really understood the underlying Data Base structure I was able to manage my collections reasonably well. I still seem to suddenly end up with duplicates and some songs seem to magically disappear, but not so much anymore. I have hundreds of CDs that have all been 'ripped' and are now in my ipods. I'm a big fan!

Also, note that I am still always concerned about losing my files due to disk crashes etc. I have 3 remote hard drives that I regularly update with copies of my collection. If you do the math, these collections get to be pretty expensive to replace, so be careful!!

 

Other than the inconvenience of re-ripping, don't rule out the Zune. They really do sound fantastic - I am stocking up spare parts to keep my 30GB Generation 1 Zune running as long as I can as it still (to my ears) sounds better than the competition.

-D

 

My iPods:


Mini


Nano 2G


Shuffle 2G


Shuffle 3G

Agreed, it's a little overkill to have four. I use the Shuffle 3G almost daily, its small size and battery life are amazing.

 

I have the 160GB classic - it is great - what goes extremely well with it is my Pioneer car head unit (AVIC F900) - this is where I do the most listening. Voice control - album artwork - very cool.

 

I stick to the 160GB classics too, it's not like they are big or heavy in themselves and I value having that vast library of music available at all times without having to choose in any way what I want beforehand.

Bit old fashioned though on how I buy music, except for the ultra rare single track which I will download I buy CD's every time and rip them immediately. Then should the unthinkable happen I do have the backup

 

Although I still have an old 8GB iPod Nano, I have moved to either my iPhone 3GS or my iPad 1G.

 

Well, I am a sucker for iPods and thus currently have:

1. 160 Gb iPod Classic Ver. 6
2. 80 Gb iPod Ver. 5.5 which I converted to a 240 Gb!
3. 8 Gb iPhone 3G
4. 16 Gb iPhone 3G (the wife's)

Waiting for the iPhone 5G! which hopefully will support 4G.

 

How do you go about installing a larger hard drive in an iPod? I'd love to do that particularly for the one I use permanently in my study. I'd not even mind losing it's portability (if for instance it made the iPod bigger)

 

I've had two iPods in the last 4 years or so and both have given me excellent service and countless hours of enjoyment while at work, in the gym and while driving.

My 160GB Classic is about the same size as my cellphone and carries just fine in my shirt pocket while I'm working. I really can't tell you what a plus it has been to have mine to listen to a few hours each night while I'm making my nightly rounds checking on machinery. What would otherwise be a case of me listening to motors and pumps whirring and humming, I get to also hear thousands of different songs. Of late I've been putting it on shuffle and allowing to do the programming for me. I can't pick up FM reception due to the steel structure of the facility plus a pronounced lack of good local stations, so without having an iPod Classic my nights would far less enjoyable!

 

So after all these years of lurking on this thread, i gotta ask, what have we decided???Is the best format for playing the best digital reproduction of our music through vintage audio equipt just to upgrade the sound cards on our pc.s, create lossless mp3s, run through our preamps?

 

using itunes i should add...

 

I would think you'll still run into the debate on what the best DAC to use would be in that equation. I'm satisfied with using my M-Audio soundcard for that purpose but many people would not be.

 

160GB Classic with FM adapter/wired remote for car/travel/office (and I can get surprisingly good sound out of it at home using a Denon dock).

2GB Shuffle for exercise or active stuff. The hard drives in the big guys don't like repeated small shocks. The Shuffle was a GW pickup in like-new condition for half of retail.

 

Currently I'm using two:

- iPod "Classic" 5th Generation 80gb
- iPod Nano 3rd Generation 8gb

I also have a box full of 1st, 3rd, 4th Generation and "Photo" iPod's from the Classic series as well as a 1st, 2nd and 3rd Generation of Nano's that are not in use.

No need to ask what my thoughts on iPod's are.

 

Why avoid ipods and see them realistically. My first "walkman" wasn't even a walkman, it was an early GE clone. They got better, I bought a Walkman with stereo recording and Dolby, an Aiwa with Dolby C and I considered it Hi-fi in '95! Now, it was a $200.00 player but still, it was small and did it all, FM recording was good. A clumsy fool dropped it on brick and ruined it.

Now we have ipods and with a good recording, a small headphone amp (even a cheapie like an E3) and good phones get what I consider JUST beyond anything tape and Dolby C ever did but surpass my old Dual with a mid-level ortofon, Kenwood amp and Ar's. In all ways. But it depends on the recording, of course. For instance:

The Vinyl pressing of Captain Beefheart: Safe as Milk is lively, clear with as much dynamic range as the cheap studio job gave the new artist. But, after 20-30 plays, permanent pops arrive. The whole DAC thing seems to be getting that performance with digital. No Pops. But the CD that was issued is just not right. It sound like it was made from a copy from vinyl. No, not that good. So, on older recordings some CD's are just awful transfers for many reasons...many to do with money, I would guess.

 

I know what you mean. These record companies should search the land for the best pristine vinyl copy of Captain Beefheart: Safe as Milk. Then take that version and play it on a state of the art record player and digitally record it and make the CD this way. I mean if they can't find the original master tapes this would be the best alternative. But I don't think they bother. Sometimes it sounds like some CDs were mastered from an old cassette tape the record company found at a yard sale.

 

Just been given an Ipod Touch

So What is the best file system to use to give best quality - vinyl to ..??

 

Hadn't visited this forum before and have a iPod story to share.

Got an iPod Touch last summer. I bought a dock for it (Cambridge iD100) that extracts the digital and sends it to my DAC. But wait, it doesn't end there. The DAC is connected to an FM Transmitter (a Ramsey, thanks to PunkerX for the rec).

This works great for me. I have a small collection of tuners with a few of them in each one of my systems so I can listen to whatever I have playing on the iPod anywhere in the house on any system I have turned on.

Beside what I have in iTunes, being an iTouch, I can stream our wifi to it and play anything I choose from our computer. I set up Pandora on it and with its customized stations, it's what I end up listening to the most.

I still get a smile everytime I listen to a Marantz 10b playing "my" station and never ever a commercial.

Thank you Steve Jobs and Saul Marantz (now there's two people I never would thought I would be mentioning in the same sentence).