iPod 80 gig

[rostasi]

  GregK said:

I wonder if any iPod experts here can clarify something for me. It seems that I can't delete a disc from my hard drive without it also being erased from my iPod the next time I plug it in. I thought maybe manually synching it would avoid this, but it didn't. I don't want to keep all of these albums on my hard drive; that's part of the reason I got the iPod. What am I doing wrong?

I'm no expert, I just use these things a lot. Please, no disrespect intended, but are you sure that you don't have it on automatic sync?

At this moment, I have nothing on my iTunes - no music - but I can plug my iPod in to the computer and play 5185 songs that I had taken previously off of my iTunes library (when it had them, of course).

Edited December 29, 2006 by rostasi

[GregK]

I thought I had turned the auto-sync off, but it still erased the corresponding album from the iPod after I deleted it from iTunes. I will have to check that and try it again. Thanks for the suggestion!

[mjzee]

In the latest version of iTunes, there's a new field available named "Album Artist" (as opposed to "Artist", which is still there). Does anyone know what this new field is used for?

[rostasi]

  mjzee said:

In the latest version of iTunes, there's a new field available named "Album Artist" (as opposed to "Artist", which is still there). Does anyone know what this new field is used for?

It works especially well with classical recordings.

I get a bit irked when I put a, for example, Xenakis disc in the player

and it shows up in iTunes under the performer(s) name in "artist",

so a good place to have this is in the "Album Artist" section.

Actually, I think all of the labels need some rethinking,

but that might screw with other software that's used with iTunes - maybe...

EX:

Name: Psappha

Artist: Iannis Xenakis

Album Artist: Red Fish Blue Fish/Steven Schick

Album: Percussion Works

[mjzee]

OK, it has jazz uses too. For instance, I just dubbed from LP the Oscar Peterson Jam from Montreux '77: The Art of the Jam Session. Since I want to put the set in the Oscar Peterson folder, and not create a separate Oscar Peterson Jam folder, the Artist is Oscar Peterson, and the Album Artist is Oscar Peterson Jam.

That's what I figured; thanks for the confirmation, rostasi.

[John L]

  GregK said:

I thought I had turned the auto-sync off, but it still erased the corresponding album from the iPod after I deleted it from iTunes. I will have to check that and try it again. Thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, I think that you still must have it in automatic synch. You know when it is in manually synch by the fact that no files are added or deleted from your iPod automatically.

Edited December 29, 2006 by John L

[Tjazz]

ipod calculator

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod/calculator/

[king ubu]

So if a CD gets ripped to MP3 by iTunes (I never do it that way, but I just wonder), it gets encoded at a crappy 128 kbps? Is that just an unchangeable truth, or are there possibilities to set up how the MP3s will be created?

[rostasi]

  king ubu said:

So if a CD gets ripped to MP3 by iTunes (I never do it that way, but I just wonder), it gets encoded at a crappy 128 kbps? Is that just an unchangeable truth, or are there possibilities to set up how the MP3s will be created?

Many possibilities abound - not just 128.

[Jay]

  rostasi said:

  king ubu said:

So if a CD gets ripped to MP3 by iTunes (I never do it that way, but I just wonder), it gets encoded at a crappy 128 kbps? Is that just an unchangeable truth, or are there possibilities to set up how the MP3s will be created?

Many possibilities abound - not just 128.

I rip mine lossless - but yes, many choices abound.

[md655321]

if you buy from itunes, however, 128 is your only option.

[mjzee]

I rip mine at 192 kbps.

[GregK]

256 kbps here

[Uncle Skid]

Exact Audio Copy, with Lame Version 3.97, "-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d".

From what I can gather from here, this is a variable bit rate (VBR) encoding with a target of 190 kbps, and ranges from 170…210 kbps.

[md655321]

I use V0, which is around 245. I have, many times, tried blind testing and i cant really tell much of a difference. 128 will do perfectly fine with most setups, depending on the heaphones/speakers.

[John L]

  Uncle Skid said:

Exact Audio Copy, with Lame Version 3.97, "-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d".

From what I can gather from here, this is a variable bit rate (VBR) encoding with a target of 190 kbps, and ranges from 170…210 kbps.

I actually rip mostly at 128. Otherwise, I wouldn't have enough room and time for my music. When I download MP3s, I try to get better quality. The logic is this: I am keeping my CD collection until the next generation of technology will make ripping and storing in lossless cheap and easy. Until that time, 128 will do.

[rostasi]

  Tjazz said:

ipod calculator

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod/calculator/

This is nice to see this. Since it may be difficult to estimate what your average song duration is,

you can put in "1 minute" and the numbers become the total minutes you can store.

Probably obvious, but thought I'd point that out in case it was missed.

[Uncle Skid]

  John L said:

  Uncle Skid said:

Exact Audio Copy, with Lame Version 3.97, "-V 2 --vbr-new %s %d".

From what I can gather from here, this is a variable bit rate (VBR) encoding with a target of 190 kbps, and ranges from 170…210 kbps.

I actually rip mostly at 128. Otherwise, I wouldn't have enough room and time for my music. When I download MP3s, I try to get better quality. The logic is this: I am keeping my CD collection until the next generation of technology will make ripping and storing in lossless cheap and easy. Until that time, 128 will do.

Hmmm... I (think) I can hear the difference between 128k and VBR (170-210), even on my (factory) car stereo. It's much more noticable on my home system, and with headphones.

Lately, I've been doing things the old fashioned (!) way: I've been playing the actual CD!

This brings up an interesting question: can iPods handle lossless format(s), other than "Apple lossless"? I've used FLAC, but not the Apple format.

[Brad]

Here's a question. I had an ipod that I got about two years ago and loaded up 3,000 tunes. To make a long story short, the computer at some point wiped the hard drive from the ipod. End of ipod. But I still had itunes and my son used it for his music.

We got him a new one this year and I thought I manually synced it but didn't so everything loaded up, which I later fixed so it just has his stuff. Anyway, when I went to play my stuff, it wouldn't play the jazz. You'd choose an album, then pick a song and it would randomly pick a song or not at all. Anyone ever heard of something like that? I'm just assuming that because the songs were loaded on an old version of itunes that somehow those files became corrupted. I can play the songs in itunes and can burn them but just couldn't play them on the ipod.

[rostasi]

I've found that when I've had a tech prob

and I start getting all angry at the software,

I often find that I had done something that

I shouldn't have and feel a bit embarrassed afterwards.

There's always some strange combination of

original source of a file or a delayed or half-assed upgrade

that I did, etc. that usually ends up being the culprit.

No telling now what the problem was then with your music

because of the nature of upgrades, etc.,

but I've found that it's pretty important for

all of your software to "be on the same page" - so to speak -

meaning that if you do or do not decide to upgrade,

that it needs to be consistent for all elements involved.

If you upgrade your iTunes (or not), then you need to

equally upgrade (or not) your iPod. These things seem

to go hand-in-hand because, unlike much PC based software,

there's a near seamless relationship that's pre-tested by Apple

that usually works in tandem.

[John L]

  Brad said:

Here's a question. I had an ipod that I got about two years ago and loaded up 3,000 tunes. To make a long story short, the computer at some point wiped the hard drive from the ipod. End of ipod. But I still had itunes and my son used it for his music.

We got him a new one this year and I thought I manually synced it but didn't so everything loaded up, which I later fixed so it just has his stuff. Anyway, when I went to play my stuff, it wouldn't play the jazz. You'd choose an album, then pick a song and it would randomly pick a song or not at all. Anyone ever heard of something like that? I'm just assuming that because the songs were loaded on an old version of itunes that somehow those files became corrupted. I can play the songs in itunes and can burn them but just couldn't play them on the ipod.

That does sound strange, beginning from how your computer destroyed your iPod by "wiping" its hard drive. How did that happen? If I understand you correctly, the music plays OK in iTunes, but not when it is on the iPod.

I imagine that there could be some problem with how the MP3s are formatted. As an experiment, you might try deleting an album from your library without removing the MP3 files, and then adding it back with the new version of iTunes. That should get the bugs out.

[Brad]

What happened originally with the first ipod is that as I was waiting for the computer to download songs to the ipod, I became impatient and opened up my browser, aol. The computer froze and when I turned it off and restarted it, it had wiped the ipod harddrive clean.

On the new ipod, you're correct. Itunes is fine and I can burn it to a cd but when I play it on the ipod, it does some weird things.

[rostasi]

Aaaaah, OK, so it sounds like your iPod wasn't demounted properly

(which would be natural after a freeze), so some of your files were probably damaged

during this - sooo, the only thing left is to re-rip those files.

Depending on how many were affected, it's probably difficult to find which ones,

but you can either re-rip anytime you hear a bum file

or if your library is on the smallish side, you could erase and re-rip

everything. A complete erasing is a good thing occasionally methinks

(with an external backup of course).

I do this with my internal drive every once-in-a-while.

As soon as I finish up with a few things here, I'm gonna do just that

in the next couple of days.

[John L]

  rostasi said:

A complete erasing is a good thing occasionally methinks

(with an external backup of course).

I do this with my internal drive every once-in-a-while.

As soon as I finish up with a few things here, I'm gonna do just that

in the next couple of days.

What is the advantage of re-ripping? Can MP3 files get damaged just sitting in a hard drive?

[Brad]

So you think that the itunes files were also damaged? That might explain things. I had about 3000 songs on there and I've started to get rid of all of 'em. I'll just start again, except for some cds I no longer have.

What I'll probably do in that case is download those to a cd and then upload back into itunes to see if that works.

Edited January 5, 2007 by Brad