anyone have an iPod?

[frank m]

Jim Dye (or anybody else who knows)---

Checking the specs on the Griffin I still have some questions--

They cite a frequency response of 20Hz to 20KHz. Why then do they refer to in terms of its use as a recording device for vocal recording only, not for musical recording???Anybody ever used an iPod for recording live music with it?

Looking at the website for Griffin-they mention a thing called iMic which is apparently used with the Griffin device (and an iPod??) Now I'm really puzzled.

Griffin cites that the device is available from Apple Store. Going there I find a lookalike device manufactured by another company. No mention of Griffin. What gives? Cam anyone help me with these seeming inconsistencies???

[makpjazz57]

I rec'd my iPOD earlier today and I'm pleased to report setting it up was a breeze and the menus are extremely easy to use. I had already burned my CD collection, A-H on to the itunes software. So, this morning, I plugged in the iPOD and 673 tunes took approximately 6 minutes to load to the iPOO. I'm very impressed. Sound quality, even with the suppiled earbuds, was very good. I used a rate of 160 AAC to record the tunes.

My CD collection is about 99 per cent jazz and I'd say, so far, the sound quality has been superb, be it Basie, Billie Holiday or Mike LeDonne's new CD.

With my collection of about 800-1,000 CDs, it is doubtful I'll need to use iTUNES music purchase service, but I may download a book or two!

Again, thanks for everyone's help.

Marla

[Adam]

I just bought an iRiver iHP-120 with 20 gB. I have immediately run into one problem and am having second thoughts. I have been doing all my saving of files on my PowerBook as AAC files. The iRiver does not handle them - it handles MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV and OGC. I need to figure out what to do _ i don't really want to convert everything that's already on the PowerBook. Any suggestions? I'm sure there's something simple that I'm overlooking.

Besides that it has some nice features, such as a built in mic for voice recording, and analog ins to tape from cassette or LP if I want (and digital ins as well).

[Claude]

I have been doing all my saving of files on my PowerBook as AAC files.  The iRiver does not handle them - it handles MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV and OGC.  I need to figure out what to do _ i don't really want to convert everything that's already on the PowerBook.  Any suggestions?  I'm sure there's something simple that I'm overlooking.

AAC is a proprietary Apple format, that's why no portable player except the iPod support it. There is no way to play those files on the iRiver.

You will need to convert the existing AAC files to MP3 or OGG (with a slight loss of quality due to recompression) or rip the CDs again and choose MP3 or OGG instead of AAC.

There is software for Windows that can mass-convert files, but I don't know much about Apple software.

Convert AAC to WAVE or MP3 format

Edited July 30, 2004 by Claude

[Soulstation1]

a co-worker got an mini-ipod for his b-day.

he said he'd bring it in on saturday, so i can check it out.

ss1

[Adam]

I have been doing all my saving of files on my PowerBook as AAC files.  The iRiver does not handle them - it handles MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV and OGC.  I need to figure out what to do _ i don't really want to convert everything that's already on the PowerBook.  Any suggestions?  I'm sure there's something simple that I'm overlooking.

AAC is a proprietary Apple format, that's why no portable player except the iPod support it. There is no way to play those files on the iRiver.

You will need to convert the existing AAC files to MP3 or OGG (with a slight loss of quality due to recompression) or rip the CDs again and choose MP3 or OGG instead of AAC.

There is software for Windows that can mass-convert files, but I don't know much about Apple software.

Convert AAC to WAVE or MP3 format

That's what I was afraid of. Oh, well...

[Soulstation1]

rule #1

is you have "we built this city" on your i-pod, you shouln't be allowed to own an i-pod.

got to check out the mini i-pod yesterday at work.

i gotta get an i-pod one day, all my big john patton on that would be cool

ss1

Edited August 1, 2004 by Soulstation1

[John L]

I am going to be spending a LOT of time away from home in the next few years. So I just bought the 40GB iPod.

Now I am ripping 40GB of what I want to always have with me. Damn, that's a hard choice! I've already ripped 6GB, and I haven't even gotten out of early jazz yet.

[7/4]

I am going to be spending a LOT of time away from home in the next few years. So I just bought the 40GB iPod.

Now I am ripping 40GB of what I want to always have with me. Damn, that's a hard choice! I've already ripped 6GB, and I haven't even gotten out of early jazz yet.

What's happening here is...

I have most of Coltrane on Impulse, including Alice, Monk on Blue Note, Miles with Tony Williams, Sketches, +18, Dolphy Prestge, Elvin Mosaic, a couple of other jazz titles...a bunch of Eno, Budd, Hassell, North Indian Hindustani Raga, a smatter of rock (Black Keys, North Mississippi Allstars, Rolling Stones, Fab Thunderbirds, ZZ Top, Johnny Winter)...

...and I almost never listen to it. At the gym on the treadmill or when I take the train to NYC maybe. I've gotten used to not having music 24/7.

[John L]

Yea, I guess that I could get used to not having music too. I could probably even get used to maximum security prison. The only point is that I don't want to.

[Tjazz]

I am going to be spending a LOT of time away from home in the next few years. So I just bought the 40GB iPod.

Now I am ripping 40GB of what I want to always have with me. Damn, that's a hard choice! I've already ripped 6GB, and I haven't even gotten out of early jazz yet.

If you can fill-up 40GB, you have an amazing collection!

[tonym]

Got mine today, well about 1/2 hour after store opened . I just had to.

You know what it's like, online ordering was going to take 5 or 6 days at best. The store got 3 in this am, same price as cheapest online.

I'm now transfering as much as I can but the task seems daunting. I haven't even looked at my jazz stuff yet. I wonder if 20Gb is going to get most of my collection on, should do.

[cannonball-addict]

I have had a 40GB iPod for about two months now. I originally thought I would fill the whole thing up easily. But after a while I still have about 10 GB left and I constantly find myself taking stuff off because it played what seems like too frequently.

I realized just the other week that if you go to settings you can set it on shuffle to shuffle songs (if you browse by song and start it on any song, it will shuffle so that you get a wide variety of what's on there. It's easy to get caught up with stuff at a certain point in the alphabetical order (like artists starting with A's or J's). You can also shuffle by entire albums (it will play one whole album and then switch to another an a random point in the alphabet and play that whole album).

Being a jazz musician who is interested in transcribing stuff from records and CDs I found out that there is another player that can actually function in the same way as an iPod but it can also slow songs down to the point where you can hear every note and neither the the pitch nor the octave changes. This seems too good to be true. It is a perenial problem for transcribers. I've never been too good at transcribing at full speed. When you slow down an LP you change the pitch but this new technology (aside from the thing they sell in the Jamey Aebersold catalog) would be great for me and other students/professional musicians who want to transcribe.

mm

[AmirBagachelles]

I just want to be sure about two things:

If I want portability for my collection but I don't like / hate MP3, I should get an iPod. AAC is OK, not too lossy.

If one of my must-have features is a line recorder (for LPs etc), I should not get an iPod. There are good HD portables w/ line recording in the Windows world.

This just about sums up my "requirements" so I guess I stay on the sidelines a bit longer, yes?

Edited September 15, 2004 by AmirBagachelles

[John L]

I solved my problem, or at least part of it. I bought a little 120 GB external hard drive where I now hold 62 GB of music. That is close to 2000 albums The interface with the iPod is simple, so I can constantly adust what music I hold on the iPod. I didn't have time to load more before I left town. But I am really happy that I have as much as I do. So far, I haven't had the sudden urge for something I didn't load. Technology is really amazing.

[Joe Christmas]

Hi folks, long time no see.

Great thread, just happened upon it and read the whole thing. I'm always looking for different applications and opinions about the iPod. I bought a 4th gen 40GB about a month or so ago, after my cd wallet was stolen out of my car.

Prior to my cds getting stolen I was anti-digital music, for the most part. I'm deploying soon for six months so the decision came also as a result of that. On submarines you have maybe 6-8 square feet of storage space, including clothes, etc, and sometimes less than that. I was faced with lugging a ton of cds and a cd player or taking this thing that's roughly the size of a deck of cards. Easy choice. I also bought a 120GB external hard drive, just so I have plenty of music to choose from while I'm underway. I'll listen to only a fraction of that for sure, but it'll be nice to have all that music to choose from.

Something I haven't seen discussed here re: the iPod: SMART PLAYLISTS. Please share any handy ideas you have about programming smart playlists. I don't have many yet, but the one I use most frequently is an "unheard" list. Needless to say, all of my music has been imported in the last month, so I don't have a need to sort the tunes by date. For now, it's just a random generator of 30 songs, all under 10 minutes each, that have a playcount of less than 1. I'd like to go crazy and make some really sophisticated playlists using the comments feature, but that seems like a lot of work. Share your playlists!

[Peter Johnson]

Hey, Joe! Welcome back! Good to see you!

I'm teetering on the edge of buying an ipod...comments like yours are pushing me closer. Ipod + bose noise cancelling headphones =

Hope all is well.

[billyboy]

I'm also very interested in an iPod. Check out smartplaylists.com for a whole load of smart playlists. Some are pretty dumb, but a few are kinda cool. You can add a bunch of keywords to the comments for each song, (like HIGH SCHOOL, the label [Mosaic, Blue Note, 4AD], shoegazing, lambada, etc.) and build a smart playlist from that.

You could spend untold hours screwing around with your music library and creating playlists. Sounds like a great way to spend time on a sub!

Edited September 23, 2004 by billyboy

[kh1958]

I just bought a 20 gig ipod last weekend, and so far I'm liking it more than I would have ever imagined. I'm not sure it's the ipod itself so much, as it has provided the impetus to delve into my collection, go through lots of CDs, and pick out the tracks I like the best to transfer to the ipod. This has been great so far, rediscovering lots of favorite music, and I'm only at 1.2 gigs used.

[Joe Christmas]

Peter, thanks. As someone who swore they'd never go digital, I can vouch for the quality of the iPod's sound. The convenience is huge. You simply won't know until you have one.

re: noise-cancelling headphones, I received the Shure E3c earbuds in the mail today. I'll report back when I've spent some time with them.

[Joe Christmas]

billyboy, I've checked out that site but only found one or two that I'd consider using. A lot of them are geared toward "party mixing" and the like. I'm sure a few of us could put our heads together and think of a playlist or two that serves the general thinking of a jazzhead with hundreds of discs.

One thing I really like about the iPod is the ability to quickly find and listen to different artists' versions of the same tune or standard.

This thing will be a lifesaver on the sub, for sure. Not too much for stimulation, but you gain a new appreciation for the finer things. Plenty of conversation to be had. Lots of music listening, lots of books, and I'll be working on my grad courses. The only serious downer is being away from the wife and kids for that long. It can be unbearable.

[bertrand]

Confession time.

For reasons I cannot explain, I completely panic when it comes to trying to start using new technology. I chose my words carefully here: once I get started, I am fine and actually start becoming quite savvy at it. But I just freeze when it comes to getting started. I use computers at work, so it's not like that's the issue.

This is the reason it took me forever to start using the web (but now I'm fine with it), this is the reason I am the only person in this forum without an avatar, this is the reason I never post pictures. This is also the reason I have yet to create a website, even though I have a lot of jazz research data I would love to share: I just don't know how to get started.

What this is building up to: my wife got me an ipod for our anniversary a month ago, and I have yet to even open the box. I'm just worried that I'll get totally confused and frustrated (also, I have a million other things to deal with right now) and give up on the thing. I know I want to put the entire Jackie McLean discography on this thing, and also download some of those OOP Verve titles they made available through i-tunes. Also, I want to have one version of every Monk tune, just to keep them straight in my mind.

So don't be surprised if I start peppering this thread with inane questions - please bear with me, and assume you are dealing with a mentally challenged individual.

My first questions (before I even open the box):

1. Once I have some tunes on there, how do I play them back in my car?

2. How do I move the songs from my PC to the ipod?

3. Can I partition the database of songs I created into 'subdirectories', e.g. one directory for Jackie with a subdirectory for each album, and other directory for Monk?

Thanks in advance,

Bertrand.

Edited September 24, 2004 by bertrand

[kh1958]

Confession time.

For reasons I cannot explain, I completely panic when it comes to trying to start using new technology. I chose my words carefully here: once I get started, I am fine and actually start becoming quite savvy at it. But I just freeze when it comes to getting started. I use computers at work, so it's not like that's the issue.

This is the reason it took me forever to start using the web (but now I'm fine with it), this is the reason I am the only person in this forum without an avatar, this is the reason I never post pictures. This is also the reason I have yet to create a website, even though I have a lot of jazz research data I would love to share: I just don't know how to get started.

What this is building up to: my wife got me an ipod for our anniversary a month ago, and I have yet to even open the box. I'm just worried that I'll get totally confused and frustrated (also, I have a million other things to deal with right now) and give up on the thing. I know I want to put the entire Jackie McLean discography on this thing, and also download some of those OOP Verve titles they made available through i-tunes. Also, I want to have one version of every Monk tune, just to keep them straight in my mind.

So don't be surprised if I start peppering this thread with inane questions - please bear with me, and assume you are dealing with a mentally challenged individual.

My first questions (before I even open the box):

1. Once I have some tunes on there, how do I play them back in my car?

2. How do I move the songs from my PC to the ipod?

3. Can I partition the database of songs I created into 'subdirectories', e.g. one directory for Jackie with a subdirectory for each album, and other directory for Monk?

Thanks in advance,

Bertrand.

The ipod itself creates directories for each artist and a subdirectory for each album of that artist.

You can listen to the ipod through a cassette adapter in your car. (The only problem I have with this is that it sounds like a cassette. Maybe there's a better way?)

I don't know about a PC. If you have a mac, you just plug the ipod into your computer and itunes automatically moves the music from your library in itunes to the ipod. It couldn't be easier.

[Claude]

Yesterday, Sony announced that their future portable players would finally support MP3. This ends an odd situation where the Sony players would only play files compressed with ATRAC (invented for the Minidisc), making it necessary to convert music on the PC into that format before being able to play it on the portable player.

So there may be some interesting new hardware ahead, from the inventor of the Walkman.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/23/sony_supports_mp3/

Edited September 24, 2004 by Claude

[vibes]

Yesterday, Sony announced that their future portable players would finally support MP3. This ends an odd situation where the Sony players would only play files compressed with ATRAC (invented for the Minidisc), making it necessary to convert music on the PC into that format before being able to play it on the portable player.

So there may be some interesting new hardware ahead, from the inventor of the Walkman.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/23/sony_supports_mp3/

I deal a lot with Sony for a couple of product lines, and after spending a few hours with them on Wednesday, I believed this announcement would be made very soon...I had no idea it would come this soon! I think Sony got the wake-up call for a few reasons:

1. A lot of their portable CD players have the ability to play mp3 CD's. I saw the soon-to-be-released lines while I was visiting with them, and they even say "mp3" right on them. Makes no sense to have this capability in some of your portable audio devices but not in the ones that really make the most difference.

2. Everyone seems to hate the software you have to use to transfer music to their digital music players, and even more so because you have to convert everything into their proprietary ATRAC format.

3. Many retailers, including Best Buy (the largest consumer electronics retailer in the USA (and in the world, for that matter)), refused to carry the Network Walkman because it didn't have mp3 capabilities. In America, not having a CE product in Best Buy often dooms that product to failure.

My sources also tell me that the pricing will soon become a lot more competitive too...but don't quote me on that.