anyone have an iPod?

[billyboy]

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?

If you have a cassette player in the car, you can use a cassette adapter. If your car system has an input jack on the front (not many do, but consider yourself lucky if yours does), you can just plug it in. Otherwise, if you have a CD player or just a radio, you need to get a tiny radio transmitter that plugs into the top of the iPod. Just set the transmitter for a setting, tune your car radio to the same setting, and enjoy. This accessory costs between 35 and 70 bucks.

To move songs from the PC to the iPod, just plug the iPod into your computer's USB or firewire port. The computer automatically recognizes your iPod is connected, and automatically transfers and updates files from iTunes. If you have more songs on your computer than will fit on the iPod, you can manually select which ones you want to move, or iTunes will pick them for you.

Right now, iTunes does not support directories or playlists within playlists. But it will handle what you described. If you click on Artists -> Jackie McLean, you will get a list of all your Jackie albums. You can then select a particular album to play, or randomly play all your Jackie songs, or randomly play a Jackie album.

Hope this helps!

[vibes]

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?

Otherwise, if you have a CD player or just a radio, you need to get a tiny radio transmitter that plugs into the top of the iPod. Just set the transmitter for a setting, tune your car radio to the same setting, and enjoy. This accessory costs between 35 and 70 bucks.

The FM transmitter is an extremely popular option right now, and most that I've seen are priced at $25 or below.

[Joe Christmas]

Bertrand,

1) You can also purchase an FM transmitter made for these things. Plug the player in and the transmitter goes through your car antenna to 1 of 4 resident frequencies on your car stereo, like 87.5FM. I've heard that the sound is everything from so-so to very good.

When I get back from sea I plan to hard wire an input into an after-market car stereo. Pretty easy with a y-cable.

2) Moving songs from your PC is pretty easy, like KH said. I recommend you install iTunes, either from the cd-rom or from Apple's website, and then just spend a day or two using the software to upload music to your hard drive, and to organize it. When you're comfortable with the software just plug in the iPod and it will do the rest.

[Joe Christmas]

gah, didn't see the two posts above mine. Sorry, guys.

[Brad]

I just happened on this thread and read evey last post. I'm getting a 40 gig iPod tomorrow and am pretty excited although I haven't loaded anything yet on iTunes. Some people mentioned about getting an external hard drive. Do I need that to transfer songs to the iPod. Or is the external for the iPod itself, not my computer. What is this firewire thing. I assume that's something extra I have to purchase.

I'm sort of Bertrand when it comes to new things. Excited, but a little nervous . The very thing I'll probably load are the Mobley Mosaic and Dexter BN box.

[John L]

I just happened on this thread and read evey last post.  I'm getting a 40 gig iPod tomorrow and am pretty excited although I haven't loaded anything yet on iTunes.  Some people mentioned about getting an external hard drive.  Do I need that to transfer songs to the iPod.  Or is the external for the iPod itself, not my computer.  What is this firewire thing.  I assume that's something extra I have to purchase.

I'm sort of Bertrand when it comes to new things.  Excited, but a little nervous  .  The very thing I'll probably load are the Mobley Mosaic and Dexter BN box.

Brad: The only advantage of an external hard drive is space. You can store iTunes music on the hard drive of your computer. But music tends to take up a lot of space. An external hard drive will both hold much more music and prevent the absence of memory space (capacity) from interfering with the operation of your computer.

The good news is that you can start storing music on your hard drive. After it starts to accumulate, you can pick up an external hard drive, give a simple command, and shift everything there. I now have over 100 GB of iTunes music on my external hard drive, which gives me the option to listen to just about anything that I want to hear when I am away from my CD collection (most of the time right now).

The search feature is also great. For example, you can immediately find all performances of a given composition in your collection. The breakdowns into genre, artist, and album are also quite useful. For example, I downloaded the complete Stax singles onto my iPod. I can listen to them in chronological order like they are programmed on the albums, or I can choose a single artist and listen to all of that artist's Stax singles in a row. With the Playlists, you can create albums that should have been but never materialized: all of the tracks from a certain session that appeared on various discs, all of the tracks on various discs with Freddie Webster solos, a straight set of Lester Young ballad performances, etc. etc.

Firewire: With a PC, the interface between the iPod and iTunes uses either Firewire or USB2. You need one or the other. If you have an older computer, you might need to buy a suplemental device that creates a firewire or USB2 connection to a USB1 portal. The device costs about $50, I believe.

Have fun. Given my love for music and all of the time that I am away from home, it sure has boosted the quality of my life.

John

Edited December 24, 2004 by John L

[Brad]

John,

Thank you for the great post. Now I undestand why you might need an external hard drive. My computer is newer (early 2004) so I should be ok with the USB port. Awhile ago I had stored a bunch of cds on my computer at work through real player but they had to reinstall the hard drive at one point so I lost everything. Since it turned out that this was against company policy, it was no big deal but now I can bring the ipod to work with a lot more capacity to say the least.

Can't wait for the morning.

[AfricaBrass]

I'm in the process of ripping my entire cd collection to mp3 (for use on my portable mp3 player).

I'm using a laptop with an external cd rom drive (so I don't burn out my internal one) and I've got a 300mb external hard drive for my mp3s. I'm also going to burn DVD backups of everything.

So far, I've got about 700 albums ripped.

It's so nice having all this music at my fingertips.

[Brad]

I'm in the process of ripping my entire cd collection to mp3 (for use on my portable mp3 player).

I'm using a laptop with an external cd rom drive (so I don't burn out my internal one) and I've got a 300mb external hard drive for my mp3s. I'm also going to burn DVD backups of everything.

So far, I've got about 700 albums ripped.

It's so nice having all this music at my fingertips.

Do you mean that the constant burning will or could eventually wear out the burner? As far as memory goes, once you've transferred it to the ipod, why not get rid it of it from itunes since we already have the cds.

[AfricaBrass]

Do you mean that the constant burning will or could eventually wear out the burner? As far as memory goes, once you've transferred it to the ipod, why not get rid it of it from itunes since we already have the cds.

I don't have an IPod so I tunes is out for me. I've got a 40gb Nomad Jukebox.

I figured I'd play it safe with the burner. I've burned them out before ripping cds, and my laptop has a built in DVD burner, so I don't want to use that and burn it out.

As for archiving everything, I figure since I've spent (and am going to spend) so much time, I might as well back it up.

[Brad]

That makes sense. Any recs on an an external?

[John L]

I'm in the process of ripping my entire cd collection to mp3 (for use on my portable mp3 player).

I'm using a laptop with an external cd rom drive (so I don't burn out my internal one) and I've got a 300mb external hard drive for my mp3s.  I'm also going to burn DVD backups of everything.

So far, I've got about 700 albums ripped.

It's so nice having all this music at my fingertips. 

Do you mean that the constant burning will or could eventually wear out the burner? As far as memory goes, once you've transferred it to the ipod, why not get rid it of it from itunes since we already have the cds.

Keeping the music in iTunes has some advantages. That doesn't cause anything to wear out. Ripping 100os of CDs can put some wear on your CDRom drive. But that is the process of putting music in iTunes, not from storing it there or transferring it to the iPod

a) If you have less music on iTunes than fits on the iPod, then you can just sychronize the two. Every time you connect your iPod to iTunes, the program automatically makes your iPod identical to iTunes. Very simple.

b) If you have more music on iTunes than fits on the iPod, then you can move whatever music you want to and from the iPod manually. Keeping a full library in iTunes allows you to adjust what you want to have on your iPod at any given moment.

[Brad]

Ah, with that post, now I understand why you need an external hard drive. If syncing is going on, it will mess up what you have on the ipod. Thanks John.

[Stefan Wood]

Still, you don't really need an external hard drive. Itunes won't remove the music if it isn't on your computer. There exists a freeware program that can upload the tunes from ipod to your hard drive, which makes the transferring of music a lot more flexible.

[John L]

Still, you don't really need an external hard drive. Itunes won't remove the music if it isn't on your computer.

Explain this, please.

[tonym]

Still, you don't really need an external hard drive.  Itunes won't remove the music if it isn't on your computer.

Explain this, please.

Hi John (and everyone).

Music/albums or songs will still remain in the iTunes program even if you remove them from your computers storage folder to which the CDs are copied to.

When I'm happy with a batch of uploads, I will check if all the info is correct (the CDDB is not infallible when it comes to making cock-ups and likewise the info stored on box-sets for eample, can be incoherent sometimes, you may find this through experience when you start your daily uploads!) if this is all correct and the mp3 hasn't any errors on playback, I then delete the subfolder containing that album from my computer.

Providing the said tunes remain 'checked' or ticked in the iTunes list, they will not be removed from your iPod next time you plug it in for an update.

If there are tunes I want to take off the iPod, then I un'check' them from the iTunes list and delete them from the computers folder to prevent my hard-drive becoming too full.

Initially, I was under the impression that the iPod mirrored anything that was left on your hard drive each time you connected it. This isn't so.

Hope this helps. Sorry I am not more succinct.

Cherry Mistmus to all.

[John L]

Thanks, Tony.

As I understand what you are saying, it is the following.

a) After deleting the source files from your hard drive, they will remain in the iTunes list untless you choose to remove them yourself.

b) When you update your iPod under these circumstances in the automatic mode when iTunes and the iPod are synchronized, iTunes will not remove files from the iPod that are in iTunes but not stored on an accessible hard drive.

That I understand. But I also understand that once ithe music stored in Tunes gets bigger than that on the iPod itself, this option disappears and tracks that are not stored either on the iPod or a hard drive are gone for good. (Of course, you can always rip the CDs again.)

Right?

Edited December 25, 2004 by John L

[tonym]

I'll find out when I stray over the 20gig threshold. That shouldn't be far off after uploading todays xmas treat.

[sheldonm]

How do you remove the cds from your hard drive? I ripped them and transferred them to my ipod but don't want to leave that much on the actual hard drive.

Thanks!

Mark

[Brad]

I'm not sure I fully understand all this. Won't the computer, the iPod recognize that the tunes or the computer equivalent is not there and proceed to delete? Also a rather dumb question but under file of the C: drive is iTunes stored?

[Stefan Wood]

I just got mine, so I can be a bit more specific. The ipod can automatically delete tracks if there is more music on your computer than the ipod. BUT you can set it manually so that this is not the case -- so you can add or delete whatever you wish. I think an issue here is if the music is on your ipod, and no longer on your computer -- if you delete the music, it's gone. There exists a freeware program where you can upload the music from your ipod to the computer -- look on www.versiontracker.com and do a search for ipod --- I can't remember the program but it is highly regarded among users.

[gslade]

I've always used my I-Pod in maual mode. I have a 120gig LACIE External drive that I use (however, it is full and now I am saving for a 500gig drive). I just delete the selections that I have listened to and drag and drop new selections on the I-Pod. Auto sync seems like too much file management time to me. (I guess having an external hard drive makes it much easier).

Edited December 26, 2004 by gslade

[mikeos]

Do these devices include a mic input? I do recording of live gigs and would like a replacement for my minidisc recorder.

[Stefan Wood]

Yes, you can use a microphone with the ipod. Griffin technologies sells a microphone for voice recordings/memos. But you know, where does it get plugged in to?

[Stefan Wood]

OK, the freeware I was talking about is called Senuti. Versiontracker.com has it and it is worth checking out, if only for the ability to upload your music to anywhere you wish.

My folks also bought me an itrip for the car. It's not perfect; however, I have been able to get it to work with a clear channel right here in the heart of DC. But if you drive around in an urban area, static will cut in from time to time. I like it if only because I don't need to run an adapter to by tape deck, which I have come to loathe. Check out Griffin for details. And it doesn't need batteries!

Been having a blast loading this sucker up. I discovered I can get more space for the buck, without loss in sound quality, by importing the tracks as mp3s with 320 kbs (higher than what is shown, you have to go to custom to get this), and choose the VBS option as well. So far I loaded the Complete Larry Young, Sam Rivers, Mosaic Lee Morgan, Grachan Moncur and I only used up 3 gigs!!!!!

I finally understand a need for an additional hard drive. Are there any places on the web that have good deals?

Edited January 1, 2005 by Stefan Wood