iPod

A portable HDD digital audio player similar to the iPod exists which can play FLAC (free lossless audio codec) encoded music files: the company JetAUDIO sells the 20 Gb and 40 Gb iAUDIO M3/M3L which supports FLAC - see http://www.jetaudio.com/products/iaudio/m3/ (US$ 329 for the 20 Gb model and US$ 399 for the 40 Gb model).

The digital audio compression format FLAC seems very interesting, and the codec is Open Source like Ogg Vorbis (check out the Web site http://flac.sourceforge.net/ for details). A lossless digital audio compression format appears very interesting. The codec is apparently available for the popular operating systems.

I'll second that - MP3 Pro is a superb piece of software - and dirt cheap too!

Note that you can also use it to burn and rip CDs - but if you got Nero free with your CD Burner, then there's simply nothing better for burning

Thanks for the tip about the CODEC - I wasn't aware of it!

Check out the various URLs on the following forum thread:

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=990&am p;PN=1

where the subject of the different quality of the codecs was discussed. It's interesting listening to clips of the same piece of music encoded by all the different formats, and one can tell the difference in some cases. AAC did figure quite highly, but then so did OGG and WMA. Anyway, the external pages referenced in that thread have some interesting (and detailed) comparisons and things to say. One of the sites even compares different bit rates for the same encoding method if I recall.

Much depends on the bitrate - your average 128k mp3 won't fool anyone; it's lossy, and a decent hi-fi will exacerbate the lossiness.

256k or 320k is a different boiling utensil of aquatic life, and CDs tend to vary in quality hugely depending on the mastering; Most early Genesis CDs, for example, pride themselves on being "AAD", meaning that the Analogue source was sent through an Analogue mixer to the Digital CD recorder, but sound muted with a narrow dynamic range. Porcupine Tree, on the other end of the spectrum have a sharp, wide dynamic range across the mix that gives a real "bling" to their music.

Those little mp3 players are great for music "on the go" - I'm very tempted to trade my portable MiniDisc recorder in for one

Further to mimusica's previous post back in June and my reply, I've just made an interesting observation (well, listening, actually):

Today I happened to listen to an album burned to MP3 at 192 kbps and played through my PC's external amplified speakers (which produce quite reasonable quality sound, I should add).

Now, I bought a music CD the other day by a different band and listened to it today, again via my PC's external speaker system. I have to say the sound quality of the MP3s from the first band's album is much better than the sound quality of the audio on the second band's audio CD. What I'm trying to get at is that is seems that, with a well recorded/produced album, MP3s can sound quite good. Or, to put it another way, playing the MP3s made from the first band's album through my HIFI sounds better than playing the second band's audio CD on my HIFI. There appears to be a bigger difference in the recording quality between the two CDs than in the conversion to the 'lossy' MP3 format.

Mind you, my ears are not as sensitive as mimusica's: I can't hear distortion on the inner tracks of an LP (see his posting on another thread), so perhaps an audiophile would still not like the sound of the MP3s. But, for me, it was quite an eye-opener.

If you are like me, you probably spend thousands of dollars, pounds or euro's on an LP and CD collection. Why would you want to get all your favourite prog bands on a tiny harddrive? from a set of the cheapest possible earphones? I don't get it, maybe I'm oldfashioned. I want to hear those guys (and galls) coming to me from gigantic speakers, with megawatts of power, from great record players or if necessary, high-end CD players.

 Abacab goes iPod? Count me out!

Yeah - I love my MD as well (only mine's a recorder as well as a player ).

If you're considering buying an iPod, however, be careful where you buy it from, as there are iPods and there are iPods...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/17/hmv_ipod/