Perhaps this is not quite the right place to post this, but...

Does anyone have an iPod and what is their opinion of it (particularly for listening to prog rock and other complex music such as classical music with many instruments)?

I am seriously tempted to get one but would like to know if they are really as good as some people are saying.

I met someone who has around 10,000 songs on his iPod and takes it everywhere, including work. He told me that he just plugs the iPod into his HIFI at home instead of putting on a CD these days, and his CD rack is just gathering dust.

I would be grateful for any good or bad comments from those of you who own one of these things.

er...

what is it?

The main problem with iPods is that the white headphones are very distinctive, and thieves have been targetting them.

http://www.Tomshardware.com - http://www.Tomshardware.com reckons that the Creative device is better - take a look over there, as Tom's is a good place for tech reviews and recommendations.

yes fitz i have a freind who owns one of these little beuteis and you CAN store thousands of songs on them.His model is about 5 inches long and about 2 inches wide,the sound quality is amazing......i must find out HOW they work

stunning stuff!!

For those with the time and inclination, here are some articles on Tom's about these devices - which I would suggest are essential reading for anyone about to spend $2-500 on a "Walkman" (used generically!)

http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030911/index.html - http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030911/index.html

http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031122/index.html - http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031122/index.html

http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040130/index.html - http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040130/index.html

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20001110/ - http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20001110/

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20001004/ - http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20001004/

And, if you want to know how these things work, try here;

http://earthlink.com.com/4520-7964_7-5134106-2.html - http://earthlink.com.com/4520-7964_7-5134106-2.html

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

Yes, I was somewhat surprised to read in that article that the Apple iPod only supports MP3 and AAC formats, but am now confused as the Amazon Web site says that the 40 Gb iPod supports MP3, AAC, WAV, MP3 VBR, Audible, and AIFF formats. Which is correct?!! Anyone with a 40 Gb iPod out there able to enlighten us?

The 40 Gb iRiver iHP-140 (mentioned by Dusanyu) apparently supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, ASF and WAV, is about GBP 100 cheaper than the 40 Gb iPod, has a battery that lasts twice as long as the iPod, has a built-in FM tuner, can record MP3 in real-time, and is virtually the same size and weight as the iPod (40 Gb iPod: 104 mm x 61 mm x 18.5 mm, 176 gm; 40 Gb iHP-140: 105 mm x 60 mm x 22 mm, 172 gm). 

To be fair, the article on the page http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/23/dvd_forum_chooses_apple_music/ - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/23/dvd_forum_chooses_ap ple_music/  appears to indicate that AAC is better than WMA 9, MP3 and Sony's ATRAC.

Anyway, I'm not going to take the plunge quite yet - I will wait for my birthday as a suitable excuse to buy one, but at present I'm drifting towards the iRiver iHP-140.

Thanks also to those of you who have sent me Private Messenger messages about the iPod - please do keep sending me info or posting here as I want to find out as much as possible about the iPod and equivalents before making a final decision, plus find out more about how the things work and how to make best use of them. (And hopefully the information may be of use to others also.)

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!

mimusica, for one simple reason: I have to travel very frequently and I can't take hundreds of CDs and my HI-FI with me.

The idea of being able, wherever I am - be it an airport, in an aeroplane, in a hotel, in an office or dentist's waiting room - to listen to *any* track from *any* of my hundreds of CDs (Progressive Rock and otherwise) is, to me, highly desirable.

And, as I have now been told by several people, with high encoding rates (which is now practical with 40 Gb and 60 Gb tiny hard drives) the MP3s, WMAs, AACs or whatever sound very good if one is using good quality in-ear earphones and also when pumped through a decent HI-FI.

So, although my main reason is 'massive' portability, fast and convenient choice at home (in the lounge by connecting to the HI-FI, or in my study by connecting to my PC's external powered speakers) is also of interest if the sound quality is good.

Ideally, as I mentioned in the LP versus CD thread, I would like a fully solid state device - e.g. no rotating (hard) disc - but such things do not yet exist in pocket size to hold hundreds of CDs-worth of music, so I'll have to make do with an iPod, iRiver or whatever with a tiny hard disc. But the possibility of having my entire CD collection, sampled at a sufficiently high rate and quantization to make it difficult to tell the difference from a CD, is attractive to me.

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.

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

Check out the various URLs on the following forum thread:

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

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!

Cd(numerical technology) is bad compared to vynil or tape (analogical)

...and  MP3 is even worst than CD!

I agree

Vynil is the best

But you have to have a good turntable with good cartridge

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/ - 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/ - 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.

have they made any players where you can port plugins across from?

on the vaguely related subject of software mp3 players, does anybody use 1by1? it supports winamp plugins and is absolutely tiny, and you don't need to create playlists, and you can skip tracks without activating the interface. http://www.mpesch3.de/ - http://www.mpesch3.de/  (it doesn't look too pretty though...)

Hi goose,

Sorry, I don't understand your question about plug-ins? Could you elaborate?

I'm not sure if Dusanyu is still visiting these forums but, if you are, thank you for your post mentioning the iRiver H140 40 GB multi-codec player. I finally got one today and it's the business. I would never have known about this 'improved iPod' had it not been for this forum.

I did quite a bit of research and almost all the reviews I read rated the iRiver player over the iPod. Since our original posts, iRiver launched the colour-screen H320 and H340 players which also display photos and can be connected directly to digital cameras as well (and recently Apple followed suit with the photo iPod). But the colour-screen versions are more expensive and, as I am just interested in a player for music, I went for the H140.

So far I've just been playing around with the H140 to get the hang of it, but first impressions are very positive. I've only ripped about 20 CDs to it so far, but my intention is put my entire collection of several hundred CDs onto it. I use Windows Media Player 10 to rip a CD, and then just drag the folder across to the player (Windows sees it as an external hard disk) and use the Manager software to update the index on the player. It's a simple and quick process now I've got the hang of it.

The iRiver manual is not particularly good and it takes a little while to fathom the controls. But, like most things, once you are used to them, it's easy. There are loads of facilities in the player that I have still to learn how to use, though.

Overall, a 5-star product. The sound quality of the music via a decent pair of earphones is very good indeed.

The H140 is not as sexy looking as the iPod, and the controls do not appear to be as ergonomic as the iPod's. The newer iRiver H320 and H340 seem to have addressed the looks issue, but the iPod is still the best looking player. I'm more interested in sound quality and functionality, so I can happily live with the H140.

Now that I have been using the iRiver H140 player for a few days I have noticed a clicking/ticking noise during quiet periods and between tracks when using the remote control unit. Apparently this is a known hardware problem with some manufacturing batches of the player. If I unplug the remote control unit and plug the earphones directly into the player instead then there is no clicking noise. An alternative would be to keep the remote control device plugged-in to the player but to plug the earphones into the line-out socket instead of the remote control unit (I have tried it and it works).

So knock one star off my initial rating! As I did not intend to use the remote control unit anyway it's not a problem for me in particular but I am warning others in case it would be an issue for them. Naughty iRiver, though: they should test units properly before shipping them.

I have also bought Sony Fontopia earphones as the iRiver earphones don't stay put in my ears.

Apart from the above, I'm still very pleased with the player.

Hi goose,

I'm not sure what you mean by "plug-ins". The iRiver H series players are firmware upgradable, if that's what you meant. I have already downloaded and installed the latest version of the firmware for my H140 player. If, by "plug-in", you mean something else, have a look at the iRiver site ( http://www.iriver.com - http://www.iriver.com ) as it might answer your question.

goose wrote: I think every other audio player beginning with "i" is better than the iPod. Particularly the iAudio, if only because it plays flac.

Maybe IRiver?

Cygnus X-2 wrote: My personal opinion is don't waste your money. Apple has been notorious for years for overpricing their merchandise. There are a lot better products out there, it just takes some good looking to see it.

Yeah they are expensive, but i rather have the convience not having to lug around hundreds (i only say hundreds because thats waht they carry, not just for the hyerbole) of CD's.  

I've got a Creative Nomad 20GB Jukebox.Apparently slightly heavier than an IPOD it was considerably cheaper (I paid £160).I have listened to an IPOD and can discern no real difference.I have 18 GB of Prog on mine () and I love it.Dont listen to that misery Oliver() MP3 is great for music on the move and as such the sound quality is GOOD!
Of course its not audiophile but if you spent £100,000 on an HIFI Oliver would tell you you should have spent £200,000!!!

Hey Oliver

oliverstoned wrote: I don't want to be violent, dear Reed. Mp3 and others compressed digital formats are the worst thing ever.

True, but I don't think a portable record player's really an option .

oliverstoned wrote: I don't want to be violent, dear Reed. But this is crap. Mp3 and others compressed digital formats are the worst thing ever. But if you're happy like that, great! You save a lot of money. Everything is not expensive in HIFI. I can advice you an english budget but musical system made of Nad electronics, Mission Loudspeakers and Qed cables. 400 £ for the whole system

We've already discussed this Oliver!!!

I like music "on the move" so I have an MP3 player!How else do you do this???????????

My set up for "proper listening" is budget but very good:

Arcam CD72T CD Player
Nad C350 Amp
Bi-Wired B&W 602 S2 speakers on Atacama stands.
Ecosse interconnects/Chord Speaker cable.

oliverstoned wrote: Forgot the amp

The C320Bee is good but not as good as my 350.

It's horses for courses, isn't it? iPod/iRiver/Creative when on the move (aeroplane, train, waiting room etc.) and decent HIFI at home. It's pointless slamming MP3/WMA/OGG until someone can come up with something better for use on the move (aeroplane, boat, train, etc.).

Until someone can come up with a player the size of a cigarette box that can play lossless 24-bit audio on 6 channels at 192 kHz, I'll have to be content with my OGG/MP3/WMA iRiver when I'm on the move.

By the way, has anyone here tried active noise suppression/cancellation headphones/earphones (Sennheiser HDC451, Sony MDR-NC11, JVC HA-NC100, Panasonic RPHC100, etc.) on an aeroplane? I don't want to fork out between GBP 30 to 90 for a pair of noise suppression/cancellation headphones or earphones without knowing how good they are first. Do they work well on an aeroplane?

It's only when you try to use your MP3 player on an aeroplane that you realise how damn noisy is the cabin of a civil airliner. I have to really crank up the volume of my iRiver H140 in order to be able to listen to it in an aeroplane, even using in-ear earphones. This cannot be doing my eardrums any good.

Can anyone recommend a specific make/model of active noise reduction headphones or earphones for an MP3 player? (I'm not talking about in-ear earphones - I've got an expensive pair of Sony Fontopia earphones already and the aircraft cabin is still too noisy - but about active noise suppression/cancellation technology.) Anyone use one of these active noise suppression/cancellation things?

Fitzcarraldo wrote: It's pointless slamming MP3/WMA/OGG until someone can come up with something better for use on the move (aeroplane, boat, train, etc.).

I'll slam anything I want now I know they make lossless players .

goose,

So you've bought a FLAC player? Which model did you buy? The iAudio that I told you about a while back?

What does it sound like? Can you tell the difference between MP3/OGG/WMA tracks at e.g. 192kbps and the same track recorded using FLAC or WAV?

I bought a Creative Nomad Jukebox. I think it's much better than an iPod. It's cheaper for the same amount of gigs, and the battery lasts longer.

It's much more durable than an iPod in my opinon too. Plus, it's not as aesticially pleasing as an iPod, so who would want to steal it??

Fitzcarraldo wrote: goose, So you've bought a FLAC player? Which model did you buy? The iAudio that I told you about a while back? What does it sound like? Can you tell the difference between MP3/OGG/WMA tracks at e.g. 192kbps and the same track recorded using FLAC or WAV?

Due to money restraints I haven't bought it and aren't likely to for a while - my guess is that in the future there'll be more support for flac although presumably it'll still remain on the fringes.

goose wrote: Fitzcarraldo wrote: It's pointless slamming MP3/WMA/OGG until someone can come up with something better for use on the move (aeroplane, boat, train, etc.). I'll slam anything I want now I know they make lossless players .

My Creative jukebox plays .wav files-that's lossless isnt it?

By lossless I mean lossless compressed - FLAC, SHN, APE and a few million other formats.

oliverstoned wrote: All these crappy numeric formats are rotten! Forget this crappy numeric and run to buy as much as (good)vynils as you can. It's the only thing to do!

But Oliver,you mad French Audiosnob.How the freeking hell do you get a big eff-off turntable,a tube amp and a couple of floorstanders onto a plane for a 12 hour trip?

You need MP3 for this.

Sometimes you are thicker than my grandmothers discharge!

oliverstoned wrote: This is not snobism. Ok, this is not for a road trip. i would take a good old walkman in which i would put a k7 recorded from a vynil on a naka 1000 zxl, for example. Numeric is crap! I it too big?

We are all searching for that perfect transparent system Oliver.

However the love of music is stronger than the need to fuss about the overall quality of the music format.I used to be like you and it can drive you to distraction.
Why dont you write a couple of posts suggesting a budget system and a mid-price system.Aim at first for UK forum members and European ones.Search the internet for prices and give them in £ and €.Explain about cabling,stands and positioning.
And stop belittling other formats,just accept that people can tolerate them better than you.

Interesting,but I would go with CD before tape and so would 99.9999999999% of all sensible people.
I have a Marantz Cd recorder to replace my Phillips one,the copies are superb,far,far better than tape! IMHO

oliverstoned wrote: I just want people to realize how horrible it is that we are "numerized" and how bad it is, for image (video), and even worst, for sound.

Hang on, analogue images don't make any sense if they're to be watched on a TV. a CRT screen has to be at least partially digital, because the screen's divided up into pixels! Unless you're talking about using projectors and suchlike?

Some useful sites for users of players:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ - http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

http://www.freedb.org/ - http://www.freedb.org/

http://www.id3-tagit.de/english/index.htm - http://www.id3-tagit.de/english/index.htm

http://www.jriver.com/ - http://www.jriver.com/ (despite the name, a media player for various makes of player)

http://www.mediamonkey.com/index.htm - http://www.mediamonkey.com/index.htm

http://mp3bookhelper.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Downloads - http://mp3bookhelper.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Downlo ads

http://www.abyssaudio.com/ - http://www.abyssaudio.com/

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html - http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html

http://winlame.sourceforge.net/index.php - http://winlame.sourceforge.net/index.php

Specifically iRiver:

http://www.misticriver.net/ - http://www.misticriver.net/ (for iRiver enthusiasts)

http://www.iriver.com/index.asp - http://www.iriver.com/index.asp (iRiver global home for users of iRiver players)

http://www.shredzone.de/projects/ifish/ - http://www.shredzone.de/projects/ifish/ (excellent db manager for iRiver H series players - better than iRiver's db Manager)

For those of you with H1xx series iRiver players, it is now possible to play music files encoded using FLAC and other lossless compression methods. Check out the Open Source Rockbox software project here:

http://www.rockbox.org/ - http://www.rockbox.org/

You can compare the features of iRiver's H1xx series firmware with the RockBox alternative here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/FeatureComparison - http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/FeatureComparison

And you can read the FAQ on installing and using RockBox on iRiver H1xx players here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverFAQ - http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverFAQ

There are also many threads about using Rockbox on iRiver players on the MisticRiver Web site ( http://www.misticriver.net/ - http://www.misticriver.net/ ). According to these threads, many people have been using Rockbox on H1xx iRiver players for many months and finding it a good alternative to iRiver's own firmware. I'm not about to re-rip all my music to FLAC (it's all in MP3 format at the moment) but, if you are thinking of getting a player that supports lossless codecs, then a secondhand iRiver H1xx plus Rockbox may be worth considering.

Fitzcarraldo wrote: By the way, has anyone here tried active noise suppression/cancellation headphones/earphones (Sennheiser HDC451, Sony MDR-NC11, JVC HA-NC100, Panasonic RPHC100, etc.) on an aeroplane? I don't want to fork out between GBP 30 to 90 for a pair of noise suppression/cancellation headphones or earphones without knowing how good they are first. Do they work well on an aeroplane? It's only when you try to use your MP3 player on an aeroplane that you realise how damn noisy is the cabin of a civil airliner. I have to really crank up the volume of my iRiver H140 in order to be able to listen to it in an aeroplane, even using in-ear earphones. This cannot be doing my eardrums any good. Can anyone recommend a specific make/model of active noise reduction headphones or earphones for an MP3 player? (I'm not talking about in-ear earphones - I've got an expensive pair of Sony Fontopia earphones already and the aircraft cabin is still too noisy - but about active noise suppression/cancellation technology.) Anyone use one of these active noise suppression/cancellation things?

OK, I finally plumped for Sennheiser PXC 250 after reading many good reviews (see Amazon.com, for example). Light, foldable, and good noise cancellation on aeroplanes.

I personally don't like iPods, they're too overrated. My brother has a cool mp3 player, it has the same amount of memory of a iPod, but its cooler. its a Creative. 

Zepology101 wrote: I personally don't like iPods, they're too overrated. My brother has a cool mp3 player, it has the same amount of memory of a iPod, but its cooler. its a Creative.

I also have a Creative player, and I really prefer it to any iPod ... mainly this reason:

• You can use online subscription based services like Napster or Yahoo Unlimited.

Listen to millions of tracks as long and often as you want for $15/month ... tell my again why iTunes is so great!