Ipod imput

Bill Troiano · Post by **Bill Troiano** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 7:08 pm

Well, my wife gave me an Ipod for Chirstmas because a friend of mine, who is also a musician, has one. It's a cool toy, but I need ideas of what to use it for. As I have a high end stereo system in my home, I don't see where I would use this in my home as the quality probably wouldn't be as good as playing a cd from the home system. I tried using the FM transmitter with the Ipod in my car stereo system, and again, the quality isn't as good as playing a cd in my car. Maybe, this is because the Ipod song files are compressed. I am not the type to go around with headphones listening to music either. I either listen in my home or in my car. Yeah, you can download music too. Not something I would probably do either. So, what else could I possibly use an Ipod for? Am I missing anything else here? I know it's a gift and I should be appreciative that my wife thought of this, but I know (and so does she), if I don't find a use for it, it will just sit on a shelf.

brianf · Post by **brianf** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 7:26 pm

I'm in the same boat, have a lot of much better equipment than an mp3 player. At home why bother - it doesn't use a Class A power amp. In the car, the FM transmitter sucks so much that I'm removing a CD player from my car and putting in the old factory cassette and using a different converter. I was really wondering why until my first trip on the plane. With 15 meg of mp3's that's a ton of music! You can always find something that can drown out a screamer. Didn't get all the way to heavey metal but have a few cuts on there just in case. Even heavy metal has it's uses, it drowns out lawn mowers and airplane screamers.

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:42 pm

I've finally gotten over 16 gigs of music on my iPod.

I tried an FM transmitter for my car, but returned it the next night. So, I got myself an adapter that goes into the unused CD changer inputs in my stock car stereo, and I play the iPod through there. Sounds better than any FM transmitter or modulator box, and even better than cassette adapters. Check out Logjam Electronics for a range of adapters (their site, of course, is logjamelectronics.com).

Also, iPod-to-aftermarket stereo control boxes have been produced by Alpine and are coming soon from Clarion and (rumored) Pioneer. For example, you buy a compatible Alpine head unit and a separate Alpine-built iPod controller, run one cable from the head to the controller and another to the iPod, and you can not only change tracks from the stereo, you can browse the iPod's menu system.

For the home stereo, I connected the audio output from the iPod's dock (which itself is getting power from its AC adapter) to extra inputs on my DVD player, and use that to play the audio through my home theater.

I often use it as a music player on the plane, bus, or subway. I have my entire address book on it, plus my calendars, and I use it for text files such as news articles and driving directions. I also use it as a backup for my entire laptop (laptop HD is 30 gigs, my iPod is 40 gigs). I can boot off of it, too.

If I could record CD-quality audio, it would be nicer, but I'd end up taking it off and editing it down anyway, so I might as well record right to the laptop or direct to CDs.

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:48 pm

Probably the coolest thing about its role as a music player (indeed, any large-capacity digital audio player) is that I have almost every recording that I possess in my pocket. If I want to show somebody a specific song, warmup clip, or whatever else, I can play it for them in a matter of seconds rather than forgetting to bring the CD the next day.

Well, all that, and its iPod-to-iTunes integration is second to none.

WoodSheddin · Post by **WoodSheddin** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:33 pm

Leland wrote:I've finally gotten over 16 gigs of music on my iPod.

Mine has every CD I own on it sampled as 192 kbps AAC format. So far used about 32 Gb of space. Guess I need to order some more CD's to fill the last 5 gigs

I picked up some Etymotic 4p headphones from headphone.com and have been in bliss. If I have some downtime at work I can listen to any of 5000+ tracks with a few button presses at fantastic fidelity.

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 4:36 am

the elephant wrote:One thing that most folks do not know is that you can download from the iTunes music store in a variety of file formats and bit rates.

I thought that the music was still 128 kbps aac, with Audiobooks (at least the one with Robin Williams interviewing Billy Crystal) being 32 kbps -- which is certainly good enough for voice.

I know that there's been rumors of Apple offering Apple Lossless or another true-CD format in the future, but as far as I know, it hasn't been implemented yet.

(oh yeah -- the presidential debates have been available for free!)

All of my music library, a huge copy-work job, and a fat novel, all on one little thing. Very nice!

Also, there was mention that footage for Lord Of The Rings was being transported from shooting in New Zealand to production in England on iPods.

We've given a bunch of good examples. People need to understand that if they treat the iPod as just a music player, then that's all that they're going to get out of it. I've told people that it'll take less than five minutes for me to show them how to make the iPod work, and a couple hours to show them everything else that can be done with it.

Bill Troiano · Post by **Bill Troiano** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:17 am

Thanks for all of the feedback, even though I don't comprehend all of it. Can any of you tell me if I can copy my cd's to Ipod in a cd quality format, even though it might take up more space? If so, is that a process that's you do when copying the cd to itunes or from itunes to the Ipod?

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:13 pm

How I approach file formats --

I've been encoding everything usually in AAC (Dolby-developed "Advanced Audio Codec", IIRC) at either 128 or 160 kbps. The way I see it, 160 kbps AAC sounds like 192 kbps MP3, which both sound really close to CD quality on average sound systems.

But, I've also got a bunch of recorded stuff that I keep in AIFF just because I might re-edit it later. For comparison's sake, AIFF and WAV are actually encoded at 1411 kbps, and might as well be bit-for-bit copies of CD audio files (which themselves are 1411 kbps, too). That's why MP3 and AAC are a tenth of the size of raw CD audio.

Apple Lossless files end up roughly half the size of AIFF/WAV files, but they're still five times as big as comparable MP3 files.

If you end up with more files on the computer than you can fit on the iPod, there are ways to manually choose which ones you want to keep sync-ed with the iPod. Until you get to that point, though, it's ridiculously simple to keep it updated -- just plug it in.

(Really, that's it! Mine is set to automatically update all songs & playlists, so when I plug in the iPod, iTunes fires up and updates any changes, then I click the little Eject icon and unplug it. Done.)

Stefan · Post by **Stefan** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 5:19 pm

The main use of the ipod is to put all of your cd's on to it and have all of your music at your fingertips. If you own a lot of cd's and listen to them often - especially if you listen to them outside of your home, you will not want to shelf the ipod. I never use it to play on my home stereo system. I would just use the actual cd for the best sound. For me, it is used mainly in the car and at work. For the car, the fm transmiters and the cassette adapters are a disapointment. So I bought the plug that goes into the back of my alpine head unit and now I have a direct connection. My F-150 was a bit more involved with the factory head unit. After doing a little splicing into the power wire, I now have a direct connection there too. My wife's Rav4 won't accept anything though - so she is stuck with the cassette adapter.

For me, the ipod is the best little piece of audio equipment I have bought in a long time. Plus, since I use palm destop for my contacts, I could transfer all of them to the ipod.

Stefan