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Offline OldNeumanntapr

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #15 on: March 26, 2011, 05:22:42 PM »
What about the Apple Lossless? Is that gapless too? I like the looks of the Classic rather than the Touch.  I like the simplicity. I don't need / want games or video. I just want to be able to listen to my music in the highest quality without gaps between tracks.

Can I convert the discs on my iMac and drag / drop them onto the iPod without needing iTunes?

How many discs can you put on a 120 gig iPod Classic in the lossless format before it is full?

Thanks.

Offline acidjack

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #16 on: April 27, 2011, 12:23:34 PM »
I believe the iPod/iTunes also have a "gapless playback" setting that can be enabled within iTunes by selecting the tracks in question, right clicking, going to "get info" and clicking something like "gapless" on one of the tabs...
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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2011, 11:04:11 AM »
What about the Apple Lossless? Is that gapless too? I like the looks of the Classic rather than the Touch.  I like the simplicity. I don't need / want games or video. I just want to be able to listen to my music in the highest quality without gaps between tracks.

Can I convert the discs on my iMac and drag / drop them onto the iPod without needing iTunes?

How many discs can you put on a 120 gig iPod Classic in the lossless format before it is full?

Thanks.

A FLAC compresses 16bit files to between 50 and 60% of the original file size.  One hour of uncompressed music in 16bit is about 600MB.  So, if you figure about 300mb per hour, that's roughly 400 hours of FLACs on a 120gig classic.

I think the classic is the way to go.  I own two of them.  Their advantage is the disc size and long battery life between charges (20+ hours of playtime).  Their disadvantage is that they have a disc inside of them and they're said to be prone to failure where the chip based storage units with no moving parts are said to be more reliable.  That said, I've owned three classics now over the course of 4 or 5 years, I used mine daily for a minimum of an hour and I've never had a disc failure.

If I can read between the lines on your Original Post (OP), it sounds to me like you haven't been involved with this subject in maybe 5 years or more.  The reason I say this is that gapless playback really hasn't been an issue for a good number of years now and FLAC has been a standard now for at least that long. 

The only reason I'm pointing this out is to say that you might be basing your current goals on the state-of-the-art from 5 years ago.  File compression technology has really improved over that time.  If you haven't listened, you should at least give a listen to the higher quality AAC compression algorithms before concluding the file compression isn't for you.  (AAC is the Apple version of MP3.)  At a minimum, don't judge compression by the MP3's you listened to 4 or 5 years ago, because the technology has improved sound quality alot. 

The reason I point this out is that, since you say that your purpose for this is for listening at work in non-audiophile environment, the AAC format might work for you and give you 10 times more capacity on your ipod classic.  I have nearly my entire music library on my bigger classic and I literally can't live without it. 

Anyway getting back to your questions, I've never had an issue with gapless playback on my ipods, so that shouldn't be a concern whatsoever. 

You mention issues with how itunes sorts your music.  That's also a non-issue because, in itunes, you can segregate and sort your music whatever way you define.  There are something like 40 or 50 different fields that you can define for each file, if you want to.  I personally keep my music segregated by artist and album and that's how I have itunes sorts.  If I wanted to, I could set up my sorts by song title, genre, song length, number of times I've played it, year the song was released, or just about anything you can imagine because 40 or 50 fields is ALOT of data for each song.   

So, the above is my itunes, but I also have my ipod menu setup the same way as my itunes menu...by artist and album.  When I'. m in the root menu of my ipod, I select 'music'.  The next menu allows me to pick what I listen to either by artist, album, song title, or cover flow (that's a semi cool app that lets you toggle through the cover art of each album to select the album that way.) 

For the shows I've recorded, I enter the date and location as the album title.  For each track, I define the tracking information, such as the song title and the track number.  If you want, for a longer show that would span multiple CDs if you were to burn them onto CDR, you can also define the disc number (1 of 3, 2 of 3, etc).  This keeps each of the songs in the right order in itunes.

If I want to listen to a show I've recorded, I select that artist and album and it plays back seamlessly.

When I load my recorded music into my itunes library, I load it in as a 16bit uncompressed .wav file.   If I wanted to, I could load these onto my ipod and listen to them directly (uncompressed).  I could also load and listen to my 24bit files if I preferred.

However, I find the AAC format to sound great for my listening environment.  All of my listening is either at work, or in the car on the way to work.  Therefore, I convert all of my .wav files to AAC format.  To do this, I go into itunes and select the .wav files that I've loaded into my itunes library.  Once those files are highlighted, you go into the tools menu of itunes and select 'convert to AAC'.  Itunes does the conversion and then you delete the wav files from the itunes library.  Synch the AAC files into your ipod and you're done!

All of my shows sound great to me and the playback is completely gapless.

I keep all of my master recordings archived on harddrives.  I have 5 or 6 1TB drives that are redundant.  I expect my harddrives to fail, but I keep them redundant so that when one does fail, I have a backup.  When failure happens, I don't lose any data but I go right out and buy a replacement to make sure I stay redundant.  My redundant drives are in my office desk drawer...one set is at home and the other is at work.  If the house get hit by a tornado, my data is safe.

I gave up on CDR and DVD storage 2 years ago or so because I was having a high incidence of disc failures less than 2 years after archiving (something like between 1 and 2 failed reads for every 30 discs or so.)  Since 1TB drives cost something $80 or $90 the cost against optical discs is cheaper too.  I don't really worry about buying the best harddrives, because I just assume failure will happen.  That keeps me diligent about keeping backups current.  If I paid $300 for the best drive on the market, I'd get complacent, and from what I'm told those drives aren't necessarily any less prone to failure anyway...maybe they last longer but they will fail someday.

I hope this helps give you a little more detailed info.

Offline Belexes

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #18 on: May 02, 2011, 10:32:38 AM »
Anyone rockbox an iPad yet? I have an iPad 2 that I recently won. Might give it a try.
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Offline OldNeumanntapr

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #19 on: May 07, 2011, 12:06:43 AM »
Well, after LOTS of consideration, I just bought a 160 gig, black, iPod Classic and I'm in the process of loading it up from iTunes. I am using the Apple Lossless files (ALC) and I imagine that I can get at least 300 shows on it this way. It seems like a pretty cool device. I had to laugh when I realized that this is the first piece of nice
'playback-only' related gear that I have bought in years! (Usually the $$$, what little was available, was spent on recording gear.)

Because of high concert ticket AND fuel prices I have decided to concentrate on fully enjoying the shows I already have., so this seems like a pretty cool way to do that.

I remember sitting in the back of my '67 VW camper at Dead shows in the late 80's with other tapers and trying to imagine gear in the future. Even the CONCEPT of a device like this would have blown my mind then, and certainly does now! Very cool!

Thanks to all who have given your advice. I really appreciate it! 

Jeff

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #20 on: May 16, 2011, 02:47:10 PM »
Anyone try the Hifiman portable players? http://www.hifiman.us/
Supposedly targeted at those looking for a device dedicated specifically to high quality sound replay. 

A new, smaller & less costly, ipod sized version was announced last fall that I didn't see on the site liked above- http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20021179-47.html
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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #21 on: May 16, 2011, 02:58:38 PM »
***Do you have PHISH, VIDA BLUE, JAZZ MANDOLIN PROJECT or any other Phish related DATs/Tapes/MDs that need to be transferred???  I can do them for you!!!***

I will return your DATs/Tapes/MDs.  I'll also provide Master FLAC files via DropBox.  PM me for details.

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Offline Gutbucket

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #22 on: May 16, 2011, 03:21:47 PM »
That's the one.  Curious how it works for our type of material and if it sounds significantly superior to other portable players in the opinion of the members here (which I value far more than reviews on headphone sites).
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Offline OldNeumanntapr

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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #23 on: May 18, 2011, 09:28:24 PM »
Thanks Tone Deaf for the extremely thorough reply. That answered a lot of questions.

I love the new iPod Classic. I'm just putting my favorite, best-sounding, shows on it. I know it will change my life more than my D6 did 25 years ago! Eventually, I would like to run it through a small set of powered monitors, such as the Audix PH3-S :

http://www.audixusa.com/docs/specs_pdf/PH3-S.pdf

These are small and run off of 12 volt (with a small power loss), or full power through an inverter, or so I was told when I emailed the company. I want to put them on the top corners of my delivery van's dash. I was thinking of putting a piece of velcro low on the inside of the A-Pillers, close to the top of the dash, on each side, to hold them steady when on the road.

I would use a line out cable (through the docking port) to hook them up. Hopefully it would sound good.


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Re: confused about portables
« Reply #24 on: May 19, 2011, 09:50:22 AM »
(AAC is the Apple version of MP3.)

Not the "Apple version," but an alternative to MP3 that was actually designed to be the successor to MP3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

 

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