Greetings all. Please let me preface my quandary:
After 25 years of taping / trading live shows, I am feeling really confused with today's 'new' technology choices. After starting with cassettes, moving to DAT, and then CDR, I am once again faced with a format change. I was happy with CD, but I'm realizing that this format is another of the 'dying' breed of technology.
I have 1,500 live shows. Back in the DAT days I was recording live shows and trading, but I was never very keen on using the DAT recorders for casual playing of music, as they were very fragile and seemed to need constant service. CDR has its pros and cons, especially thinking in terms of long term disc storage.
I have been seriously considering transferring my collection to FLAC files, as this seems to be what most people are doing. I like to listen to my music at work, where I have been using a portable CD player and Grado iGi earbud headphones. The sound output of the portable CD player sucks, though it improved a lot with the Grado phones. It's too bad that high quality portable CD players haven't been made in some time. The portable CD players seem to be geared for children, and they are definitely not audiophile quality.
My question:
I need to find a high quality portable that will work with my iMac and play gapless FLACs. I have never owned an iPod because I can't stand MP-3 compression and I Really can't stand gaps between tracks. I've looked at the RockBox website and that seems to be one option, though it is not available for current iPod models (Classic). I looked online at the Cowan players, but they don't seem to work with Macs. I want something well made, but I don't want/need a lot of bells and whistles.
The few times that I've looked at an iPod, it seems that they are geared to play 'songs' rather than live shows. I can't stand iTunes on my Mac, as it wants to put all the versions of the same song together alphabetically. Is there a way, using the RockBox firmware, to select complete shows to play?
I don't really record live all that much anymore, though I would still like the option to do so, seeing how I still have my Neumann mics and Beyerdynamics preamp. DAT blanks are impossible to find now, even though my D8 and DA-P1 are still solid.
I have considered getting a portable HD recorder, like a Sony or Tascam, and just loading it up with Uncompressed shows to listen to at work. I know that it probably wouldn't hold nearly as many shows (uncompressed) as a FLAC player would, but it would work I guess. I don't need to the ability to take Everything with me at all times.
All of the CDs that I have recorded (DAT->CDR transfer) with my HHb CDR 800 have no text files encoded on them. I would need to add that somehow, before loading the shows onto a portable, so that I would know what I was listening to. How do I go about doing that?
I know these are a lot of questions and I thank everyone in advance for your time.
Topic: confused about portables (Read 6732 times)