since i've bought my iPod....

Headphones make a huge difference too, but they're only as good aas the source material.

(please don't take this as an advertisement for the ipod per se, but rather for the randomness of the great music, and the surprises of said randomness)

It doesn't really get to me w/ my ipod, but I can see how it could.

Oh, and the box headphones *are* an abomination.

Who wants to spend all day uploading shit?

Shit that sounds weak as hell at 128kbps...

Get $150 for it on eBay and buy all the Brian Eno reissues on CD.

...is this where I say I don't mind them because I thought the whole point was to have something small and comfortable for listening rather than actual headphones?

"all day"

I think this is where I say I'm kinda glad I'm not an audiophile.

That's not a bad idea at all, stet.

I still use the white earbuds (if you can believe that!), but then again, I also kept the AC Delco stereo system that the truck came with.

I am perfectly fine with my white buds. My audiophile husband however, knew he wouldn't be fine with them, so shelled out $100 for a pair of Shures before he even got his ipod. He loves them. Me, I get a lot of earwax so those in-ear thingies just don't seem very practical to me. I don't like sticking things in my ears.

i heard about a lot of ipod thefts back in nyc, but out here in arizona no one knows what the fuck an ipod is (most people can't afford one, and the nearest apple store is probably up in phoenix).

http://www.calvertdeforest.com/photos/gallery/cowboycal.jpg

http://sonypictures.studiostore.com/images/p/MWC/pdBUMWC0004.jpg

http://www.nndb.com/people/895/000024823/budcort9-harold.jpg

Headphones must be matched to impedance level...Big fancy headphones will (most likely) not get as loud, but sound better.

Dorky sound geek speaks like one unfamiliar to the english.

What I'm trying to say here is that I'm guessing that your headphones of preference are not necessarily suited to the iPod output due to an impedance mismatch. I will skip the details here and suggest a happy medium of either buying the sony earbuds (which sound very good, and fit in the ear canals of those w/small ears, and are loud) or suffering through the lack of volume and reveling in the higher fi of studio headphones w/o uber-volume.

Right on, i've had my ipod a few months and its filled with great music but i still cant work out why i dont want to use it very much.

Never liked the idea of earbuds at all, just don't like having things actually inside my body or something. The Senn 100s above do sound very nice but they couldn't take the punishement of being tossed around in my bed and broke.

I love my iPod, but I understand why it can make you depressed. There's just something about having all your favorite records in this one small place - or, for that matter, all your favorite records, and plenty of room to spare! It both minimalizes your collection and makes it seem almost superfluous and redundant.

Also, listening on random, as I usually do, is sometimes a bummer, too. It just never stops - song after song I like (since I put it on there). It's like finding the perfect jukebox or radio station that never repeats and only plays good stuff. Which is further proof that even perfection won't make everyone happy, since what comes next? What's to look forward to?

It's like this Julien Barnes story I like. A man goes to heaven and find it to be like a perfect golf resort. So he plays golf, eats a lot, has sex, etc. Then slowly but surely, over eternity, his golf game gets better and better, until every game he plays in 18 strokes, he's eaten every food and combination of food, and had sex with every person. Then, when he realizes it's all been done and he has nothing else to look forward to, it all just ... vanishes.

Anyway, an arty way to encapsulate the iPod heavenly jukebox paradox.

About the shures: does Mr VegemiteGrrl find they stay in while stomping about the streets? I've got a set of in-ears (from Sony) and whenever I walk or eat they start to come out, which loses *all* the bass and drives me daft.

In terms of sound quality, the only way to really hear music is to be there or to play it yourself. Short of that, everything else is somewhat of a compromise. The iPod sacrifices some of the sonic range for mass quantity. If that's not cool for you, so be it.

There should be no Discman/iPod gang wars.

Probably it is not as good as a small-sized guitar that you could really wow people with, but that's got more of a performative element where with the i-POD you're more djing to the ultimate audience of you.

I guess the headphones are not as good as they could be. I wear a lot of white though so it's off-the-shelf headphones for me. I won't style in anything like those butt-ass silver Sony ones above.

Cool... hope you see you all "bumpin" -G

i dont download whole albums anymore, only samples/blog mp3s. Then buy what i like. This way i listen to only stuff i like and bought and dont get bogged down with like 50 downloaded albums to listen to. None of which i give the time to appreciate. This used to get me down about music.

Not having to carry like 10+ cd's with me at all times in my bag is great! i can even go out without a bag and put ipod in my pocket now.

do miss seeing the cd jewel case though. Every time i used to change a cd in my discman would appreciate any nice artwork but now its just on my shelf after i've ripped it.

i use the sony mxr-71 (?) earbuds which are great. They fit really snuggly so block out tube noise like earplugs.

mate. nobody's ears are that big. not even yours.

If you want to be sadder, imagine how it is to have your i-POD ripped off by these new thieves. In the '80s the top thing to steal was a Walkman or keys, but now police are documenting this new trend of plucking an i-POD off of people.

I think the way that a girl can smell a guy who has a condom in his wallet 10 miles away, a thief can tell those people who are "SAD" about their i-PODs, so of course your i-POD is probably not long for this world. Good thing too.

why its was a suprise to me that apple would produce and distribute something that doesnt work I DONT KNOW. dumb.

re: the shitty white earbuds that Ned and many others don't mind, that's because for stock earbuds they're really much better than they need to be. Given that Apple's markets iTunes/iPod around a 128kps AAC standard, there's really no point in Apple bundling anything better just to please the whinging 5% who care.

As a member of the whinging 5%, I can say that I'm very very pleased with the Shure e4c canalphone. Others seem to dig the new super.fi canalphones. YMMV.

Susan, I don't know which "large black cushiony" cans you're rocking, but it sounds as they they may want a little more power than ye ipod can give 'em. Welcome to the world of portable headphone amps :-)

For me, the ipod has been the fulfillment of a long-held (maybe 20 years?) fantasy that went something like, "wouldn't it be nice to have a magic bag that would let me carry all of my music with me all the time?" With a PocketDock lineout to hook it up to the stereo and a NewerTech Roadtrip+ (an FM transmitter that actually works in SoCal!!) to play it in the car, the question of the earbuds almost becomes moot...

Tell me more....my iTrip sux in SoCal. Is this product you speak of better?

kickitcricket, the RoadTrip+ looks like a cheap piece of junk (whereas your iTrip is a thing of beauty), but has the distinct advantage of actually working in SoCal.

It's an in-car only solution, plugs into your cig lighter (yay ipod charging) and connects to the ipod dock connector (yay line-out sound quality/no messing with ipod volume).

Most importantly, it broadcasts on 87.9 FM. And only 87.9 FM. There are no tuning controls at all (and none of those annoying iTrip "tuning tracks"). This would be asinine, except that there are only three stations in the U.S. licensed to broadcast on 87.9 (KSFH in La Canada, California (Bay/Silicon Valley Area); a low-power religious broadcasting repeater in Sun Valley, Nevada; and an experimental station in Brazos, Texas.) If you live near one of those, you're SOL, but in most other areas, it's gold.

Now. It's still an FM transmitter. But I had pretty much given up on being able to use a transmitter at all given SoCal's crowded airwaves, so one that works beautifully 90% of the time is still enough to make me very happy.

ipodlounge as a full (and typically idiosyncratic) review, along with links for purchase, here: http://www.ipodlounge.com/index.php/reviews/comments/newer-technology-roadtrip-plus-fm-transmitter-ipod/

- is that 160kps mp3 or AAC?
- increasing bitrate does improve clarity/fidelity, reduce clipping, etc, but probably won't fix your volume problem. It really does sound like your cans require more power to drive them than the ipod headphone jack provides.
- do you have an ipod dock, pocketdock, or other means of connecting your ipod to whatever source you usually use with those 'phones? That'll let you separate the audio quality issue from the volume issue.

You can't go wrong encoding with the LAME encoder using the setting --alt-preset standard, but you need to figure out how to do it (and you can't do it using iTunes).

LAME is good, but sloooooow to rip. And a bit more of a PITA for Mac folks. I'm pretty happy with iTunes-encoded 192kps AAC. Decent quality without completely forsaking portability.

iTunes can't encode AAC files as VBR though, so there's that to consider.

Susan, at this point mp3 v. aac is mostly a matter of preference. There are those who swear by LAME-EAC mp3 (which offers the greatest combination of audio quality and device compatibility). There are those (like me) who aren't worried about device compatibility and happily use AAC (which offers the greatest combination of audio quality, file size, and out-of-the-box ease of use with itunes/ipod).

Note that "which audio format should I use" is an enormous box of frogs. Lots of opinions out there, all supported by greater or lesser amounts of selective hard data and anecdotes, all expressed with near-jihadist fervor and condemnation of all other false idols.

There are entire sites and communities devoted to this question, but the ipodlounge audio formats board is a good place to start if you're curious: http://forums.ipodlounge.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=24

The iTrip KILLA. I love it so much that I have two!

The AirPlay is definitely an improvement over the iTrip in terms of ease-of-tuning (at least until next month, when the digital tuning iTtrip comes out).

I'll stick with the no-tuning newertech though, which has the advantage of working in crowded radio markets -- AirPlay only goes down to 88.1, not 87.9.

http://www.geek.com/images/minireviews/javoearbuds/propjavoear3.jpg

Sound great. If this image doesn't show, just visit the site. These Koss earbuds got the best rating out of all the little headphones he tries.

Also, they come with a bunch of sponge replacements, so you can get a good fit (there's a few of each shape and size) and replace them if they get too dirty. But, they're black, so they'll never look like a lump of earwax.

but i hove around all the time with them and they never fall out. not once. i'm going to have to pay more attention to how you walk: you're obviously doing it all wrong.

i've never tried eating with them on, but that's because i hate being able to hear the sound of my own chewing.

Something else that's really cool is underneath the sponge, is a rubber tube. You can pull off the sponge and squeeze the tube and all your earwax will come out! Fun to gross out random strangers on the subway!

They're only $20. Buy them.

Mr VegemiteGrrl's Shures seem to stay in just fine...I observed him rocking his ipod whilst weeding the garden on Saturday, and he was happy as a lamb. The longer cone seems to fix the problem of falling out, plus they come with 4 or 5 different spongey/plasticy thingies [yes, that's a technical term] so you can custom fit them to your ears. I love his look of utter blankness when I talk to him...obviously being noise cancelling he can't hear a thing I say, which as henpecked husband he must be loving too! (headsup to the henpecked, noise cancelling be the way to go)

My hearing is total shit and I can tell a huge difference between the apple headphones and the $50 in-ear sony's.

On the subject of cluttered artist lists, I put "zz" before the name of any artist that I have less then three songs by ("zz Dixie Chicks"). This moves all of the one-hit wonders to the end of the list and works well for me. All of my music is in one list that I can browse through fairly easily.

It took almost a year but SOMEBODY FINALLY GOT AROUND TO IT.

They crush my glasses arms against the side of my head which hurts.

If I ever get an iPod it won't be before doing an in-store listening test, I can say that much.

haha mark, my wife just bought me an iPod for my birthday BECAUSE she hated the big clunky koss things I was wearing to listen to music, she was all like "damn, you can't go around looking like THAT"

[admin: link to password-protected image removed]

question (and this is probably 101): why do we rip at a rate? how does that affect file-size unless there is a time limit?

Imagine trying to reproduce oh, I dunno, "Stairway To Heaven" based solely on the first second, the last second, and the track length. Pretty unlikely. But the more seconds you're given, the more likely you are to get it right, and once you start dividing those seconds, you can get to a place where you asymptotically approach total fidelity (the asymptotic curve should explain the cost in file size to jump from "pretty good" fidelity (128-160kps) to really good fidelity (320kps) to lossless)

The relationship is NOT linear, so a file twice as big will not be "twice as good" - you really give up very little at 320kps, and you'd need true golden ears to notice any difference. Most folks are hard-pressed to hear a difference between 128kps and CD, especially with pop tracks, which are often already highly compressed coming out of the studio.

blah blah blah - bottom line: higher bitrate = more slices of the actual source file (CD, .WAV, lossless file) built into the compressed file, more space consumed on your hard drive/ipod.

If your files are still sounding blah at 320kps, you can try messing with the ipod's limited EQ ("Dance," "Jazz," and "Latin" seem to be popular flavors). One issue may be the ipod's sonic signature, which is admirably flat from an EQ perspective, allowing it to take on the flavor of any system it's hooked up to without coloration, but can sound dull if you're used to brighter or warmer sources.

If it's feasible, I'd recommend hooking it up to your stereo (through the line-out, not the headphone jack) and doing some blind tests against CDs through the source you're familiar with. Much as I like my current 'phones, they do sound noticeably better when powered by my home rig vs. powered by the ipod alone.

thx for explanation on compression too.

But different eardrums, different folks.. 320 it is for you, Susan.

for "Drop It":
160 mkbps rate= 5.1 MB
320 rate mp3/aac = 10.3 MB(for some reason the AAC sounds better to me??)
actual file (lossless) = 29.6 MB

-- Susan Douglas

I really hope it just is that, and that you get this fixed soon :) I seem to be one of the few who totally can't stand the bizzare way that iTunes sounds (wrong, to my ears). I've ranted about this elsewhere.

I'm not sure if this means I'll feel the same about an iPod (how does the mp3 decoder work in those things tech people?) but it sure as hell doesn't encourage me! I'm looking at one of these myself - http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/product_info.php?cPath=3&products_id=72 I really hope it doesn't make me sad too :(

The very tentative statement I'm about to make has been known to touch off firestorms, but: this should be the case. AAC (aka mp4) is an ostensibly more efficient revision of the mp3 compression algorithm, which is supposed to deliver better fidelity than mp3 at any given bitrate.

The conventional wisdom is that AAC is superior at lower bitrates up to a point (usually 128kps, which is accepted as roughly equivalent to 160kps mp3), and then it ceases to matter.

In theory though, AAC should always sound a little better. You do seem to have Teh Golden Ears. Consider applying for work at Dolby Labs/THX/etc. They loooooove y'all folks.

that device looks insane, maybe its the answer and you won't get depressed like I WAS. how much is that in us$$?
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thats interesting. i wonder how they conduct sensitivity tests since a person could be hearing diff. but not able to verbalize or even realize it. maybe they measure brainwaves or something. that wuld be a fun job - esp. if i could just lay back and get hooked up to some sound machine.

I might still get an iPod, but only after very careful listening tests (will try and find a nice store) the device I linked... I guess it's the same price as a mid-range iPod would be, 30GB is it now?

b-b-but you can't say "holds 5,000 songz0rz!!!!!111!!11" if you use, say, 192kps as a standard. I get why they do, though it's totally annoying/weaselly that iTunes defaults to 128kps AAC and calls it "high quality."

My bigger gripe is with iTMS for only offering 128kps AAC files. Middling quality and DRM too! Wow! grrrrr....

first iTMS, then that goddamn barber that fucked up my head ;-)

(but if you don't remember the bit from DO THE RIGHT THING, I admit it must sound a little random)

nope, it's an audio stream. You can see "files" when you look at your cd drive in your file browser, but those are fictions--that's why you can't just copy them to your hard drive, they have to be "ripped."

It makes some sense that aac would sound better than mp3; Apple is pushing aac for obvious reasons, and while their aac encoder is industry standard, their mp3 encoder is widely seen as far inferior to at least a few others (LAME, Frauenhofer). Who knows, maybe the iPod actually decodes aac better than mp3 as well, again for obvious reasons...

Guess IM one of the few who thinks that the iPod buds are generally better than *any* headphones/buds that come with portable systems.

Ok, the bass sucks though.

Im pretty sure compression doesnt work in this way. That is, you arent taking 'slices' of time - but instead reiterated information and representing that information with shorter strings (i.e the equivalent of representing 'abbbxc' as 'a#" and 'baaxc' as 'b#')

Lossy compression is based on psychoacoustic models of what the ear can hear (in terms of frequency) - so if a model predicts that certain frequencies are generally not perceived by humans, (even only at a given dB perhaps) then the compression algorithm will be more likely to not represent this information in the sound file, making the sound file smaller. So the compression is not due to increased sampling (representation) per 'second' or the like, but instead based on type of information (frequency).

this diagram actually explains it pretty well:

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/mp3-waves.gif

For those who want to go into this a little deeper: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mp3/chapter/ch02.html

That's the half-chapter from A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters. I think the narrator returns to life at the end, but it's a while since I read it.