iPod users in please

[Spivonious]

iTunes is a waste of space. iPod is pure marketing. The only reason it's so successful is because Apple has so many accessory-makers under exclusive contracts to only make iPod accessories. There are far better options, and they're cheaper too!

Oh, and Windows Media Player is a far superior software than iTunes these days. If you don't have it already, check out version 11.

[emperor_black]

I'll tell you one other quirky behavior of the ipod+itunes. Ipod has this weird algorithm built in that it plays your "most-played" songs again. Every 10th or 20th song will be one you've heard previously. Even though I have 2300+ songs, I'm listening to the same 100 or so. Since I restored the Ipod to the factory settings last week, I am listening to songs I havent heard in a year since I bought the ipod. How annoying is that?? Most of my songs are heavy metal. However, I had one album by Queen on my Ipod. Every 5th song, it used to play Queen. I got so pissed that I deleted that album from my ipod.
You can reset the play-count in iTunes. then it will play "new" songs...but only for a while and then it goes back to playing its "usual" songs. Its so annoying! Did I say that already??

[emperor_black]

oh, I have one more useful information... Don't want to Edit the previous post...
Anyone annoyed, like I am, that all songs on the ipod or any mp3 player dont play at the same volume? I found it very annoying. Like I said, most of my songs are metal and I play them at very high volumes while working out at the gym. it was so annoying when opeth will play at a low volume, then I turn up the volume and inflames will start playing and nearly deafen me I found this cool software called MP3gain. its free and it can add/reduce volume on mp3 without altering the quality.
I connected my Ipod, opened mp3gain, selected ipod_control from windows explorer and let mp3gain loose. It has adjusted the volume on all the songs and its such a relief. What was surprising is that the software did not crash even once on my super-slow office laptop and it adjusted vol on all 2300+ songs in one shot. Now all songs play at the same volume and my work-out at the gym goes on much smoother.
I know, there is a "Sound check" option in Ipod that is supposed to do the same thing, but that sucks ballocks IMO! There is also an option in itunes where you can say "Play all songs at the same volume" but IMO that works only when you are playing songs on itunes and does not affect the iPod. Anyway, thought I'll let you know.

[shobet]

Oh, and Windows Media Player is a far superior software than iTunes these days. If you don't have it already, check out version 11.

I don't have a Windows machine so I can't comment on iTunes on it. I've never had a problem with iTunes on my Mac. The iPod has the best user interface by far of any MP3 player I've tried. Plus I even back up to mine.

So if you don't like it, sell it and buy something you do.

What's Winamp like these days, anyone here use it with the Milkdrop visualizer? Great to get off your face to...

[YetAnotherOne]

I just avoid iTunes like the plague. As far as the hardware goes, it's better IMHO than anything else out there.

Pretty much sums it up for me. I checked out the available HW and for my money the new 80GB iPods are the best thing going.

As far as software goes, has anyone tried Mediafour's XPlay? Seems like it might be approximately what I'm looking for.

I'll probably try Media Monkey first since I've been using it to index my collection for a while now. It's solid and will probably work but it's not exactly a quick lightweight solution.

Oh and Pete - since I'm only a couple of hours north of you at the moment we'll have to get together and, ahem, "compare" collections one of these weekends. I'll see your 300 and raise you a few GB to boot.

[OzoMan]

If I rememeber right you can add mp3s by simply dragging them if you change the firmware of the iPod. I've heard that Rockbox is a great alternative ( http://www.rockbox.org ).

I'm still using the iTunes though since I find it easy to use and fluent.

[SeventhSon]

This whole notion of ripping/storing/hoarding music is for the stone ages IMO. I'd rather have someone else do it for me. I'm a big fan of Rhapsody (so far). I've heard Napster has the same concept. You basically have a couple of millions of songs at your disposal that you can listen to for a monthly subscription fee.

New Guitar World arrive in the mail with tabs, songs or bands you haven't heard? Cue them up!

Want to reminisce and listen to someone like April Wine? Just cue them up!

Someone post on the JCF about a cool band and you want to listen to them? Just cue them up!

Don't feel like creating a playlist? Listen to someone elses!

You can sync any of this music to a MP3 player or stream it through your home audio system (albeit through special devices). The downside is that they don't have everything (especally metal) which is annoying. But the concept is the future IMO.

[emperor_black]

Will Rhapsody work with iPod? iPods are not compatible with the Rhapsody To Go subscription service. You may, however, use the iPod to play tracks purchased on Rhapsody. Or view the MP3 players compatible with Rhapsody To Go.

[SeventhSon]

Will Rhapsody work with iPod? iPods are not compatible with the Rhapsody To Go subscription service. You may, however, use the iPod to play tracks purchased on Rhapsody. Or view the MP3 players compatible with Rhapsody To Go.

Yea, to sync the music available through the Rhapsody subscription service you need one of their special MP3 players. But this isn't much different than the situation you have with iTunes/iTunes purchased music as you can only play it on an iPod.

[emperor_black]

who says I purchase anything from iTunes? Ipod plays mp3's which can play on any mp3 player.

So on top of the $15/month subscription service, I have to buy an mp3 player that's compatible with rhapsody...

Rhapsody is a cool concept, but its another channel for money to flow.

[Boxcar Willie 84]

well dude, that is what the music business is....business....a channel for money to flow....i guess you can either do this or pirate music, or not listen to music at all?

[SeventhSon]

$15/month is a bargain compared to the idea of pirating all the music I want to listen to and all the *crap* that that entails...

Installing P2P software, doing searches, filtering through crap and viruses, then downloading to my hard drive where I have to keep all the files organized and correct the ID3 tags, then importing said files into iTunes so that I can sync with my iPod. Creating my own play lists. Worrying about hard drive space. Kicking the dog when my hard drive crashes. It might be "free" to you to pirate, but it certainly isn't free to me. My time and the rare moments of hassle-free bliss in this high tech world are worth a lot more to me.

To me, Rhapsody is to music what google is to web pages or youtube is to videos. I just type in the song I want to listen to and boom it's there playing. Can you imagine storing all those youtube videos onto your computer and painstakingly organizing them into folders? What's the point?

Finally, I get the satisfaction of knowing that I support the musicians whose music I like.

[emperor_black]

Kicking the dog when my hard drive crashes.

:ROTF:

Whoa! Who said I download pirated music?? Please dont assume anything you want! I have over 300 cd's. I use itunes to import the songs as mp3 and put them on my ipod to listen. I like the "shuffle" concept wherein a mp3 player gives a fair chance to listen to all the songs I have. I download legal paid versions of mp3's. Not one of the songs on my Ipod is illegally downloaded!

[YetAnotherOne]

This whole notion of ripping/storing/hoarding music is for the stone ages IMO. I'd rather have someone else do it for me. I'm a big fan of Rhapsody (so far). I've heard Napster has the same concept. You basically have a couple of millions of songs at your disposal that you can listen to for a monthly subscription fee.

It's a neat idea to a point but the whole problem is that, as I understand it, none of the services has anything like complete coverage. Thus I'd probably have to subscribe to multiple services, maintain multiple incompatible hardware & software setups to support them, *and* still be forced to purchase more obscure titles on top of that mess. From $15.95/month it could quickly escalate to more like $50-60/month plus a few hundred per year for new hardware plus my time and effort learning and maintaining all that crap. To me picking up 6-8 new titles/month at a used CD shop seems a *far* better deal and I never have to worry about being locked into a particular service, losing my tunes if I decide I don't like a particular service, etc.

A few years ago I ripped my thousands of CDs to 320 kbps mp3s and have never looked back. It makes a whole hell of a lot more sense to me to be able to just pull up the tunes I want to hear and burn 'em to a CDRW for the car or drop 'em on an mp3 player to take to the gym than to spend a couple of hours rifling through boxes of CDs or a bunch of time and money on a variety of proprietary subscription nightmares. IMHO the future looks more like the USR 8700 2TB NAS box, for well under a grand today anyone can have 1.5 TB of RAID-5 storage available wirelessly on their home network in a neat little box and given that we'll be seeing 1.5 GB SATA drives by the end of the year the capacity will likely triple at a similar price point in the next year or so. Ahh, finally ... *almost* enough storage for a reasonable home network.

[thetroy]

$15/month would be an amazing price if they had everything on there. As it stands I would have to spend over $20,000 to get my mp3 collection from something like the itunes store and even more to buy all of the CD's.