Don't shout at me I bought an ipod!

[rickcr42]

.........and BTW I KNOW I have no choice but to cave eventually.

The iPOD IS cool as hell.the idea,the look,the implementation all good. I just have a problem with not having choices other than which model to buy rather than which manufacturer offers the best cost vs performance ratio plus even the above mentioned battery replacement crap is all about the bottom line.

The new breed of consumers who will buy anything no matter the price becuase to not would be uncool .Someone should do the "Anti iPOD" commercial where a suicidal iPOD owner walks off a cliff and the "followers" fall off the edge one person at a time too damn stupid to help themselves just because "everyone else is" so it must be right !


(oh yeah,don't get me started on Windows Media Edition either.Won't be pretty )

[rickcr42]

YIKES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two pages on mikemonsters ipod !

Man,the world as we know it is coming to an end and that cliff is starting to look better and better............................

[Stormy]

Sure, ALAC is an Apple invention, but I'm pretty certain some of the other players support alternative lossless formats. The very fact that they are lossless means there should be no difference in sound quality, so it's all down to file sizes and the processing power required to play them I guess.

You could always waste a bit more space and use WAV or AIFF!

I suppose we'll just have to hope tht Apple would license it if it "wins" although, like Rick says, the one that wins will probably be the open-source one, even if it isn't technically the best. Even then, you'll only be sacrificing a bit of HDD space, or some heat and battery life for the extra processing power. Quality will not suffer - it will always be just as good/bad as a CD.

[PinkFloyd]

Man,the world as we know it is coming to an end and that cliff is starting to look better and better............................

As it happens guys and gals (in best Jimmy Saville voice) I'm moving to a place that has plenty of really high cliffs...........

No, seriously Mr. Rickamundo, this ipod thingway is good in so much as it's a 45 year old man wearing jeans and T-shirt who has it strapped onto his not so trendy Levis 501's, smoking a not so trendy roll up and sporting a not so trendy "f**k you" attitude. That's what I like, the spotty little wanks who think this is some kind of exclusive "fashion statement" get to see me walking about totally destroying their "illusion" that this is some type of medium exclusively for them. I take it one step further and play Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk and Hawkwind at full blast just to really piss on their party

The same cannot be said about my mobile phone, it is deliberately old school and I refuse to conform to the small and compact ring tone "herd" Oh no, my phone has an antenna and weighs in at a good 1/2lb.. perfectly good phone and I have no need for an integral camera or 20GB hard drive when making a simple phone call and, wonders of wonders, when someone rings me (rare) it goes "beep beep, beep beep" that really confuses the "herd" and I believe I even heard one of them say "wow, that old bloke has got a really cool ring tone"

Anyways I'm off to "personalize" my ipod with some fake leopard skin and furry dice............


Uhuhuhuhuh! Howsabout that, then! Goodness gracious guys'n'gals! Now then now then!!

[rickcr42]

Sure, ALAC is an Apple invention, but I'm pretty certain some of the other players support alternative lossless formats. The very fact that they are lossless means there should be no difference in sound quality, so it's all down to file sizes and the processing power required to play them I guess.

I am more of a universal cross-platform player type of person and if there is one thing I hate is needing a specific player for different formats which means every time some knucklhead comes out with a better way then decides to lock up the code for one company specific product lineup it is me that must purchase another player to add to an already too large collection.

Single format/Multi-platform players once made sense :

1-Anolog Disc for pure playback
2-Open-Reel Analog Tape for either live recoding or playback of pre-recorded tapes
3-Cassette deck to make copies for the car or portable cassette player (first Walkmans) and before that 8-tracks for the car

That was it ! Each had a specific use that was its strength and at the same time weakness.LPs did not do portable or mobile well,open reel is a complicated machine to operate but was the only method to record a live garage band,cassettes travelled REAL well but did not have the lowest noise floor-something you never notice on the go anyway where ambient or road noise is way higher than the worst equipment noise floor.

each had a use that was not cross-platform compatible because of the nature of the medium then along came the CD where for the first time music was relegated to "ones and zeroes" with a bit toosed away (sampling rate) and once it was found the public never bitched about what was "tossed" the wheels began to turn and we are where we are now,In a place where most will claim MP3 sounds every bit as good as the CD-and in some cases they are 100% right due to system resolving issues or bad recordings-and once there could be manipulated in the digital domain so why if all the music is in essence is data do we need a specific player for every damn "closed" system ?

Common sense would tell any end consumer a simple software upgrade of an 'open ended" system would be the way to universal playback and recording right ?

Maybe even a ROM chip as an upgrade once you purchased your "universal digital music player" instead of the industry wide rip off tactics we now suffer ?

How many here have either a closet full or formerly garbage cans full of "outdated" digital audio players that sounded just fine (in my case all the Vintage players sounded WAY better ) but because they could not play the next generation of digital music were now useless ?

It is all bullshit meant to dig into your pockets but at least there was some compatibility between players and manufacturer choices ratyher than "if you want it take it or leave it but we aint sharing shit" going on.

The iPOD is cool and likely I will relent in the near future but to say I will like giving in would be a lie.I will just put iton the shelf next to my RCA Lyra MP3 Player and MD recorder in a couple of years to remind me how easily fooled we humns are and how well the industry knows that


Rant over........................for now.................. ;D

[Sol]

Of course .. if you want non-proprietary lossless compression there's always flac ... Squeezebox support it for hours of endless hifi fun just flicking and comparing from couch potatoe mode, and the advantage then is your archive of flac encoded music on your PC (can be streamed wirelessly) can be copied across to your ipod beater, the iaudio X5 (which supports flac) with 30Gb space and 15 hours continous use.

The iaudio also supports video, has a voice recorder and a FM radio, but I use mine for flac music and with flac direct thorugh my grados 325i it sounds fantastic. It has an onbard EQ for tose taht want to mellow things out, and it has enough punch to make your ears bleed.

I'm impressed, and worth everything just to have a flac archive for the Squeezebox that doesn't have to be encoded again into mp3 for an ipod.

reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029995,39191195,00.htm

flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html