[spgass]

While I can see real advantages of fitting thousands of songs in a small amount of space rather than having tons of CDs to manage, I have not yet purchased an iPod for the following reasons: too much static, too time consuming, too expensive, and to a lesser extent... the loss of liner notes.

http://lowtechtimes....ot-own-an-ipod/

What do you think? Is it worth it?

Thanks,

S.P. Gass

http://lowtechtimes.com

[gooser]

if you're satisfied with cds then just stick with them. it's still the best quality music you can get. i have 3 ipods and rarely use any of them and never in a car. i keep one at my girlfriend's house so i can listen to my favorites when i'm over there. i also use one when on vacation, and for sitting in doctor's offices or the dmv. i sometimes use one as a portable hard drive to transfer files back and forth from work. that's about it. having said that you can't beat em for ease of use and changing what you want to listen to. i guess in my case if i want to listen to music i prefer cds. if i want to hear music i prefer itunes. i take it that you're like me in that you're not intrigued by watching movies on one or playing games.

[Rugby]

law of success: if you are successful with something there will be people questioning it and say they don't need it. (you might find some website's in the same style regarding Windows by the way...)

I love (listening) to music but never seemed to:
a find the CD I wanted/craved at that moment
b never seem to play/listen to ALL the songs on the CD

so recently I finished my project: ALL my CD's are on HD and tucked away in the cellar. I have multiple playlists and fill up the family pods with various wishes on command. Fill up my iPod when we are of somewhere as I can connect it to most (any really) hifi systems etc (and TV !).

Use it when at gym (they have sooooo poor music at those places)

Use it on occasions when I run (Nike sport kit, brilliant and it works !!)

My recent Nano has so far been outstanding when watching sport, films etc while in a hotel/plane etc

so for me it's now "can I live without it" ? Frightening

...and yes you can live without it, actually better to stay away as it is really easy to get addicted

[mdawson]

Using an iPod does not mean pitching your CD collection. I definitely have no intention of selling off my collection of nearly 1100 CDs. The advantage of an iPod is portability, just as was the case with Walkmans and CD Walkmans; the difference is that your source media stays safe at home.
iTunes is rather flexible where libraries are concerned and there are iTunes users that have their music ripped in either a high bit rate compressed format (e.g., AAC 320 Kbps) or lossless format (e.g., Apple Lossless) for playback through a high-end sound system at home and a separate, but similar library with music ripped at higher compression rates for syncing to an iPod. Due to the hard drive capacity I could afford at the time I opted to rip my CDs as 160 Kbps AAC, but now that my entire CD collection has been ripped I wish I had opted for 256 or 320 Kbps.
As to the negative points you listed:
bq. Too much static Since when? I have never heard anyone complain about static from an iPod. Playback on an iPod is just as it is from any other digital device, therefore the only shortcoming are the headphones that can be easily replaced. Unless cut-rate chips are used, digital devices are not prone to the type of noise anomalies that plagued analog devices.
bq. Too time consuming The longer it took for you to acquire a music collection, the longer it will take for you to rip that collection into iTunes or any other music management software. That is simply the reality of ripping a physical collection. Depending on how many CDs you have, it took time to build up that collection. People are not in the habit of buying CDs by the carload. It took me in excess of two years to rip my CD collection and get all of my cover art into iTunes and I still have 1200+ records to digitize, process and import. Now that all of my CDs are imported, I am glad for the effort. I also spent considerable time figuring out how to organize my music in iTunes before ripping the first CD. If you put considerable planning into setting up iTunes to suit your listening preferences, the time it takes to rip your collection is well worth it. I now have the ability to listen to my music as I never could before and I have rediscovered music in my collection that I either forgot or never realized that I had.
bq. Too expensive How much is it worth to you to have the ability to tote around most if not all of your music? When I purchased my iPod in 2005 it cost me $350 for the 60GB model with academic pricing. At 160Kbps, that is roughly 12,000 songs, based on my iTunes library. I could not possibly do that with cassettes or CDs, and in the case of the latter, taking my CDs on the road means risking damage to them. When I first purchased my iPod it was synced to my work PC to which I had ripped a few thousand songs from my CD collection. When I went to Tampa for a three-day conference, I was able to listen to whatever music, whenever selected from a myriad of tracks from a variety of artists at random based on playlists that suited my mood at the moment. That kind of convenience is impossible without an iPod or similar portable digital music player and well worth what it cost to get the iPod. For what I spent 2-1/2 years ago, you can get nearly three times as much capacity.
bq. Loss of liner notes You are really just niggling at this point. If you are listening to music on the go, what do you need liner notes for? Excepting the iPod Shuffle, which targets more active users, the iPod displays the cover art, song title, album and artist for the track that is currently playing. And again, ripping your music into iTunes and having an iPod does not mean that you have to forfeit your CD collection. iTunes can be used to store a modicum of information, but ultimately, no music management software acts as a detailed cataloging database. Dedicated cataloging software such as Music Collector, Readerware AW and Delicious Library serve as media collection databases, but they do not manage or playback music as iTunes, WMP, et al., do. I use iTunes to access my music and I have Music Collector to catalog my media collection.
In the end, an iPod is a portable music player just as a Walkman was. Just as people made tapes of their record collection to use a Walkman you can rip your CDs to use an iPod on-the-go. Nothing will prevent you from continuing to listen to your CDs.

[sandbag1]

The beauty of iTunes and an iPod to me is the ability to search and find a tune to play and be able to in a matter of seconds. Try that with a 1,000 CD collection. I also use an Airport Express to play through my Stereo system. Static? I never hear any. I have all my music converted to AAC not MP3 by the way.

They are the worlds greatest Juke Box's.

I have my entire CD collection in iTunes and keep the CD's and their cover notes in a CD rack next to my system for posterity. lol

If you purchase on iTunes, there are some albums that have what they call digital booklets.

[spgass]

Thanks, you guessed right, Gooser... not much interest in watching videos on a tiny screen :8}

[spgass]

Rugby, good point (B). I think iTunes is worthwhile to purchase individual songs. The perfect album (every track good) is a surprisingly rare find.

[spgass]

MDawson and Sandbag1, thanks. I should've been more clear regarding the static. The static problem I've witnessed is not with the iPod itself, but transmitting to a car stereo via FM transmission.

[mdawson]

Well interference with FM transmission is to be expected unless you live in the sticks where the FM band is pretty empty. When I first purchased an iTrip for my iPod I though I had wasted $30 because I could not find a decent station to tune into; the FM band here is crammed with stations from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Southern NJ and DE local stations.
Griffin Technology now provides a Station Finder for numerous urban markets to narrow down open frequencies. I also discovered this summer that if I remove the antenna from my car, I could tune into any station with my iTrip as long as I am not close to the transmission tower for the selected frequency. I went on a trip to NYC from Delaware last July on one frequency and experienced no static whatsoever on the 120+ mile trip.

[sandbag1]

{quote:title=mdawson wrote:} I also discovered this summer that if I remove the antenna from my car, I could tune into any station with my iTrip as long as I am not close to the transmission tower for the selected frequency{quote}

How does the iTrip transmit to your FM radio if you removed the antenna?

[klimegreen]

I am of two minds on this. For one, I love my nano and I don't think I could live without it. But it does add complication to my life. CD's were so simple in a way. Not that the iPod is complicated, but it is if you consider maintaining a music library on a computer. I wish there was a service where I could drop off my CD's and pick up an iPod all set up. There is something simple about doing the CD thing, but then again you can't beat to coolness factor of the iPod. Plus there are certain situations, like the fitness center, where CD's aren't pratical.

[mdawson]

I cannot understand how you would see iTunes/iPod as more complicated than having to manage a physical music collection. iTunes allows you to have your entire music collection available at a whim. If anything, iTunes and other computer-based media managers are the Holy Grail of music selection that CD mega-changers could never hope to achieve. While mega-changers were good for people that had 300 or less CDs—the largest such beasts held roughly that number—they lacked the type of interface that a computer-based music manager can provide. Also, because the manufacturers continued to fail to implement anti-skip technology into component players, CD (mega-)changers always had the inherent gap between tracks.
Where portable music players are concerned, the iPod, and similar digital playback devices, far exceed their predecessors. Portable cassette and CD players where limited to playing one piece of media at a time. The portable digital music players of today can hold the equivalent of several CDs, can randomly playback music according to user defined playlists from varied albums and artists and can have the contents changed en masse with little effort. Even 1 GB models such as the iPod Shuffle can hold better than 25 CDs worth of music; far more than an in-car CD changer let alone any personal CD player.
Managing a music collection in iTunes is by means more complicated than maintaining a physical collection. iTunes is an automated database in which you can find artists, albums or songs via a quick search. Using playlists, you can organize your music in multiple ways with redundancy if need be—not possible with a physical collection unless you plan to purchase multiple copies of each CD—and, you can resort you library based on a number of criteria on a whim. CDs are definitely the ultimate in terms of holding music of uncompromised quality, but managing the physical media is far more complicated than managing electronic files in an automated database.


So, I have to ask, how is iTunes or the iPod more complicated?

[mdawson]

The external portion of the antenna on a car is only necessary for either pulling in weaker signals or overcoming crosstalk, the result of too many neighboring signals. Without the external antenna the tuner in your car can often still receive (strong) local stations and most definitely a signal transmitted from a source within a few feet of the receiver given that the means to pull in anything else has been removed.