Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[arkabee]

If you're going for replacement then why don't you use some kind of lossless codec like Monkeys Audio?

is that playable by portable mp3 players?

[jough]

Portability and ease of transfer is important to me.  So for a lossless codec it'd have to be fairly small in file size.

Right now my albums are about 70-100Mb apiece (depending on the album length) and sound identical to the original CD.  You can even compare wave tables and spectrographs for each format and you wouldn't know which was which.

At about 1/5th of the file size of CDs.  Seems a decent tradeoff.  It's about the same amount of compression as Atrac, but I don't have to use a proprietary codec (and say what you want about mp3 licencing fees, but I've never spent a dime on an mp3 encoder or decoder and DAPs cost about the same no matter what formats they support.

[CortJstr]

If you're going for replacement then why don't you use some kind of lossless codec like Monkeys Audio?

is that playable by portable mp3 players?

Some but not the iPod. It's popular in audiophile circles (coughhydrogenaudiocough) to rip once to Monkeys for permanent storage (often on a whole other hard drive) then downconvert those files into moderate mp3's for things like iPods.

I just go straight to the recommended mp3 type and save the CDs for backups and for lending. When making mix CDs I also rip directly from the original CD whenever possible to avoid generational issues.

[jough]

I'm looking to be CD-less by the end of the year.  I'm selling or giving away all of my discs, and not really buying more except to rip them and re-sell.

Of course, the RIAA would say that once I sell the CD I should delete the mp3s, but I say they can go fuck themselves.  Sell me what I want and I'll buy it.  My time spent buying, ripping, and reselling a CD is worth more than $9.99.

Who asked for DRM?  And who are the morons that are obviously buying (er, renting, leasing, etc.) music this way?  

Why in the world would a consumer want to lease a music format that limits what they can do with that music, and who wants to have to ask permission to listen to music on a portable, in their car, on another PC, etc.?

I mean, I can't imagine that EVERY iTunes/BuyMusic/Napster/Walmart Music/Etc. purchaser is a complete idiot, but they're either ig'nant or stupid.  I don't know which is worse.

[Pedro Picasso]

A few things:

Naught but good things to say about the iPod personally.

My coworker had a problem with his iPod.  He sent it to Apple, bitching that they were going to try to screw him.  He got a brand new iPod.  He had to pay $20 shipping.  This is not a success story, but it's good enough.

If you're buying a new iPod, I can't recommend this case enough.  JL got it for me.  You can use the buttons while it's in the case.  It's rubberized on the sides, very protective, and not too big.

I buy DRM music from Apple.  I don't mean to, but it's so easy.  I'm here at my laptop all day with iTunes staring at me.  It's unnerving.  It's also so easy to listen to it on the iPod that I don't notice it's crippled.  And when I want to give my DRM'd music to a friend or listen to it on an unsanctioned player, I just burn it to a CD (and sometimes rip it again).  No big deal.

Audible.com - This is a wonderful service.  For $15/month, I get two books of any length.  One month I got the Old Testament and the New Testament for fifteen bucks.  It'll take forever to listen to all that audio, but that still rules.  They have a large (enough) selection of unabridged books, which is all I buy.  Also, they keep track of what you've bought and you can erase it from your hard drive and redownload it later (which iTunes will not allow you to do.  Do NOT buy books from iTunes.).  Their books are DRM'd, but you can burn them to CD with no problem.  (One small problem.  Once you've burned a book to a set of CDs, you have to redownload it to burn it to a second set.)  The audio quality is generally great, and I couldn't be happier with this crap.  I got most of the Dark Tower books from Audible.com, all unabridged.  Super mega.

[CortJstr]

Who asked for DRM?  And who are the morons that are obviously buying (er, renting, leasing, etc.) music this way?  

Why in the world would a consumer want to lease a music format that limits what they can do with that music, and who wants to have to ask permission to listen to music on a portable, in their car, on another PC, etc.?

I mean, I can't imagine that EVERY iTunes/BuyMusic/Napster/Walmart Music/Etc. purchaser is a complete idiot, but they're either ig'nant or stupid.  I don't know which is worse.

From what I've read on Wired/ZDNet/etc the goal here is to retrain consumers to think of music as something they have a license to which just happens to come on a concrete medium. Not something that we in any way own. Movies too. We're just renting it long-term.

I was skeptical about this plan 2 years ago but it seems to be working quite efficiently. Plus they don't mind people going Pedro's route of burning/reripping because of the generational loss which can be quite pronounced.

[jough]

I don't see myself ever renting music, especially not when it's so easy to get unhindered mp3s/ogg/flac/whatever.

I posted something before about not being able to buy legal mp3s online, and that's still true except for eMusic, which has a bunch of artists I like, but it only took me 150 songs to get everything that they had that I wanted, and 2/3 of that 150 were in the form of free trials.

So they got me for 1 month.  Woo-hoo.

But I wanted to download the new Prince album, and the only store that had it was BuyMusic (I believe iTunes has it now - but it was a BuyMusic exclusive for awhile).

I thought about getting it from BuyMusic, so I went to their site and was turned away because I was using Firefox instead of IE.

So I figured up my Gnutella client and downloaded a 256kbps mp3 copy of each song on the album in about five minutes.  It sounds great.

I've since acquired the CD (they were giving them to everyone who went to see Prince live) but my point was that I was UNABLE to buy the music digitally online.  

The RIAA and its member companies are so clueless about the marketplace.  People aren't going to stop wanting something just because you don't want them to want it.  Most people are idiots and won't care or even understand the DRM issues with their music.  At least, not until they try to copy their music to the 6th PC and find that they have to re-buy all of their music again.  Won't that be fun?

I can hardly wait.  It's like with Pan & Scan "full screen" versions of DVDs.  In a few years everyone will have a widescreen television and these people will be complaining about the black bars on the SIDES of their image.  Ha ha.

Sometimes ignorance IS painful.

[St_Zartan]

also, I have gone through the last four or five days with "the WARRANT! the WARRANT!" popping into my head at random times, so my suffering should be shared by all.

Better



than



?

YOU MAKE THE CALL

[V-Adore]

Point, point, point. Of course, now "Cherry Pie" is all up in the brainstem, and God only knows when it'll dislodge. "Thanks," Zartan!

[jay-ell]

Zartan, your graphical post put a smile on my face ten miles wide.

[CortJstr]

God dammit! Now I have Polka Your Eyes Out stuck in my head. Thanks a lot, people.

Also, are 4G iPods even really available yet? Last I heard they were on backorder pretty much everywhere.

[jough]

Nah, they're readily available.  Especially since I got an iPod from HP, who have really stepped up manufacturing on them since they introduced them last week.

[miles]

I'm gonna go with the Jet Adio 40gb when I get round to it. I refuse to buy one that means I end up using DRM fomats. JetAudio supports mp3, ogg and wma, has the same storage space, and in my opinion looks and functions better than the iPod.

Did you ever end up buying this?  I'm in the market for an MP3 player now and have been having the hardest time deciding.

[miles]

Anyway, I ended up going with the 4G 20gig iPod.  So far, I love it.  But the earbuds hurt my ears.  I have some decent studio headphones that I use at home, they aren't too huge but a bit of a pain to lug around.  I also have some sony over the ear headphones that make my big head look bigger, but they will probably have to do for now.  Any recommendations for some relatively inexpensive (under $50 or so--but of course, the less expensive the better) earbuds?  I want to go out and get some tonight so I can have better ones for tomorrow's train commute.  Thanks!

[CortJstr]

Earbuds are the devil's tool. I've never found a set that will stay in. Sadly, I know more than a couple people who hate them but won't switch because they want the white-cord status symbol.