The ipod Turns Five today

[Edella]

It has already been five years since the introducion of the ipod.In those five years, Apple has sold almost 68 million iPods.2006 iPod sales account for 40 % of Apple's revenues.They are everywhere,and I hate them.They sound horrible to me.ipods are more about convenience than sound quality IMO.

 

As someone who has spent way to much money on tube (valve) amplifiers and turntable mods,I have to say analog wins hands down.

 

How do you feel about ipods?Do they sound good to you,or do you just own one for the convenience?Am I just a modern day Luddite?

[pgrmdave]

Ipods have incredible sound quality for digital music - they blow most other mp3 players out of the water. But for the best sounding music, analog is much better.

[Jay-qu]

I dont think thats a fair assumption. It depends on the bitrate of the music, if I rip a CD I wont go less than 192kbps and even then it can sound a little grainy in parts. Good quality music is up around the 320kbps mark. So people that want to fit loads of songs on their ipods may have sacraficed quality, or didnt know they could change it..

[Edella]

I gotta tell ya, music at 128 kbps makes for some piss poor sound. A raw music file on CD is 1411 kbps.When you create a compressed music file at 128 kbps (or 128,000 bits per second), you are reducing it to less than one-tenth its original size.320 kbps to about a quarter its original size.

 

When music is compressed and then uncompressed, there are losses: little things like spatial qualities.Apple also doesn’t make it easy to go uncompressed. If you buy music from the iTunes store it comes to you in that 128Kbps AAC file.:(

 

If you use Apple Lossless Encoding, you can reduce the size of CD audio tracks by about 60 to 70 percent percent without(according to Apple) any corresponding loss in sound quality.I haven't heard music using Apple Lossless Encoding,but it seems to be the way to go for audiophiles.

 

If you have the time or inclination ,listen to a tune on a CD at 1411 kbps and then at the different compression rates through a quality playback system.(ditch those crappy headphones that came with the iPod.)Let your ears be the judge.

 

As for me I'll stick with my vinyl.

[Jay-qu]

I have done that before, i can tell you on 320 I dont notice much of a difference, there are some songs that have parts that are an exception..

 

Once i tried lossless compression, it encoded at 1200 or something.. it was so high that my computer couldnt take it and screwed up the copying LOL

[pgrmdave]

You lose a lot of the clearness of the sound with digital, but it sure is a space saver! I try to have my music over 300kbps on digital to listen to. BTW - does anybody know what it would take to transfer music from vinyl to mp3?

[TheBigDog]

One of the problems with MP3, as I understand it, is that it is not just compression, but filtration as well. It takes elements that are deemed to be inaudible that would be part of an analogue recording and throws them out before compressing. This can be as much as 75% of the content. So those people who are incredibly sensitive to such things will indeed be aware of the missing elements that 90%+ of the population would never be aware of.

 

A CD has increadible capacity for sound reproduction. But you need to consider the process that went into making the CD. If at any point they went through a digital filter and compression process then even if they are later put on the disc at 1410, they are just the filtered and compressed recording heard at 1410. So they will sound no better than the compressed version of the original. And compressing them will result in continued degradation of quality.

 

The one advantage of digital is that it is not played by friction like a needle in a record. No matter how good your equipment is every playing of a record degrades the sound quality. And when you buy a record made these days you need to consider what the source was for cutting it. If the source was at any time an MP3 recording, guess what you are getting.

 

I personally have trouble hearing the difference.

 

Bill

[CraigD]

does anybody know what it would take to transfer music from vinyl to mp3?

A turntable, obviously.

 

Less obviously, the turntable must either have a ceramic cartridge (the device that converts stylus (needle) movement into electic current), or you’ll need a pre-amp to increase the voltage from a magnetic cartridge enough that a typical soundcard input reads it as loud enough.

 

Magnetic cartridges have better frequency range and accuracy. Unfortunately, most commodity stereo receivers lack “phono” inputs to a built-in pre-amp. Fortunately, the scratching/DJing biz has produced preamps like this under $20 one, so a decent complete turntable setup should be obtainable for pretty cheap.

 

I transferred a few hundred vinyl albums to CD a decade ago. Given how cheap storage is these days, I’d recommend transferring to large or even non-losy files. Since you have to transfer from vinyl at normal speed, you’ll likely use up your patience or your vinyl before your disk.

 

After going to the trouble of getting a decent turntable setup, make sure your soundcard’s input ADC is decent (the one that came on my laptop is terrible!)