iTunes: Trials and Tribulations

Indeed, but you can't blame me for thinking there might be at least some anti-iPodeyness there.

But I agree, I don't like that attitude either. A Mac is a PC, it just runs on a different operating system (one that I happen to be very used to and enjoy using). But you can't let other people's bad attitudes rub off into your own. I honestly don't think iPods are as complicated or troublesome as you may think. I've had very positive experiences with all the Apple products I've ever bought, but I could never say they're better than anything else simply because I haven't tried many other things. I just happen to like Apple products.

If someone gave me a Sony MP3 player, I'd be chuffed with that too I'm sure.

I suppose so. iPods are ball-bustingly simple to use!

Mmmm... I would add fear as a serious motivator as well.

Well, he's right.

It wasn't directed to you Tom, it was a chance to discuss some things further. I thought it was evident, but i apologize if it came along otherwise.

I was thinking this morning that nearly everything that I own came with a manual including my camera, phone, computer, printers, and the VHS/DVD unit with the built in hard drive. Believe me that was a bit of a challenge but because I had the book I can read and I figured it out completely.

I only said that at this point it is going on hold. I'm behind on my reviews and have some talks that have to be edited for language and then put up on a website. When they are edited it means I've to listen to the entire talk. I'll get back to it and I'm confident it will be smooth for me. My frustration is more of fear of the unknown which makes me uncomfortable.

Thomas

Tom, when I first got my mp3 player I didn't know how to tag correctly and that meant that when I transferred my tracks to the player I just drag-and-dropped everything. Track titles and album titles were all sorted as I wanted the correct information displayed when I played them on my PC.

When I decided I also wanted to show album art on my player I was completely lost as I needed to know how to tag the tracks with the correct information in the proper way so that I could have the artwork displayed. And to cut a very long story short I realised that I had to sync my player so that the artwork would be transferred - dragging-and-dropping would not do the job.

So I had to find sortware so that I could tag tracks/albums correctly. Research is the only way to get the hang of what's needed to be done. But once you get familiar about what to do (and it's not too much trouble once you know what you need to do with the software you'll use) it actually makes populating your player so easy.

Sort out tagging, synchronise your tracks (I'd always recommend doing it manually so that you keep control) and everything will go to where you want to.

Keep at it Tom. The effort now will pay dividends in the long run.

It's good to have friends to help you through these difficult times.

As you know I'm working on a review of The Soloist and I want to put up a couple of clips and now I find that wordpress doesn't allow mp3's.
Thomas

Just a case of dragging-and-dropping?

Okay, I'm going to buy my first iPod soon, and I'm a little in doubt wether which one to get. The shuffle and nano are out of the question, so it's between the Classic and Touch. Since I just want to get my complete collection on the thing, I first blindly went for Classic, but now I'm realising I probably don't need all the space, which means I might also be able to afford the cool eyecatcher that is the Touch.

So, Thor and Erik, I've got a question for you . Thor: you mentioned that you got 815 albums on 56 GB. Do you remember on what bitrate that was?

I've got myself about 350 albums (which includes LotR: CR's and Star Wars complete counted as 1 album each, yet also 30 min. releases) which are approx. 70 MB each at a bitrate of 192 kb/s. So altogether they might take up about 24.500 MB, while the iPod Touch has 32.000 MB storage. Which would mean I've got about 7.500 MB left to store an additional 114 albums. Is this reasonable logic?

HOWEVER: Erik: this is calculated with having a 'normal' MP3 in mind, yet, when compressed by iTunes, would that take the same amount of storage? I heard you mentioning things like 'a 192 kb/s compressed with iTunes sounds like a 320 kb/s of a 'normal' MP3'. Aren't iTunes MP3's smaller or something?

OR: do you really have that full 32 GB at your disposal? Or are there some gadget that take up that same room, like some games they installed on it?

Hope you can help me out

Yes, there is some overhead for managing your playlists and the internal gadgets (which differ per model).
However, on my 160 GB iPod, which is full, it amounts to no more than 400 MB in total.
So it negligible.

iTunes MP3s aren't smaller: iTunes uses a proprietary format called AAC, which -apparently- delivers a better sound quality against higher compression. So a 192 kbps AAC would sound better than a 256 kbps MP3.
I wouldn't know though. I use MP3s as that's a multi-platform format and should I in future decide to switch platforms (i.e. a non-iPod MP3 player), I want the least hassle in transferring my files.

For me to, in selecting a player, size was the primary criterion.
The only reason I went with the iPod is that it wsa the only brand sporting a 160 GB player that wasn't just a portable movie player (their only competitor was Zen, but that had a huge screen was really geared towards watching films).

Actually AAC isn't a proprietary format of iTunes/iPod. It's just one of the many compressed digital audio formats which Apple chose for iPod, I believe. There are other software & portable players supporting AAC... for example, though I don't know it's the same outside Japan, SONY recently released portable player supporting AAC.


But actually I don't know much about portable audio players. I only have an old 512MB iPod shuffle, because it was the cheapest at that time This can hold only 5.5 hours of music as 256kbp AAC, but I mostly use it for playing a few of selected favorite tracks at school or in train, so it's enough for me

Some research yields about 628 songs on an 8GB nano in the highest possible AAC compression,
MP3 160kps stereo files will about allow for 1,615 tracks of to take up 7.1GB of space.
MP3 encoded in LAME variable bitrate (extreme preset in most cases) results in an average 200, 250 bitrate, which will fit about 1100 songs on an 8GB nano

Again: mind that an '8GB' capacity isn't REALLY 8GB of user files. For example, the '16GB' Touch holds just 14.5GB of user data. The '8GB' can hold about 7.4 GB of data. This is not only due to internal operating files taking up space, but also the standard "consumer confusion":

Sorry, I couldn't find a comparison chart for "tracks Bob likes".
Obviously these are averages, but at 8GB disk space you could reasonably assume a good mix of track sizes.