MP3-Player

Can Ipods do subscription services yet?

I know they were working on it.
 
DSS3 said:
Erm... Weren't they the first to impliment it?

No. They hired someone to get them to that point from Microsoft. That is the only reason I didn't buy an Ipod in the first place.
 
MKS said:
No. They hired someone to get them to that point from Microsoft. That is the only reason I didn't buy an Ipod in the first place.
dude, i've been subscribing to podcasts for a good while now.
 
etlgfx said:
much much much much better, very little noticable distortion at high volumes, excellent EQ settings, and a load of extra sound enhancing functions: "BBE, Surround, Mach3Bass, MPEnhance"
I just use the EQ to compensate for what frequencies my earphones lack, and let my audio files do the rest.

Cowon is pretty much known for great sound quality players. You could also consider the newer iAudio U3, except it has shorter battery life because of the Li-ion battery instead of AA battery. Go to iaudio.com to compare their specs, see what you want, you can order them from amazon.com or jetaudio.com in the states.
Awesome, I shall get one. Thanks :)
 
James Murphy said:
dude, i've been subscribing to podcasts for a good while now.

Not that. Like Rhapsody. Apple knows that is what people really want. Subscription services are awesome. Itunes is NOT a subscription service. Rhapsody allows you to listen to all the songs you want for one monthly fee. For a little extra, you can transfer all the songs you want to subscription portable device like the IRiver H10 or the Creative ZEN.

This is the whole reason they hired Julia Miller from Microsoft's XBox Live team in its quest to deploy a subscription-based iTunes music service.

I amazed more people aren't aware of this. It changed the way I check out new music.
 
James Murphy said:
and i still say, if you own your music, which you should, then all those other codecs are totally unecessary.

I don't get what you're saying... 99% of what's out there to download isn't OGG or FLAC, it's MP3. So it's not like people need these codecs because they download music and they need something that will play them, as I'd say 99.9% of people probably never even encountered the formats ever...They've a million times more likely to have have encountered WMA though, which I don't think an iPod can play either, but that codec sucks.

People who want FLAC and OGG are generally people who actually OWN their own music and want a better sounding codec than MP3. OGG has a better quality/size ratio compared to MP3. And FLAC is lossless. Apple has their lossless format, but it's only compatible with Apple players and very few audio applications outside of iTunes, FLAC is more widely supported.

I own quite a decent amount of music (1200 albums) and would rather have it in FLAC, then again I mainly just listen to CD's or Vinyl. I'd take OGG over MP3 probably, though I rip LAME APS MP3's instaed of OGG for compatibility reasons or if I need to send someone a couple songs for demo purposes.

The only people that regularly use FLAC files online are people who trade non-album live concerts as it's lossless compression and makes it easier than trading WAV's and most serious traders are elitists when it comes to quality...
 
yeah... sorry for my ignorance on all that.. i just don't know or care much about what's available to download since i just rip my own CD's to my iPod.... and not to mp3 either since i hate the sound of them.. i juse either AAC or the Apple Lossless. i was on about ogg, not flac.... mainly sincei never heard of it. and yeah, iPod's not supporting .wma is a non-issue to me sincei agree with you fully that .wma's sound like shit.

and my bad on the subscription service thing... i don't care for that type of thing and would never likely subscribe, so i just don't know much about it... and likely never will.
 
James Murphy said:
and my bad on the subscription service thing... i don't care for that type of thing and would never likely subscribe, so i just don't know much about it... and likely never will.

It's good for me since I can check out most bands before buying the CD. If I like it, I usually buy the CD. The record companies still get a kickback everytime I listen to each track. Not much, but better than nothing.

It really is a great service.
 
Yea, what SPLASTiK said! :p

OGG files do have much better quality / compression ratio than MP3, no I haven't done much with AAC, mailny because I tend to gravitate towards Open Source solutions like OGG.

Your Typical MP3 is encoded at 128kbps right? And sounds like garbage right? I have my CD (Yes mr. murphy all my own CDs) collection ripped to OGG files at ~128kbps (q4 VBR) and the reproduction is very near lossless. What you won't accomplish in an MP3 below 224kbps (? it's been a while)

But yes, when I send demos etc. I usually just encode a 192kbps MP3, so anyone can play it.


Anyway, James: you're comparing the iPod's lossless format sound with other players using a shitty 128kbps? ... never mind it doesn't really matter, you got your iPod, and you have high quality shit on it, I have my Cowon player, with high quality shit on it. We can all be happy now :)

And Nitronium Blood: glad I could help out :)
 
MKS said:
It's good for me since I can check out most bands before buying the CD. If I like it, I usually buy the CD. The record companies still get a kickback everytime I listen to each track. Not much, but better than nothing.

It really is a great service.

It is a pretty great service, I'm no big fan of giving record companies more money though. I wish more money could go to the artist... like give me a check box to say all of my money goes straight to the band :)
 
Yesterday iTunes quite disappointed me when I wanted to burn some albums of my library to an MP3-CD in order to be able to listen to it in my car.

It told me that the albums couldn't be burned onto an MP3-CD because they are in the wrong format (AAC). Well, of course they are, iTunes ripped it to the format!! So far so good, but I would have really expected it to temporarly convert them to mp3 in order to be able to burn the stuff on a CD that is compatible with my car's stereo...

Did you change your iTunes settings so that it ripps to mp3 or do you use AAC?
 
Have the Zen Vision:M and it's the best mp3 player i've had/tried (there have been a few). Has already come in handy on more than one long haul flight and the sound quality beats anything else I've heard. The bass response is nothing short of fantastic. I don't leave home without it...

I also can't recommend enough the Shure e2c's. I have very sensitive ears and after many years of uncomfortable listening via earbuds, closed ear phones, and Koss Portapro's (which I also liked), I love these things. They took a little getting used to, but I'm finally happy. Good bang for the buck as they're great quality without being overkill in the hip pocket.