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CrimsonBrian |
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Friday, May 7, 2004 at 12:07 PM Is there a site that offers the MP3s at a little higher quality? When I transfer them to my iPod, they sound very tinny. I am not concerned about size (although I recognize it is an issue for people hosting). Thanks! —CrimsonBrian |
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Jeremy |
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Friday, May 7, 2004 at 12:25 PM MP3s of what? The full shows? —Jeremy |
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puck71 |
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Friday, May 7, 2004 at 1:25 PM Where are you trying to get them now? If you go on the DC hub, there's a variety of qualities available. Personally all of mines are 16kbps, mainly to cut down on space, and because I think they can sound OK depending on the quality of your audio input. However, other people on the hub have files at 24, 32, or 64kbps - you just gotta search and browse around. In general, older episodes (pre-2002) may only be available in 16kbps, but anything newer is available in a variety of qualities. —puck71 |
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CrimsonBrian |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 6:02 AM Thanks for the replies. I did mean MP3s of full shows, sorry for not being more specific. I will hunt around and see if I can find some of 64kbps. Thanks! Brian —CrimsonBrian |
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puck71 |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 6:31 AM Yep, I was talking about full shows too. :) —puck71 |
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dr ipod |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 2:28 PM The problem is really that when it goes over the airwaves the quality goes down. And unless someone has a real good radio with awesome reception, its going to sound a little tinny and staticy at points. It's not going to sound as good as a studio album ripped in 192kbps... The worst parts are definitely always the music. Music sounds shitty in anything less than 96kbps. And then when you get down to like 16khz too it sucks even more. By the way, iPods rule. Have you seen this yet? http://www.colorwarepc.com For $50 + shipping you send them your ipod and theyll professionally colorize the front for you. I'm probably gonna get mine done in black, or "carbon" as they call it. They have like 30 colors, though! —dr ipod |
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CrimsonBrian |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 3:28 PM Wow, that is really cool. I might send mine it to have it done. Although, it would be so hard to part with even if only for a few days... —CrimsonBrian |
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Marc |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 4:23 PM
Edited Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 4:32 PM This is a stupid question but is there a way to check the actual quality of mp3s? Obviously with some shows I can tell by ear that the 40ish MB shows are great quality (like Kevin's) but is there a way to check the kbps? When adding Loveline episodes to an iPod is it easy to find/catergorize them? One last question: I was looking into buy an iPod and saw they had minis which hold about 1000 songs? Does anyone who has the 15G+ Ipods have more than 1000? Does anyone actually get up to about 3700 songs? Thanks in advance for the help. —Marc |
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Mahalo |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 5:36 PM I would use another software player if you can't easily see the bitrate (like Winamp). The compression ratio of minutes to megabytes depends on both the bitrate and the sampling frequency (and the source audio if you want to get picky). For example, I record Loveline at 128 kbps (bitrate) at 44 kHz (sampling frequency) and I get about a 1.1 minute to megabyte ratio. Concerning the iPod advertising, it is definitely possible to fit 3700 songs on a 15GB player assuming the average song length is about 4 minutes and is compressed at 128 kpbs, 44 kHz. I think that quality is atrocious while others don't seem to care, especially if they're using stock earbud headphones. Variable bitrate recording using the LAME codec is nice because it uses higher bitrates during complex parts of songs and lower bitrates during simple parts. This means a VBR mp3 can be of better quality at the same file size of the song recorded at a constant bitrate. You might want to Google some of this if my explanation is making it more confusing. —Mahalo |
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ZT |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 7:28 PM Those of you doing the encoding, if you're not already, at least use a 15.4 kHz low pass on the mp3s, even for the high-bit rate ones. I would recommend an 11 kHz low-pass for the low-bit rate mp3s. A decent explination behind all this is here: http://jthz.com/mp3/ —ZT |
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dr ipod |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 10:05 PM
Edited Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 10:06 PM I have a 40gb iPod and I once had around 8200 and chance songs, mostly 192kbps albums. I had to reinstall the iPod software on my computer though and I reformatted it. OOPS!! Funny story: when I bought my 40gb iPod the lady at bestBuy said "Are you actually going to fill that??" and I said "absolutely." and she just said "pft..men." Funnier story: I originally bought a 30gb ipod for $300 with a bestbuy service plan for an extra $40. When the 40gb came out for $400 I decided to break my ipod's screen against my desk, and go exchange it and try to pay the difference for a 40gb. I went in and explained to the manager how I sat on it and my keys cracked the screen. He OK'ed the exchange and even transferred my service plan. I then went picked out my new 40gb Ipod, and the girl who scoffed at my manly MP3 collection did a straight exchange, and forgot to charge me the difference. Men ;) —dr ipod |
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Johnny |
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Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 10:05 PM PLEASE! don't waste your money on Ipods. Go buy one of the spinoffs (dell and rio makes some) ipod's are over priced (you can save a couple hundred by buying a spinoff) and they have horrible reliabiltiy (all of my freinds' ipods broke). —Johnny |
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puck71 |
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Sunday, May 9, 2004 at 7:23 AM Marc: You could do the same thing, like in Windows Explorer, to determine which of your files are higher bitrate. The bigger filesizes are the higher bitrates...so just sort your file list by size. ZT: Thanks for the link, but many of the people who encode the shows do so off an online stream, so I don't know what frequency those use. That site is way more technical than I want to get into. I just encode mine constant bitrate of 16kbps and 16khz (and sometimes 11.025 khz). As was mentioned above, the songs are what really suffers here, but I just deal with that. I record the shows for the talk part not the song part. If I want the songs I download them separately. —puck71 |
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dr ipod |
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Sunday, May 9, 2004 at 1:50 PM Dude no way, the Ipod spinoffs are a complete waste of money. They're a lot bulkier, weightwise and dimension wise. Second, they don't look NEARLY as cool. the Ipod's awesome chrome back, the layout and the controls, are simply unparallelled. I actually got the Napster MP3 player which holds 20gb, and has a built in fm tuner (you can send the music out to any radio station that is unused and listen to it on a stereo) as well as reciever (you can listen to the radio too). it also had recording features, and line-in. Well it fucking sucked! I returned it and went back to my iPod. No matter what, iPod controls the portable MP3 market. They're selling faster than Apple can make them for a reason. A spinoff will always be just that. iPods kick ass all the way. None of my friends have had ANY problems, breaking or battery or antyhing. I know three people who still uses their 1st generation iPods on a daily basis. And they're saving up to upgrade to a 3rd gen (modern design) as soon as they can.
—dr ipod |
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dr ipod |
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Sunday, May 9, 2004 at 1:52 PM Oh, by the way, theres a great program called "MP3ext" that replaces the standard MP3 icon with an icon that tells the bitrate. It's really cool, and it's also great for tagging MP3s. You can click single or groups of mp3s and click "properties" and there is an extra tab for it, and it has all the ID3 fields and gives you all the MP3 info. Of course in XP it says all this in the info window, but MP3ext is a definite must if you have a lot of mp3s and are anal about quality and ID3 tags. It's a free program, just goggle "mp3ext" and it will come up. —dr ipod |
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CrimsonBrian |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 6:15 AM I agree with dr ipod on the knock-offs. I had a Rio and hated it, the menu sucked and it was a pain in the ass to transfer songs to. I got a 15GB iPod and I will never turn pack. I am a PC guy, but Apple has absolutely cornered the market on the MP3 players. iTunes could not be easier to use and being able to download a song at a time from the music store and have it on my ipod, ready to go, in less than a minute is great. The 15GB is only $300, which is not too much more than the knock-offs. Get the iPod, you will be much much happier. The extra money is well spent. —CrimsonBrian |
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Marc |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 6:26 AM I have a dumb question: do you HAVE to download from iTunes or can you use mp3s that you already have or download from other peer-peer? Also, if you have iPod do you have do you still have to pay for iTunes? —Marc |
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FlyinACE |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 6:58 AM Anyone catch screensavers yesterday? They were doing a bit on how its ok to buy an ipod mini and all the problems really are just isolated...But right at the begining of the segment the IPOD freaked out on them and it erased all of the music!!! It was pretty funny to see live and so in the end they said NOT to buy an Ipod mini just yet. —FlyinACE |
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Jeremy |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 10:57 AM Marc, you aren't restricted to iTunes at all. But if you do download songs from there, of course you still have to pay for them. —Jeremy |
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dr ipod |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 11:31 AM I haven't messed with the mini yet. It's cool, but frankly it's a ripoff. It's like $250 if you can find it, and it only has 4gb. But then for $300, and widely available, you can get 15gb. Or for $500 you can get 10x what the mini holds. I would fill a mini in a second, so I'm not going to bother. but they do look cool... As for iTunes, I don't even have it installed. You can use a few programs with the iPod, MusicMatch is what I use. Seriously, it's beautiful...If I download a new MP3 or album or whatveer, I just toss the iPod in the dock that sits on my desk. MusicMatch automatically opens and the 'portable device' thing comes up, recognizes my iPod, and I'm ready to load it like 20 seconds after I throw it in. Then I quickly add the song, its real fast because I use the firewire connection (but they have USB cords) and hit eject and bam, I can have an episode of Loveline or a song on there in like 2 minutes tops. Seriously, I used to burn a ton of CDs before I got my iPod. I've burned like 2 since. It's probably the best thing I've ever bought in my life...Seriously. —dr ipod |
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superhew |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 12:18 PM ive got a rca lyra, its really small, but its doesnt have nearly as much space as an ipod. it works peerfect though, has more than enough space for a months worth of loveline episodes, which is nice while im at school. i heard that the ipod's battery becomes useless after 16 months? is this true? i want to get one on ebay but i dont know if its worth it because it probably wont come with the store warranty. —superhew |
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dr ipod |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 12:49 PM I've heard about the battery issue, but no one I know personall has fallen victim to it. I've had mine for a year now, and nothing. My friend got mine a week after I did (he was convinced the moment I got it) and he has had no problems either. On top of this, I know 2 people who have had the very first version of the Ipod and they have absolutely no problems. The only problem they have is they want the new model! —dr ipod |
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Johnny |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 6:01 PM I'm just saying from my personal experiences, many of my friends have had battery problems. I also remember reading somewhere that there was going to be a lawsuit against apple because they lied about battery time or something, no clue if it was it actually happened. —Johnny |
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dr ipod |
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 8:38 PM If you have a Best Buy near you, I'd recommend just paying the retail price for it, then tack on their $50 4 year "performance service plan" If ANYTHING happens to it, you can exchange it. If you can tell a good lie you could just break it yourself and exchange it when something new is out, or if the screen is scratched up fafter a few years or somethng. That's the only reason I love Best Buy.. —dr ipod |
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CrimsonBrian |
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Thursday, May 13, 2004 at 7:12 AM There was an article come time back about the battery issue in the iPods. It seemed to be pretty isolated and Apple now offers a replacement that they will install for you (of course you have to pay). The NY Times also did a review of all the MP3 players in their Circuits section about two months ago and they said that while there were some serious contenders, the iPod still carried the day. Their major complaint was no FM receiver, however, I dont really care all that much about the radio. I switch between the CD changer in my car and my iPod (also can be used in the car with one of those $10 tape adapters from Radio Hack). I have only had my iPod about a month, it froze on me once, but a quick reset and no problems since then; and I use it almost constantly. I also agree with dr ipod: forget the mini, spend the extra $50 for the larger version. —CrimsonBrian |
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superhew |
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Thursday, May 13, 2004 at 12:43 PM yea minis are such a stupid waste of money. less space and more money for a few inches smaller? not worth it for me. the big ones are already too expensive for me... —superhew |
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