Re: Classical music on iPod

In article <H35Hf.9183$Nv2.2481@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
wjmccn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
I'm considering buying an iPod (or other MP3 player) but there's the
problem of how they handle gaps (or lack thereof) between tracks. They
all either add gaps or cross-fade between tracks, both unacceptable for
classical music. But, if I rip a multi-track work as a single track
("song" in MP3 parlance ... yuck!), then all should be well, right?
Assuming I'm willing to put up with a symphony or concerto as a single
track, is there some other pitfall I'm missing? [BTW, I'm not really
interested in buying music off the net; my primary interest is in ripping
CDs I own.]

I know there was a thread not long ago that addressed some of this, so
apologies in advance if I missed the answers to my questions.

Assuming the gap problem can, indeed, be overcome, does anyone have
specific recommendations for MP3 players? ... iPod? ... Creative? ...
Toshiba? ... ???

-- Bill McC.


I have a Creative Zen Micro which I bought partly because it sounded
better than the iPods I had listened to (and reviews I had read agreed)
although I'm told iPods have improved in the past year. I like a small
player because I don't need to keep my entire collection on it, just
what I plan to listen to at this time. It's not a substitute for my
stereo system, it just makes it easier to listen to music when I want.

Other major points in favor of the Zen Micro are built-in FM receiver
and removable battery (you can take extra batteries with you and swap
them). I use the generic MP3 firmware rather than the firmware that
integrates with Windows Media Player.

I rip using Easy CD-DA Professional, which costs $30 but is at least as
good a ripper as EAC while providing much more flexibility, including
format conversions, CD burning and tag editing. It supports LAME MP3,
aac, flac, wma and others internally, as well as external encoders.

I prefer MP3 to aac or wma because it is reasonably universal, meaning
that my rips will play just as well on an iPod or any other player I
might get including PDA's like the Treo. Even if ripping is quick and
painless, entering information is not for Classical music and Jazz,
which are poorly supported by the online databases. I have no interest
at all in buying music from any of the online vendors.

Most of the problems users cite with MP3 files come from deliberately
poor MP3 support in both iTunes and Windows Media Player (Apple and
Microsoft want you to use their proprietary formats).

LAME MP3 supports gapless encoding, as do some other encoders, but few
if any portable players do. Gapless playback means setting aside RAM for
buffering and that drives up the manufacturing costs. The gap on the Zen
Micro is smaller than iPods, but still present. Many software players
for computers provide gapless playback for music encoded as gapless.

Creative provides a Windows device driver that detects the player when
you connect it and shows it in the Windows Explorer. This lets me ignore
their music management software (an iTunes lookalike)and organize files
the way I want to, so they are accessible across different computers on
my home network. I can load files directly from whatever computer I plug
the player into, from hard drives or from DVDs for files I keep offline.

I have far too much music on CDs to store on a single system, so I keep
a lot offline after ripping. A complete set of Beethoven string quartets
or piano sonatas fits neatly on one DVD in both flac and mp3 formats.
The MP3s can be copied to hard disk or player as desired and the flac
files provide lossless backups with tags in case I want to convert to
some other format at some later date.

Hope some of this helps.

Jan Werner

--
FROMjwernerATjwdpDOTcom@xxxxxxxxxx
.

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