Spiritualized

Got an I-Pod on holiday in San Fran and am about to commence whacking some music on it. Do I have to download I-Tunes to use it or can I use other media players such as Media Monkey or Windows Media Player? What are the differences if there is the option? And can you still decide which format you rip CD's in (ie MP3, WMA, etc.)? Any tips much appreciated as I have heard it from quite a few people that I-Tues is a bit of a bummer to use. Thanks.

You must use iTunes. There might be some crazy open-source program that would let you do it, but as far as I know, iPods only work with iTunes. You can still choose which format when ripping the CD. iTunes has mp3, AAC, AIFF, WAV, and Apple Lossless (.m4p?). What also sucks is that you have to import the CD to your computer and then to the iPod, not directly CD->iPod. There is some trick with windows (i think), but I'm not great with computers...

You can try Songbird ( http://www.getsongbird.com ) as an alternate to iTunes. It's open source, I think, and is under continual development. It's nice and light and does most iTunes things like album art and cover flow but it doesn't link to the store and handle podcasts or video. If you do download it you'll also need to download the iPod add-on once you have installed Songbird.

It's also quite nifty to use at work as you don't need admin rights to install it on your PC.

The good thing about iTunes on the other hand it is does everything you will want to do with your iPod all in one place.

Give me a shout if you need help with either.

I'm just starting to get my heads round I-tunes now so thanks for your help. One rather silly question though....when I-Tunes can't find the cover art for an album, when the album clearly exists (and is even on sale in the I-Tunes store!), how do you manually find the cover art? And what about albums that it doesn't recognise. I remember on Windows Media Player it gave you the chance of finding the best match.

You can just do a google image search for it, choose the best one, highlight the album, right click -> get info, and drag the image to the artwork box.

cheers Toomilk, job done.

Sorry guys, yet another boring I-Tunes related question. If I'm ripping CD's while not on the internet, is it possible to get all the track, artist, album info along with cover art when I do re-connect to the internet or do I have to be connected to the internet at the time of ripping for this to happen? Any answers, as always, are greatly appreciated.

Hey,

While ripping and your connected it will seek the record, tracks and artwork.
If you are not connected to the internet then select the tracks and...
when you have connection at a later time...
Advanced > Get CD Track Names
Advanced > Get Album Artwork


Best,


M

I had a nano and lost it, then i bought a classic and the in-car (radio frequency) thingy...
I despair with i-tunes as a piece of software...I can have everything lovely-jubbly in my pc/laptop library and then when i syncronize it with my ipod it moves things into different/new folders on the ipod....it seems to sort in a bizarre way!
I like to sort in artist then album (quite bloody simple) but it sorts in so many bizarre ways...artist/feat artist/song/album/pot-luck!!!
It's probably some setting somewhere that i'm failing to do but it just seems onerous the amount of re-sorting/checking/hair-pulling/screaming required...i get fed up with it as a tool for listening too music quite easily.
The in-car attachment is guff as well...when you find a channel to play it through you have to over-compress the sound in order to hear it!
I found media monkey was fairly good at sync(ing) with ipod however i got rid of media monkey as after a while it stopped me ripping music to my pc/laptop.

Anyway, i keep meaning to persevere with the thing but at the minute I hulk about 100cd's in the boot of my car.
It just bores me slightly and i could have bought 25cd's with the money i shelled out for the thing!
Ach well, it still looks nice!!!

Cheers Modlab...that works.

hallo.
more quandaries for consideration.

I am fairly new to the ipod scene. I want to transfer some new stuff from itunes to the ipod.. manually. The "manual" box is checked... what do I do now? Do I really have to "uncheck" everything else and it will then sync the new checked tracks?

I tried checking "selected playlists only", but it won't let me.
Since I've more room (and more music) on the pod than on the computer, I don't wanna lose all that by doing the auto sync.
anyone know?
thanks

Connect the iPod and make sure that iTunes identifies the device. Once the iPod shows up in iTunes, just select the stuff you want to put onto the ipod and drag it to where you see your ipod in itunes.

thank you.
easy as pie!

and.. Anyone else have a cd of Royal Albert Hall that refuses to be put in yr computer?

Here's another one of those "yep, I'm d-d-d-dumb" type ipod questions. I charged mine up yesterday, all fine, uploaded a couple of new cd's to it (Mojo Mags 'Dream Pop' cd - very good, and a new Weatherall track), all fine, disconnected it.

Went to play it this morning and it was completely empty of music. Nothing. Zero songs. Wiped. Zilch. What the hell has happened? It's 6 years old this summer and has been playing up a bit recently, ie: not being able to turn it off after playing, so could it be an ipod on it's last legs? I can easily whack all the tunes back onto it from my ext hard drive/itunes but was wondering if anyone had experienced the same thing or something similar.

Cheers.

Hi,

one thing i could think of is that you received a firmware update when connecting your iPod (it should have asked you, but who knows). If the update isnt compatible or maybe a "bit" broken, such a thing can happen.
Another idea maybe that your battery is really wrecked. And since its an iPod you dont have much chances to replace the battery.
6 years is a good time for electronic stuff - so it can be the time to get a new one. Maybe reset it first - itunes offers you such a thing (doing this, be sure to force it to reinstall the firmware or better update to latest). Let it stay connected for maybe one day so the battery gets fully loaded. After this try to load songs onto it and check directly if theyre available. Then let it lay around during the night and check the next day. If the songs are gone its sure the battery. If theyre still there, it should work again

If in doubt, buy a new one.

NightWash wrote:Hi,

one thing i could think of is that you received a firmware update when connecting your iPod (it should have asked you, but who knows). If the update isnt compatible or maybe a "bit" broken, such a thing can happen.
Another idea maybe that your battery is really wrecked. And since its an iPod you dont have much chances to replace the battery.
6 years is a good time for electronic stuff - so it can be the time to get a new one. Maybe reset it first - itunes offers you such a thing (doing this, be sure to force it to reinstall the firmware or better update to latest). Let it stay connected for maybe one day so the battery gets fully loaded. After this try to load songs onto it and check directly if theyre available. Then let it lay around during the night and check the next day. If the songs are gone its sure the battery. If theyre still there, it should work again

If in doubt, buy a new one.

Cheers for the top tips. I did a manual reset on the ipod during the same day and all the songs came back in. Very weird but very glad my music is back. I've had to do about 3-4 resets so far this year which I never used to do so can only assume the battery is on it's last lap around the ipod circuit. Can't afford a new one so hope it lasts the rest of the year, or more.

What's cheaper than an ipod and a good one to buy? Do they link up to itunes?

johnnyboy wrote:What's cheaper than an ipod and a good one to buy? Do they link up to itunes?

Well, not easy to answer. Most mp3 players are cheaper than ipods. I suggest youre looking for an ipod with 40 or 60GB, so not a nano or something.
Sansa makes some nice mp3 players and you may have the chance to update it so rockbox runs on the device. Rockbox is a free firmware that offers some cool stuff on top and is still growing. There was a topic somewhere about it.
Samsung, Anchor, Sony and the iRivers maybe also something you would like, also i am not sure about the prices and the storage they offer.
Im not sure if they will work with iTunes at all since iTunes is really special apple crap. Usually mp3 players are much easier to handle since you just put your mp3 files in a special folder (say music for music files) and power it on...thats it. iTunes has to create/update a database and also renames your music files into something like asbe456.mp3 which is shit in my eyes. If youre used to itunes you wont care but if you are not used to it or cant use it (like me) its a really horrible "tool".
Nevertheless i bought myself a nano 5g recently and i am almost happy with it. The battery seems to leak (after 2 month!) a bit and i had to find a way to copy my files onto it without itunes. I found something (gtkpod/libgpod) but this lasted around some weeks which were very unpleasant. I was up to throw the thingy out of the window...

One factor to ease your decision maybe the music/video formats they offer. Its not all mp3/mp4. Many players can play various formats and also you dont use them at the moment you may use them in the future.

ro wrote:Anyone else have a cd of Royal Albert Hall that refuses to be put in yr computer?

see, I bought the CD brand new, it played in an old CD player I had that went South, but it has never allowed itself to be uploaded into itunes (computer spits it out each time I try), and simply won't play on the remaining CD player I have.
So I can't listen to it at all.
I sure miss hearing those first three tracks.
Anyone willing to send a file via PM or something?

well, that's sorted.
Thanks.

I've got an iPod/iTunes issue - is there a simple way to downgrade the quality slightly when copying music from my iTunes onto my iPod?

Basically, I buy CDs, then import them into iTunes as Apple Lossless files. Then I've been transferring them onto my iPod, but these files are taking up a lot of space, so I would rather have them as mp3s on the iPod (while keeping the files as Apple Lossless on my iTunes).

Any help would be much appreciated.

Hi,


Yes there is a button... When you sync. You have a choice to convert the songs to 128bit in the options window.


B,

M

MODLAB wrote:Hi,


Yes there is a button... When you sync. You have a choice to convert the songs to 128bit in the options window.


B,

M

I didn't realise it was that simple - thanks a lot!

mkb wrote:

MODLAB wrote:Hi,


Yes there is a button... When you sync. You have a choice to convert the songs to 128bit in the options window.


B,

M

I didn't realise it was that simple - thanks a lot!

Your Welcome!

M