Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Megafoo Chavez said:
I thought so too, until I realized that you can have the system just play the music that's highly rated. In other words, it's for smart random play.
btw-- gross avatar!
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iPod nano buy? or not
- Thread starter Myoclonic Jerk
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I thought so too, until I realized that you can have the system just play the music that's highly rated. In other words, it's for smart random play.
btw-- gross avatar!
actually the rating system is there for random playlists. party shuffle for example, plays songs based primarily on ratings.. i.e. higher rated songs get played most frequently. My Highest Rated playlist also does this in which you can even limit and randomize the playlist contents.
Ratings are really the only thing that makes sense. There is also number of times played (which is also used on some smart playlists) but that can be misleading because a song can play a couple times (as part of an album) but you really don't like it.
Hopefully eventually Apple will use ratings like Tivo and start providing suggestions from iTMS based on your ratings of various songs, albums, and artists.
Ratings are really the only thing that makes sense. There is also number of times played (which is also used on some smart playlists) but that can be misleading because a song can play a couple times (as part of an album) but you really don't like it.
Hopefully eventually Apple will use ratings like Tivo and start providing suggestions from iTMS based on your ratings of various songs, albums, and artists.
Cauliflower of Love
Banned
borghe said:
Probably only counts full played songs. So if you don't like it, chances are you skip it. At least my karma works like that.
---- said:
I'll be the 1st to say I think apple products are overpriced. However, I don't believe the nano is. 4GB of FLASH is not cheap to produce- that along with a color screen, etc etc- and I believe its reasonable.
Put one on hold today at my uni bookstore, w/student discount. This will be my 1st apple product of any kind, ever.
I've been looking into getting an iPod (and getting back into music in general), this seems PERFECT. Wow, so small. Techwhore in me is jazzed.
I do have a question though. More of a general question. Does anyone own any audio speakers or anything used with the dock for the iPod? Like this Bose Speaker set. I think something like this would be a great idea for my bedroom or something. Any opinions (searching for a thread didn't turn up much)?
I do have a question though. More of a general question. Does anyone own any audio speakers or anything used with the dock for the iPod? Like this Bose Speaker set. I think something like this would be a great idea for my bedroom or something. Any opinions (searching for a thread didn't turn up much)?
I'll order one as soon as money will allow. It's pricy at ~$325 Canadian (after edu discount), but whatever. I just wish I lucked out like my friend, who managed to get a $60 discount instead of $20 thanks to a goof by Apple. In the end, he got the Nano with a dock for roughly $40 less than the Nano alone costs after tax.
picked two 4GB up yesterday at the apple store on Regent Street. Drove into London on a whim. They got them in 20mins before I got there, and there was already a queue.
VERY thin. Still quite tall, but its the thinness thats the killer. Makes the normal ipod look huge in comparison. I like my 40GB photo, but you do have to compromise on size. With the nano, its really got to the size where its irrelevant - your headphones will probably use up more space than this thing.
The UI is pretty much identical to a photo, but smaller. Same nice click feedback on the wheel etc. The wheel is quite narrow compared to the photo, and I found myself 'falling off' when spinning a lot. Plus the main surface is quite 'sticky', so that can combine to feel a little clunky.
White looks great - black is OK but I'm not convinced by it. Maybe I'm too indoctrinated by ipods ID to accept anything other than white.
Haven't done anything with them yet - I'll probably sell the black one as I'm not fond of the look, and keep the white. I'll sell my 40GB to fund it - its *way* too big for me in comparison, and I'm pretty sure the music I actually listen to is a lot less than 4GB.
^
| Thats two stacked together BTW
VERY thin. Still quite tall, but its the thinness thats the killer. Makes the normal ipod look huge in comparison. I like my 40GB photo, but you do have to compromise on size. With the nano, its really got to the size where its irrelevant - your headphones will probably use up more space than this thing.
The UI is pretty much identical to a photo, but smaller. Same nice click feedback on the wheel etc. The wheel is quite narrow compared to the photo, and I found myself 'falling off' when spinning a lot. Plus the main surface is quite 'sticky', so that can combine to feel a little clunky.
White looks great - black is OK but I'm not convinced by it. Maybe I'm too indoctrinated by ipods ID to accept anything other than white.
Haven't done anything with them yet - I'll probably sell the black one as I'm not fond of the look, and keep the white. I'll sell my 40GB to fund it - its *way* too big for me in comparison, and I'm pretty sure the music I actually listen to is a lot less than 4GB.
^
| Thats two stacked together BTW
mrklaw said:picked two 4GB up yesterday at the apple store on Regent Street. Drove into London on a whim. They got them in 20mins before I got there, and there was already a queue.
VERY thin. Still quite tall, but its the thinness thats the killer. Makes the normal ipod look huge in comparison. I like my 40GB photo, but you do have to compromise on size. With the nano, its really got to the size where its irrelevant - your headphones will probably use up more space than this thing.
The UI is pretty much identical to a photo, but smaller. Same nice click feedback on the wheel etc. The wheel is quite narrow compared to the photo, and I found myself 'falling off' when spinning a lot. Plus the main surface is quite 'sticky', so that can combine to feel a little clunky.
White looks great - black is OK but I'm not convinced by it. Maybe I'm too indoctrinated by ipods ID to accept anything other than white.
Haven't done anything with them yet - I'll probably sell the black one as I'm not fond of the look, and keep the white. I'll sell my 40GB to fund it - its *way* too big for me in comparison, and I'm pretty sure the music I actually listen to is a lot less than 4GB.
^
| Thats two stacked together BTW
Tell me how is the Nano in comparison to say the Zen there? I have the zen and i'm thinking about just saying fuck it and getting a nano instead.
B'z-chan said:
Jesus Christ get the nano!
The zen is a POS IMO. Unless you absolutely cannot live without FM radio, or you use WMA download services or subscriptions (I bought it because its a playforsure device), then avoid.
Nasty UI, nasty screen, nasty slide touchpad thingy trying hard to be a click wheel. It sounds OK but thats about it. Its so difficult to find stuff to play that you stop bothering.
Plus nano gives you access to itunes playlists which are a lot more flexible than windows media player
Oh, and it more than twice as big and a lot heavier than the nano.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
i've heard some people complain about ipod sound, although I've never noticed problems, does the nano have better sound?
wandering goat
Member
Supposedly the iPods (bar shuffle) have a bass roll off in the lower frequencies on low impedence headphones (like around 30 Ohms.) That's why some people have no problem with them and others can really notice it.
as kurashima said, their is some serious bass rolloff on the non-shuffles with certain impedence headphones (I bevelieve it's a range that tops out at 30ohm). This problem is further compounded by the fact that using bass boost on most MP3's overdrives the amp in the ipod and causes distortion and crackling.
There is a fix for it that can get all AAC/MP3's working fin on non-shuffles. Basically it requires you to use MP3Gain on your collection (which everyone should do anyway) and lower the gain on all of your files (not actually reencode them but fill the gain tag of ID3/MP4). With the lowered gain you can then apply bass boost (or any bass boosting EQ) to your songs and it will give it increased bass on those headphones without the distortion and crackling.
The only two minor glitches are that a) it can take a while to batch MP3Gain on a large collection (it has to decode the WAV, check the levels, add the tags to the original MP3, then move on for each file), and b) some players and jukeboxes (though not itunes or ipod) have issues with the Undo tags that MP3Gain adds to the file if they are expecting only older ID3v1 tags.
Anyway, my thought on this approach is that everyone should run MP3Gain anyway just because audio normalization is a necessity and it does it without actually changing the audio portion of the file. So if you normalize all of your files and set them for a few decibels lower it's basically win/win. If you have some nominal impedence headphones they will still sound the same and you can crank the volume up. If you have some 30ohm headphones, you can turn on bass boost for songs you want bass in and get nice sounding undistorted bass.
there are still some signal to noise issues, but I don't know if those carried over to the nano. I was told that those issues were directly related to having a hard drive sitting on top of the DAC/Amp. But I don't know for sure. I just have the crappy stock Apple ear buds for now so I can't say.
Somewhat back on topic, just had to walk somewhere last night and had my 60GB in my pocket. I now get the nano. In no way shape or form was it convenient for me to walk around with my 60GB just sitting there. The arm band is fine, but if you aren't exercising and just want to carry it around in your pocket.... well, I'm gonna get a nano.
There is a fix for it that can get all AAC/MP3's working fin on non-shuffles. Basically it requires you to use MP3Gain on your collection (which everyone should do anyway) and lower the gain on all of your files (not actually reencode them but fill the gain tag of ID3/MP4). With the lowered gain you can then apply bass boost (or any bass boosting EQ) to your songs and it will give it increased bass on those headphones without the distortion and crackling.
The only two minor glitches are that a) it can take a while to batch MP3Gain on a large collection (it has to decode the WAV, check the levels, add the tags to the original MP3, then move on for each file), and b) some players and jukeboxes (though not itunes or ipod) have issues with the Undo tags that MP3Gain adds to the file if they are expecting only older ID3v1 tags.
Anyway, my thought on this approach is that everyone should run MP3Gain anyway just because audio normalization is a necessity and it does it without actually changing the audio portion of the file. So if you normalize all of your files and set them for a few decibels lower it's basically win/win. If you have some nominal impedence headphones they will still sound the same and you can crank the volume up. If you have some 30ohm headphones, you can turn on bass boost for songs you want bass in and get nice sounding undistorted bass.
there are still some signal to noise issues, but I don't know if those carried over to the nano. I was told that those issues were directly related to having a hard drive sitting on top of the DAC/Amp. But I don't know for sure. I just have the crappy stock Apple ear buds for now so I can't say.
Somewhat back on topic, just had to walk somewhere last night and had my 60GB in my pocket. I now get the nano. In no way shape or form was it convenient for me to walk around with my 60GB just sitting there. The arm band is fine, but if you aren't exercising and just want to carry it around in your pocket.... well, I'm gonna get a nano.
Could someone here answer a question about the Nano that have it? There are some people that are afraid that it's fragile and might snap in half or bend easily or whatever because it's so thin. -_-
Now, I can't be sure either, but I assume it's not easy to break it at all. So, could you please try to bend it or see if it's really tough material and stuff? Thanks.
Now, I can't be sure either, but I assume it's not easy to break it at all. So, could you please try to bend it or see if it's really tough material and stuff? Thanks.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
good post borghe, I don't know anything about sound. what is bass rolloff? and can someone explain impedence. I don't understand either.... MP3Gain though, I'm going to try that.
impedence is how much resistance is actually in the line. so 30ohm headphones have 30ohms of resistance in the line. you don't have to worry about what it really means, just in this case know that different speakers (or earbuds in this case) have different levels of impedence. in this case, certain ones on non-shuffles (26-30ohm I believe) causes bass rolloff. The problem is that most ear buds are at this impedence. :\
Bass roll off is just a fancy way of saying they dont reproduce bass well. In technical terms it means that at a certain point, the lower frequency you have the more it is dropped from the speaker. almost like a flat EQ with the bottom bands dropped down in a bell curve.
Bass roll off is just a fancy way of saying they dont reproduce bass well. In technical terms it means that at a certain point, the lower frequency you have the more it is dropped from the speaker. almost like a flat EQ with the bottom bands dropped down in a bell curve.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Makes sense... The EMF produced by HDD can certainly screw things up. I know for a fact on my work computer I hear hiss in my headphones (attached to the same computer) every time a HDD reads/writes something intensively. Still, it's a shitty excuse. Other players, like Iriver or Sony's NWHDs have HDDs in them, are smaller or about the same size as ipod, and have pristine audio quality with this problem entirely absent.borghe said:
Signal to noise is my *by far* biggest issue with Ipods. If someone could listen to their new nano using some decent headphones or in-ear buds and confirm/deny the problem is still there, I'd be thankful.
For those who don't know, what this problem is, it's basically the noise that you can hear on more silent parts of the songs. Easiest to notice between the songs, if you turn the volume up all the way, you can hear the humming noise coming from the amp electronics itself, not something that's actually in the song.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Another question - does nano support USB 2.0 transfer? Can someone measure the transfer speed rate?
Cauliflower of Love
Banned
Ruzbeh said:
Looked better in the press pics. =/
Jill Sandwich
the turds of Optimus Prime
iPods attract fingerprints and scratches too y'know.
Cauliflower of Love
Banned
Ruzbeh said:
=*(
BobbyRobby
Member
Can you buy just a regular 20GB or 40GB iPod anymore? I don't really have any use for looking at pictures. If so, what do they run for?
Goddamnit. Where can I download that fucking Apple event? That streaming from the website doesn't work. Edit: Found it.
I just think it's hilarious how cool Steve is when he unveils stuff. :lol And how has this 'cool' look on his face. When he introduced the Mac Mini he was like "it's like this and that... and it's soo awesome * shows picture, crowd goes wow * in fact, let me show you one right now * crowd goes WOO WOOOO*".
BobbyRobby: http://www.apple.com/ipod/color/
I just think it's hilarious how cool Steve is when he unveils stuff. :lol And how has this 'cool' look on his face. When he introduced the Mac Mini he was like "it's like this and that... and it's soo awesome * shows picture, crowd goes wow * in fact, let me show you one right now * crowd goes WOO WOOOO*".
BobbyRobby: http://www.apple.com/ipod/color/
SteveMeister
Hang out with Steve.
BobbyRobby said:
20GB iPod is $299, 60GB iPod is $399. If you go to http://store.apple.com and click on the red "SAVE" tag in the lower right, you'll see items currently on sale along with refurbished products, and there are always various iPods available there.
But for a new iPod, the only one without a color screen now is the iPod shuffle, which of course HAS no screen.
shantyman said:
just use the fucking thing and stop looking at it.
I had to do the same thing today. My black one is smudgy, but fuck it, just listen to some music...
Mine is now in my wallet
while listening in the car via cassette adapter, I noticed that the nano is smaller in all dimensions than a cassette.......I wonder if someone could build a cassette adapter that the nano fits inside
Beer Monkey
Member
no gapless + no FLAC = no iPod for me. Sticking with Karma, will eventually upgrade to something that runs Rockbox.
Those Sony OLEDs are dead sexy.
Those Sony OLEDs are dead sexy.
Beer Monkey
Member
I download live shows in FLAC all the time and I like just dumping them in my player and listening to them. If I convert, then I have to deal with two formats (ALAC doesn't play on as many devices, like my modded Xbox).
-1 iPod
Wow, the iPod nano is horribly dumb.
Okay, for people who don't listen to much, that's awesome. 4 GB is fine.
But why the FUCK would ANYONE pay $250 for a 4 GB iPod when the 40 GB is only $50 more!? That has to be some of the most ridiculous pricing I've ever seen. And the 60 GB iPod is only $100 more.
Makes absolutely no sense to me.
Okay, for people who don't listen to much, that's awesome. 4 GB is fine.
But why the FUCK would ANYONE pay $250 for a 4 GB iPod when the 40 GB is only $50 more!? That has to be some of the most ridiculous pricing I've ever seen. And the 60 GB iPod is only $100 more.
Makes absolutely no sense to me.
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