Christmas gift help - Freeze-Frame Radio

Date: Fri Dec 9 11:55 2005

Christmas gift help

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

That depends on if she HAS to have a real IPod or if she wants just an mp3 player.

The Ipod is one brand (the most popular & most expensive) of mp3 players. It is the brand that comes only from Apple.com or it's retailers. I got Mrs. Web a "Dell Jukebox" (from dell.com) player for her birthday. It works great with the only issue being that the battery life (recharagable) is considerably shorter than advertised.

To get your music into the player, I believe you have to have a computer and plug the player into the computer to transfer the files from the coputer to the player.

Many people use "I Tunes" which is Apple's music download site. You buy songs for $.99 each, download them and put them on your player. The songs only come in Apple's format which is not mp3. They are also protected to they can only be copied a certain number of times or they will stop working.

Personally, we still buy the cd and then I use my computer to "rip" the cd to mp3 files. I like the control of being able to rip the songs at the quality level I chose. Then I can listen to the songs on my laptop and also put them on Mrs. Web's mp3 player.

Need more details?

Added:

Itunes is not the only download site. Napster is another one. There are two models of download sites. One is you buy the song like in Itues and you can keep it forever.

The other is a subscription service where you pay a monthly fee and can download all the music you want. If you ever stop paying the monthly fee, all the you music you downloaded through that service will stop playing.

I still like paying only a little bit more and having a physical copy of the original CD to do with as I please. The advantage I can see to buying individual songs is that you don't have to buy an entire cd if you only want a couple songs off it.

-- Edited by WebGuy at 13:46, 2005-12-09

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

Ruby - an Ipod is Apple's version of a MP3 player. It is similar to a walkman or CD player in that it is personal player. Although, they do make some contraption that allows you to dock it and listen like a regular CD player. You have to download the music into it, so you will need to have access to a computer. You can use CDs that you already own or you can purchase songs on the internet to download. Things to look for are memory size (GB or MB) so you can have a rough idea of how many songs it can hold. Unlike a computer, you can not add memory to a MP3 player.

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

I am similar to Web. I own Dell's version of the MP3 player. I bought it for myself and my 30th birthday present. I have transferred most of my collection to my DJ and still have plenty of room to add more. I have 20 GB.

Molly · The Mediator

I'm getting my husband an MP3 player for Christmas. I don't have much to spend, so I'm not getting a big name, and here's the one I found with the best features for the best price that I think will work for him: Zen Nano

Date: Fri Dec 9 13:54 2005

Cool, thanks that is a start.

My concern is how she is going to put music into it and keep it there. Web I got fuzzy there.

If you buy the song it is then yours forever? If I buy an Ipod, I can only gets songs through Apple?

I am not really wanting to pay full price for an Ipod. If I went with Dell that is a good recommendation? How do you transfer stuff if you have a cd? Can you do that with any of them Is my computer going to need something added to it to enable her to download songs?

Sorry!

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

Good point Fuzzy to watch for storage size.

I got my wife the 5 gig version. It was on sale for $150 which I thought was a pretty good deal.

Also, there are two types of players, solid state and hard drive. The solid state versions will run longer on a battery or charge and most hold one gig of data or less. The hard drive versions will hold much more as most of them are 5 gigs or more.

To give you an idea, I have been ripping our CD's at a quality of 160kb/s. Looking at four Keith Urban CD's, at that quality, each song is averaging 4.68 megs of each. At that rate, the 5 gig player will hold just over 1,000 songs. I believe the download sites run at a lower quality (128kb/s) than that which would mean more songs will fit in the player . . . at the cost of slightly reduced sound quality.

Date: Fri Dec 9 13:56 2005

Can you delete and put them on at will?

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

I believe the Ipod will play mp3's as well, but if you buy music from Apple's Itunes, it will only play on an Ipod.

Yes, if you buy and download the song, once you buy it, it is yours to keep considered you don't have a crash and lose your data on your computer and IPod.

You can use Windows Media player to rip cd's to your hard drive but it will do the files as .wma files rather than mp3. No biggie as long as the player you get will play .wma files. I prefer mp3 as it will play in most anything . . . even on my Linux desktops.

All you need to rip CD's to mp3 is software. There are many free rippers that do a fine job. I can help you with that if you need it. I do it as a two step process . . . I rip the songs with one program, then I used antoher to edit the mp3 id tags to make sure they will come up in the player as we want them to.

You just need software to get the songs from cd into the player and there are free choices to do that.

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

Yes Ruby you can.

When I bought my Dell, it came with similiar software. To tell you the truth, I bought my Dell to go with my Dell computer (plus it was on sale when I bought it). I figured it would make things easier. It came with software to copy your CDs to your computer and then you transfer them over to the MP3 player. Like I said, I have a 20GB. I presently have 7GB free. I already have 3104 tracks on it. That is a lot of songs.

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

Yes, you can delete songs off your player as you wish. In my case where I rip my own songs, I can put them on and take them back off as many times as I want.

I'm not sure with downloaded music though because of the copy limitations that exist. Someone who buys the downloads will know more about that than me.

Date: Fri Dec 9 14:13 2005

This info is so much more helpful than a salesman. Molly tell me more about yours? You can do all this stuff too?

Also, bear with me- too much mg, gb talk, for what Molly shows, it can only hold 250 songs?

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

I'll try to explain the size thing better . . .

Each player has a maximum amount of memory available. One gig is 1,000 megs. So a 512 meg player is about 1/2 a gig.

A full song on a CD is likely to be around 40 megs. So, at full CD quality, a 512 meg player would only hold about 12 songs. By shrinking the song (at the cost of quality) you can get many more songs in that same amount of space.

MP3 and WMA are formats that pull some information out of the song's data. When you rip a song from a cd into an mp3, you can select the level of quality you want. The higher the quality, the larger the file size, and the less that will fit in your player.

It turns out that you can pull quite a bit of data out of a song and most human ears can't really hear the difference. If you switch back and forth from a CD to a farily high quality mp3, you will notice that the mp3 does not sound quite as "full". If you listened to one one day and the other the next, I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference.

The one that Mz is looking at will hold 512 megs of song data. At the lowest quality setting they recommend, that is about 256 songs. At the quality I've been ripping my songs at, it would hold about 110 songs. It is just a trade-off between song quality, file size, and how you are going to use the player.

If you are going to be using your player with a pair of ear buds in a noisy environment, like riding a bus to work, then quality is probably not a big issue. If you are going to relax in your quiet living room, with some quality headphones and want to sink into some classical music, then song quality would likely be a much higher priority.

Molly · The Mediator

In my case, it's either a lower quality cheaper player or no player at all. He'll also mainly be using it while he's walking home from work, though the one I'm looking at does come with an FM transmitter, so I wouldn't be surprised if he uses it around the house as well. Considering we sometimes still listen to tapes, sound quality is not that big of an issue.

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

One more thing I'll add on this Ruby . . . try to determine if she has to have an ipod or if she just want's an mp3 player.

The ipod is the "in" player. Its like if she wants a certain pair of Nike shoes and you got her something similar but not Nike, will she still be happy with her shoes? If she really wants, and will only be happy with an ipod brand player, then get her the biggest you can afford, and the rest of this megabyte, song quality stuff doesn't matter.

Date: Fri Dec 9 15:15 2005

Well I will need to talk to her, but she is different. She never has an opinion! Very rare for a teenager. I doubt she would be honest anyway. I told my hubby I am doing research and he needs to get over the word Ipod and think MP3. He is really clueless, so he does not care. Like MZ said $$$. She is responsible and a very good kid, but she is 13 and does not live with us 24/7, so there are othere factors at play too.

If I get an Ipod, I can download from Itunes or do the cd thing right?

What about the connection from the MP3 into my computer? What does my computer need- maybe like a port or something?

WebGuy · Doesn't Do Windows

Yes, with the ipod, you can buy music from itunes or play mp3's that you will create from your own cd's. I don't have one, but I'm pretty sure the ipod will play regular mp3's too.

The connection is just a USB cable similar to what your digital camera uses.

(I think) All players come with software to help you copy your music from your computer to the player.

Date: Fri Dec 9 15:53 2005

Thanks so much. This is the best way to shop!

CP · Lord of the Lair

Try browsing through ebay. You may be able to get the best of both worlds.

pipsar6 · Chocolate Pip Cookie

Don't know if this is any help Web but on your battery issue earlier...you will probably find that after running down' Mrs Web's batteries several times and having several full recharges, they will improve their charge.

My kids have been after players too...MP3's v iPods...I didn't know where to start either. Got a couple of not too expensive MP3's for them - I can't wait to get them open and start experimenting

Ultimo · King of the Ring

Ruby another thing to consider is that all new Ipods now play video and allow you to look at digital photo's too, I own an Ipod myself, mines not one of the new video ones but still the best thing I have brought in years, Ipods will play many formats, when you are converting a CD, in Itunes preferences menu you can choose which format to use, AAC, AIFF, Apple LossLess, MP3 or WAV but as Web has said when you are downloading from Itunes you get a format that only plays on the Ipod I think, I have never used anything other than IPod but Im guessing that most of the MP3 players are pretty much the same now.

Date: Wed Dec 14 09:17 2005

Thanks Ultimo, but for a 13 year old, she can wait til she is older for all those bells and whistles.

Hey I got this via email today, any advice on this one?

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