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iPod Storing Lossless on the new ipod 60 gig
- Thread starter JW8725
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Ok im guessing lossless makes a cd album about half the origional size right? So half of 650 = 325 mb per cd album.
and since 60 gig = 60X100 mb = 60,000 mb
Therefore 60,000 / 325 = Approx 186 Albums in Lossless.
Thats not bad, not bad at all.
Also since it costs $400 and can store 186 albums, that means it costs me $2.15 per album to store it.
and since 60 gig = 60X100 mb = 60,000 mb
Therefore 60,000 / 325 = Approx 186 Albums in Lossless.
Thats not bad, not bad at all.
Also since it costs $400 and can store 186 albums, that means it costs me $2.15 per album to store it.
Yeah, lossless is typically about 50% file size. Your figures are right for a 74 minute disc, 80 minutes would be 350-400MB in files, (I usually deal in shn and flac files which are about 400MB, forget how big the m4a lossless file sizes are, but since a cd is 700MB, lets say 350MB). That would recuce the number down to about 170, but if you have a lot of albums that were originally released as LPs, that would take them down to about 40 minutes, thus you could fit twice as many on.
Basically, your sums are pretty much spot on and you know your own music collection. You should be fine with your original estimate, but keep an eye on the battery life.
Basically, your sums are pretty much spot on and you know your own music collection. You should be fine with your original estimate, but keep an eye on the battery life.
It depends on your music type, the less complex the music, the bigger the file, try encoding a solo violin recital and a rock track of the same length, the violin track will be bigger...
The best you can hope for is around 50% reduction, but be aware this will cane your battery life, the ipod dumps around 32 Mb into it's RAM at one time, which equates to 3 or 4 songs at 320Kbps, with .aiff or lossless the disc is spinning up twice every song at least.
It'll shorten your drive life too, ipod drives are not designed to run all the time.
It'll sound good though.
The best you can hope for is around 50% reduction, but be aware this will cane your battery life, the ipod dumps around 32 Mb into it's RAM at one time, which equates to 3 or 4 songs at 320Kbps, with .aiff or lossless the disc is spinning up twice every song at least.
It'll shorten your drive life too, ipod drives are not designed to run all the time.
It'll sound good though.
I agree, I have a lot of live recordings that I trade and whenever i import one into iTunes, I don't import it at lossless, (which would be best for something that is already poorer in quality), but at the same 256kbps. I still notice the hard drive spinning fairly often and so at over twice the bitrate, I can only imagine how little skip protection you would have just for starters.
rossoUK said:
You should...it exists!!!
Really though, prior to Lossless I recall dumping a Dylan concert on my iPod in WAV or AIFF (this is a 1st gen iPod by the way), and I will never do that again -- skip protection in my car was an issue...
Lossless is roughly 1/2 the size of AIFF...so it would be better, but I do everything on the iPod and in iTunes at AAC 160kbps...keep the lossless stuff only for my boot collection, very few of which (at the moment) I keep in iTunes.
Lacero said:
I'm with the gent who started the thread. I too am excited to have left cassette tape sound quality behind... I also prefer DVDs to VHS ... FM stereo to AM music. It's why folks spend thousands of dollars on speakers, SA-CDs, HD-CDs, and DVD Audio - they want the best sound reproduction they can get (okay, some people just do it because they've read Stereophile magazine for too many years - you people with the $2,000 phono cartridges know who you are). Full frequency on a realistic soundstage, I would want that too on an iPod, so looking for the best compromise for quality to sound quality is reasonable.
Lacero said:
The issue with me is QUALITY. I have a £10,000 setup and only purchase hi end exotic highest fidelity kit. Thesedays if it dont say Linn or Naim I dont wanna know. I have a problem with the quality of music. To my ears MP3 sounds whack!
The problem with this is that the earphones and iPod only produce up to 20kHz, which is lower than CD quality anyway. When you are out and about you get background noise, which cancels out the sound differences. I too am an audiophile, but see no point in using lossless on something that not only won't be able to produce it as well as the original music and will be almost always used in conjunction with enough noise to make the differences null and void.
OK, quick lecture.....
Human hearing= 20hz to 20Khz (varies slightly)
Sample rate for CD=44.1Khz which yields a maximum frequency response of 19.98Khz under Nyquists Theorem.
So, no standard CD will producer frequencies above the range of human hearing.
This is obviously mitigated downwards by your delivery system.
The problem is that the tone of sound is affected by frequencies we cannot hear, it's called intermodulation. So "CD quality sound" isn't actually perfect at all, certainly I can hear the difference between an analog master and a CD. In fact all CD systems have a filter at 20K to remove the artifacts caused by the frequency of the wave approaching the frequency of the sample base, this is called aliasing.
Analog recording preserves some of the frequencies above 20K, and this is one of the reasons a lot of "audiophiles" like the sound of analog above the sound of digital, simply put, digital audio isn't as complex.
Lossy audio codecs remove frequencies they deem we won't hear in the mix, which changes the sound, lossless codecs seek to preserve the quality of the sound at the expense of the filesize.
The difference you hear between any lossy codec (MP3, AAC etc.) and Lossless is very real and a function of the mathematics. The term "lossless" itself is based on the delivery of identical waveform after encoding, no lossy codec will produce an identical waveform.
The iPod produces frequencies that match the quality of Red-book CD, if you attach decent headphones and play aiff files, it'll sound as good as a decent-ish CD player, but it won't sound as good as a Cambridge Audio or a Naim top-spec CD player.
All digital is not equal.
The real problem has been mentioned, that is environment, the quality of the audio is seriously degraded by environmental sound contamination, the best headphones in the world sound crap on an underground tube train where the ambient noise threshold is 80-100db.
So it depends where you listen to your iPod, and the codec you choose will only affect your listening pleasure in an environment that is quiet enough to hear the difference.
The ipod will never sound as good as a decent separates system, it can't, however it probably doesn't matter to the 95% of users who have no idea how audio actually works.
For the record, I have a mixture of 320Kbps AAC and Apple lossless files on my iPod and a pair of Sennhiesser MX550 earbuds, I listen on the train most days, and then through good systems at work or home.
Human hearing= 20hz to 20Khz (varies slightly)
Sample rate for CD=44.1Khz which yields a maximum frequency response of 19.98Khz under Nyquists Theorem.
So, no standard CD will producer frequencies above the range of human hearing.
This is obviously mitigated downwards by your delivery system.
The problem is that the tone of sound is affected by frequencies we cannot hear, it's called intermodulation. So "CD quality sound" isn't actually perfect at all, certainly I can hear the difference between an analog master and a CD. In fact all CD systems have a filter at 20K to remove the artifacts caused by the frequency of the wave approaching the frequency of the sample base, this is called aliasing.
Analog recording preserves some of the frequencies above 20K, and this is one of the reasons a lot of "audiophiles" like the sound of analog above the sound of digital, simply put, digital audio isn't as complex.
Lossy audio codecs remove frequencies they deem we won't hear in the mix, which changes the sound, lossless codecs seek to preserve the quality of the sound at the expense of the filesize.
The difference you hear between any lossy codec (MP3, AAC etc.) and Lossless is very real and a function of the mathematics. The term "lossless" itself is based on the delivery of identical waveform after encoding, no lossy codec will produce an identical waveform.
The iPod produces frequencies that match the quality of Red-book CD, if you attach decent headphones and play aiff files, it'll sound as good as a decent-ish CD player, but it won't sound as good as a Cambridge Audio or a Naim top-spec CD player.
All digital is not equal.
The real problem has been mentioned, that is environment, the quality of the audio is seriously degraded by environmental sound contamination, the best headphones in the world sound crap on an underground tube train where the ambient noise threshold is 80-100db.
So it depends where you listen to your iPod, and the codec you choose will only affect your listening pleasure in an environment that is quiet enough to hear the difference.
The ipod will never sound as good as a decent separates system, it can't, however it probably doesn't matter to the 95% of users who have no idea how audio actually works.
For the record, I have a mixture of 320Kbps AAC and Apple lossless files on my iPod and a pair of Sennhiesser MX550 earbuds, I listen on the train most days, and then through good systems at work or home.