MP3 for music and books?

Understood Bob, and I have no issue with what you say. In fact, I was starting to think going the other way from what I'm doing, and converging on the way you do it.

Tom:

Tom said:

Understood Bob, and I have no issue with what you say. In fact, I was starting to think going the other way from what I'm doing, and converging on the way you do it.

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However they are used, isn't this technology a great thing? About a year ago, I was shopping for a CD player with multiple CD capacity that I could move between my rig and my jeep. While looking at various units, a young salesman from Fry's asked my why I would want to do such a thing. He then asked me why I didn't go with an MP3 player such as an iPod -- and my response was, What's an iPod? Anyway, the rest is history - and I have no use for CD's anymore other than the ones I borrow to copy into my player.

What player do you have? The downside of my current player is that is is not compatible with Win Media Player and the SW interface that came with is not that great. The good news though is that I can play that puppy for several days without playing the same track twice. Sure is nice as a solo traveler.

Bob, I have the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 with 20GB hard drive. It's currently hooked to the audio system in my den, along with the XM Roadie receiver. Shortly after I bought the Noamd, they came out with the 40GB HD. A friend has the iPod, and I have to say that's a really slick machine.

Tom:

I started out with a Personal Jukebox.  20gb.  I got all my music on it and started ripping and coding books on CD from the Chicago Public Library.  Filled it up fast, so I started saving the books on my external 250gb backup hard drive.  I also got a 40gb iPod last year.  The menu system for the iPod is just awful compared to the clear, simple menu system for the Jukebox.  However, the iPod is smaller and easier to use when I'm biking.  Also, and here's a huge problem, the Jukebox was designed to make it impossible to recover from its hard drive.  The original thinking was that music was not supposed to be copied.  I gave away my entire Cd collection after I transferred it to the Jukebox.  I lucked into a UK website that reversed engineered the Jukebox, wrote new firmware that made it possible to transfer everything onto my hard drive.  It took 24 hours to transfer everything, but I was glad I could do it.  Now I have all my music on the iPod, plus about 30 books at a time.  When I'm biking, I can choose, and I'm not lugging a heavy MP3 player.  In fact I have given the Jukebox to my brother after loading their entire Cd collection on it.  I also have their music backed up on my computer hard drive and on the backup drive, like my music. 

Now, to the books.  I have been working to rip and code every audio book on CD I can get (all fiction, 95% mysteries) from libraries for the past 3 or 4 years.  In fact, this week I'm doing the 30 or so books that Mesa PL has acquired since last spring when I ripped and coded their collection.  I have something like 215 books saved and another 15 to do from the main branch before I look at what's at the east side branch.  They're all saved in MP3 format, and they load to the iPod in minutes.  In fact, before I put my music collection on the iPod, I was able to cram 63 books on it, with the rest of the collection backed up. 

My toad and my motorhome have only CD players, so I bought an FM transmitter that is compatible with the iPod.  There are some compatible with other players, where they plug into the earphone jack.  So I'm legal when I'm listening to books on the road.  I also have some cupholder adapters coming from Amazon that will hole the iPod upright in either vehicle while it's playing.  The FM transmitter works great, by the way.  I was looking at a Belkin at Circuit City for my brother.  $50.  Some of them are lousy, so you need to read reviews on Amazon or someplace. 

Earphones.  I tried the Etymotic ER4P in-ear phones.  They were VERY expensive.  I think over $200.  Unless they are very firmly and deeply inserted in the ear canal, the sound is tinny.  For books that's not so important.  What I found was that, despite a lot of ear cleaning, I was having trouble hearing, because they were jamming up my ears.  So I gulped hard at the loss and did some research.  Last weekend I picked up the Bang & Olufsen earphones.  They are just fantastic.  Great base, great music sound.  I need something that doesn't crush over the top of my head under my biking helmet.  These things cost around $170 and are extremely well made.  I don't have much money, but I'm almost tempted to get a backup pair, because they are so perfect for my needs.  Then, again, if they're that expensive, they should last, and I wouldn't want them if they didn't, I guess.  The ones that came with the iPod are already staticky and worthless.

I bought some excellent Altec iPod speakers, but I gave them to my brother and sister-in-law, who are having a great time with them.  They played them for a month on the same 4 AA batteries; the sound is superb; they have an auxiliary input jack for microphone (I think) and definitely for the Jukebox.  In fact, they came with a short wire to go from the aux to the Jukebox's earphone jack.  They have a dock for the iPod. 

Since I have everybody's music and all the books backed up (music is double backed up), they can drop the Jukebox in a lake while fishing and I'll be able to whip everything onto a new MP3 player quickly. 

Hope some of this is of interest.  I really enjoy playing with this stuff.  Copying the books is extremely boring, but it's time well spent.  Each CD takes about 5 minutes, including loading, unloading, etc.  Oh, by the way, I downloaded and use Musicmatch.  I'm currently on Ver 10.  $19.95. Works fine.  I don't think iTunes rips and codes. 

--pat

Thanks for that explanation Pat. I kept all my CDs after ripping them, and also kept a backup on an external HD. However, something happened in the ripping process because 20-25% of the tracks had a problem, so I eventually deleted them all. I'll be starting over soon, although it's a but of a daunting task.

Every time I see one of my friends with an iPod I'm tempted to go buy one. It's a really nice machine.

Terry Brewer had a very nice set of Bose powered speakers at Moab. Both speakers are essentially a single unit with an iPod port at the front. Just plug in the iPod and you have some good sound.

Tom:  I looked at the Bose speakers.  They were not well rated by reviewers I think mostly because of cost relative to sound.  Also,I thought it didn't have an auxiliary input jack.  All it had was the dock for the iPod, so other portables couldn't be plugged in.  Might have been a different speaker system.  I don't like noise when I'm doing things at home and never turn on a stereo or radio.  So I never used the Altec speakers that I bought with my iPod.  I would replace this iPod with another, if needed, even though the menu system is really pathetic, and it doesn't remember your place.  When I stop a book, I have to write down the disk and track info and wheel back to it when I start up next time I ride.  Some of these books are recorded with 99 tracks per disk, so that is quite a chore.  My Personal Jukebox would always fire up exactly where it left off, even if the battery had been changed.  The menu system had a line each for set, disk, track, a set of choices whether to repeat, shuffle, play through once, etc. On the iPod, once you select a playlist (each book is a playlist), you have to toggle through every disk and its tracks.  Ridiculous, unless I'm missing something.  Maybe there's a menu item that says for it to remember my place.  Loved that Jukebox, but they were twice as big and heavy as the iPod and didn't read and write like a hard drive. 

I forgot to note that my Bang & Olufsen earphones are the earbud types.  They also have a nice extension cord for plugging into something farther away, such as a stereo.  They have ear clips similar to the backs of eyeglasses that are hinged and clamp down comfortably but firmly. 

Musicmatch has trouble reading bad tracks.  The audio books from the library here were originally marked with a grease pen or something.  The hot lasers in people's players melted the grease all over the CDs.  They've since switched to a proper felt tip permanent ink pen, but the older books are just a mess.  Even with some of the permanent ink you can see they stuck the CDs back in the sleeves before they let the ink dry for a couple seconds.  Then there's the food and who knows what else all over the CDs and the scratches and gouges.  Musicmatch slows way down and tries to read the tracks, even playing them and recording in analog mode, but sometimes it can't.  The Evanovich books are in pathetic condition.  I  clean each disk before using it, so the books are returned to the library much cleaner than when I checked them out.  Still, out of 20 books I checked out the other day, maybe 3 or 4 of them couldn't be read entirely.  I list the collection, including bad copies, so I don't try them again.  I take my list whenever I go for more books.  Makes grabbing new ones much more efficient. 

If you're recording music, you use at least 128 bit, I assume.  I agree with you, it's a daunting task to start over again.  I did my music CDs twice when I realized my first 4gb and 6gb Jukeboxes were too small.  Got them better organized the second time.  My brother had two CDs that my system just couldn't read at all, but on a CD player they were fine.  I could do them in analog and copy the music through the earphone jack to my line in, but that's so degraded.

How many music CDs are you ripping and coding?

--pat

Tom:  Another problem, besides the bad menu system, on the iPod is the non-replaceable battery.  You need to take it apart, voiding the warranty, to replace the thing, or spend over $100 sending it out to Apple for replacement.  There's an Apple store here in Tempe or one of these towns which probably could make the change.  I bought the external AA battery pack, which doubles the size and weight of the iPod. The built-in battery doesn't run for the 10 hours or so they say, but it gets me around my 3-hour bike ride adequately.

That said, I'm eyeing the 60gb iPod Photo.  I dont need the Photo stuff, whatever that is, but the 60gb is, well, bigger.  Problem is, that iPod's bigger, too.  I have to carry my cellphone when I'm biking.  It would be great to have a unit as small as the iPod with 100gb or so capacity and work as a cellphone.  And a GPS. 

I bought the tiny microphone attachment for the iPod.  Works great.  The unit detects the microphone and the fact that you're recording and creates a file.  Fun. 

I love electronic gadgets.  Someday I need to get to CES in Las Vegas.  It's a trade show, so I'd have to lie my way in, but I manage with another show I attended a couple times.

--pat

Pat

I have no idea what the Bose speakers cost, but I must admit I was impressed when Terry used them in the outdoor makeshift threater at Moab. OTOH I'm a Bose fan, so I might be biased. They make decent quality stuff at a reasonable price.

No, it did not have a jack for plugging in other devices, as I found out when I tried to plug in my Jukebox III.

I wouldn't be able to use the B&O earbuds - I'd have to have an over-the-head pair of buds. B&O have been making state of the art audio for many years, and I used to stare at them in amazement when I was in my youth in the UK. They seemed kinda out of this world, very pricey, and out of my league. Haven't paid much attention to them since then.

How many music CDs are you ripping and coding?

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I forget, but it was something like 7,000 tracks.

Pat
I have 38,000 tracks on my G5 with 2 internal HDs occupying 230 Gigs.

This summer, I hope to start ripping all my audiobooks on cassette tapes into iTunes.

Applescript makes the labeling of tracks simple. One of my scripts, 'audiobooker', inserts the book title-CD# in the album field, author in artist, and it the track field put s an abbreviated version of title -CD#-chapter#. Usually the latter is short enough to fit on the iPod screen.

Next, I must convert my MP3 audiobooks to AAC so that they are 'bookmarkable'.

How low a bit rate do you find acceptable for audiobooks?

Tom:  A truly fabulous over-the-head earphone that has small ear covers and a thin metal band over the head is a Koss PortaproDJ headphone (at Amazon--- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00001P4ZH/qid=1116251692/sr=52-26/ref=sr_52_26_etk-pc/102-5689888-4369769?v=glance&s=electronics&n=541966).  $37.95, no tax, free shipping.  The sound is just amazing.  The problem I have with them and my bike helmet is that they have a comfort tab on either side of the head about at temple height that crushes under the helmet.  After a few minutes of having that tab smashed into my head, the pain is pretty bad.  Without the helmet, of course, the tab does its job making the earphones comfortable.  I gave away two pairs of them recently when I switched permanent to the buds.  I can't remember if I have a third.  They came with my Jukeboxes.

I had a funny Bose experience.  I ordered the wave radio, hoping to get a decent AM signal in downtown Chicago when I lived there.  I set the thing up, preset some of the stations.  The next morning I looked up, and my radio digital window was changing stations like crazy.  I lived in an 11-story, L shaped apartment building.  My apartment was inside the elbow of the L.  Apparently somebody within sight of my place had a Bose and was changing stations with his remote.  Or, more likely, I reset all the settings on his Bose, and he was putting things back.  I called Bose, and they said they didn't have multiple channels on the remote and that it probably wouldn't work in a dense metropolitan area.  So I mailed it back to them.

By the way, the AM reception was terrible to nonexistent with the Bose.  I finally got a more powerful radio from Sears that picked up AM much better.

--pat

rh:  I rip everything at 128 bit.  That way I don't have to remember to correct anything.

My external backup drive is 250gb.  My internal is 120gb, so I have the music backed up on both.  The books are only on the external.  I have been considering getting another external backup drive (my computer doesn't have expansion slots), on which I would probably do a second backup of the books.

In order to rip the cassette tapes, you have to play them and copy them via analog.  Doesn't seem worth it.  That's why I'm limited to CD books only.  Anyway, I'm still barely making a dent in the going-on 250 books I have so far. 

I have a PC, not a Mac, and, of course, I have iTunes for my iPod.  However, I couldn't figure out how to rip and code the library audio books with iTunes.  How are you doing it?  I have always enjoyed using Musicmatch.  It has some klutzy shortcomings, but it also has some nifty features and it does the job adequately.  The unlicensed "free" version is so slow, it's not worth having.  Anyway, the license is only $20. 

Any of the automated labeling features require going online so the program can look up the title from some code on the CD.  I don't bother.  I just type in the title once and name the disk something like "Disk 01 of 10" or whatever is appropriate.  Then Musicmatch takes the book title and disk title and incorporates them into each unique track name, which it automatically creates by numbering the tracks.  What it does wrong, though is to omit the "0" before the first 9 tracks, so they don't sort right in some instances.  I need to correct the setting for that.  I'd love to find a filename management program where I can do a mass search and replace to correct all the inadequate tracknames.  It would have to work on partial filenames and not distort the rest of the filename, though.  Norton used to have a file manager that could do it.


It's just too bad that the iPod can't bookmark automatically. The Jukeboxes have no problem taking up where they leave off.  Plus the iPod menu system doesn't drill down far enough.  It needs a "disk" layer within the playlist menu. 

Well, today I drop the second 15 books off at the library.  Then I'll go to the other branch to see what I've missed.  I'm going to be 110, lying in a nursing home bed, listening to these books, my collection is growing so fast and big.

--pat