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=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: vansmack on October 10, 2005, 01:23:00 pm
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October 6, 2005
Songs, My Format
By SEÁN CAPTAIN
There are many pocketsize digital music players available, but they fall into two groups: Apple's iPod products and everything else. That split, rooted in technology as well as style, poses a challenge for music lovers who want to upgrade their devices.
IPods, the most popular music players with more than 70 percent of the American market, can play MP3 music files, a popular digital audio compression format. But for the most part, Apple steers its customers to songs in another format, called Advanced Audio Codec (AAC), which most non-Apple devices cannot play.
Apple's iTunes software, which runs on PC's and Macs, for example, automatically "rips," or converts, music from CD's into compressed AAC files for loading onto a computer or portable player. But users who want to convert tracks to MP3 files have to change the settings.
And downloads from Apple's iTunes Music Store come exclusively in a version of AAC that includes FairPlay, Apple's digital rights management technology, to prevent illegal copying and sharing of music. "One of the problems I see a lot is that people who are using iTunes-iPods have ripped their entire CD collection to the AAC format because that is the default setting in iTunes," said Grahm Skee, who runs the Web site AnythingButiPod.com, in an e-mail interview. "Now they are stuck with a format that can only be played on iPods."
At the same time, most of Apple's rivals use Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, which does not play on iPods. And most online music stores apart from iTunes - like Napster (napster.com), Wal-Mart (musicdownloads.walmart.com) and Yahoo Music (music.yahoo.com) - sell downloads in the copy-protected Secure WMA file format.
With many people's digital music collections locked into one of two incompatible formats, their choices for new music players are largely determined by what they bought in the past. Those who want to remain neutral in the format wars - or who want to switch sides - may spend more and endure inconveniences.
Making a Choice
So why not avoid all that trouble and just go with Apple? After all, its music players are trendsetters, and the iTunes music store offers a large collection of titles.
But the iPod's list of missing features is also noteworthy. No iPod offers a built-in FM radio, for example, or a voice recorder. These features are common on rival players from companies like Archos, Cowon Systems, Creative, iRiver and Samsung. And Apple has yet to release a device with video playback abilities like those on Creative's Zen Vision hand-held device.
Nor does iTunes offer a streaming service that lets subscribers listen to any song in its catalog for a monthly fee. Subscription sites like Napster, Rhapsody (rhapsody.com) and Yahoo Music have extended this offering by using a Microsoft technology that lets customers load tracks onto new WMA-based players and listen to them as long as their subscriptions remain current.
The bottom line is that no single music player offers everything, and no one can say what next year's models will provide. To keep their options open, some users spend extra time managing the format of their collections.
Format Flexibility Online
A few online music stores try to bridge the Apple-Microsoft gap, though none offer a perfect solution.
People whose tastes stray beyond the top 40 may have luck with eMusic (www.emusic.com), which offers a large collection in the universally playable MP3 format. Many of eMusic's current top artists - Iron and Wine, Bloc Party and Devendra Banhart - are not household names like Kanye West and Coldplay, but they are popular among indie rock fans, who purchase more than 2.5 million songs a month, according to the company. EMusic is a subscription-based service, and its offerings start at $9.99 for 40 downloads a month.
Music fans can find a more mainstream selection, although less flexibility, with Rhapsody. Long a popular streaming service, Rhapsody began earlier this year to offer music files for outright purchase and subscription download. Songs purchased from Rhapsody use RealAudio 10's flavor of copy-protected AAC, but Real's Harmony technology can convert them to either Secure WMA or Apple's FairPlay version of AAC.
The WMA conversion is done with Microsoft's blessing. But converting to Apple's format is shakier. Apple changed the iPod's built-in program in October 2004 to prevent Rhapsody songs from playing on newer iPod models. Rhapsody updated Harmony in April so that its tracks can once again play on iPods. But that may change if Apple changes its iPod software again. Apple declined to comment for this article.
The safest strategy, and one popular among audio purists, is to purchase music on compact discs and rip it to the MP3 format.
James O'Rourke, a software engineer in San Francisco who owns a 20-gigabyte iPod, said a friend told him that AAC had the best quality. "But then I thought, well, maybe I'll have a problem in the future with being able to transfer music between different players. So most of my CD ripping is now done in MP3."
That rules out the instant gratification of simply clicking "Buy Song" from an online store. And it means paying $10 to $20 for a CD rather than 99 cents a track or less for the songs you want.
Back to CD's
But CD's still offer the greatest selection. Some of the most popular music of all time - from bands like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC - is still unavailable from legitimate online stores.
Ripping CD's can also offer higher quality. ITunes and some other stores sell music encoded at a data rate of 128 kilobits per second. (EMusic, Rhapsody and Yahoo use 192 kbps.) Typical CD's are encoded at a rate of about 1,400 kbps. AAC and WMA use sophisticated data-compression technologies that allow them to maintain audio quality at lower data rates than CD's or even MP3's can, but no one claims that a 128 kbps download is equivalent to a compact disc.
Those who have already ripped a lot of CD's into either the Apple or Microsoft format have the option of converting their music from one format to another. ITunes software, for example, can find WMA files on a computer and convert them to AAC. Windows Media Player does not have a similar ability to change AAC to WMA, but other programs can handle this. For instance, Switch, a free program from NCH Swift Sound (nch.com.au) can convert more than a dozen audio formats, including AAC, MP3 and WMA.
The main drawback is that most formats require a data compression method that tosses out some audio information to make files smaller.
Quality deteriorates when ripping CD's to WMA, for example, then deteriorates further when converting the WMA file to AAC. And converters do not work on copy-protected files from online music stores - at least not without straying into troublesome legal terrain.
Some iPod owners, for example, use a program called JHymn (hymn-project.org/jhymndoc) to remove the copy protection from iTunes music downloads to convert or otherwise modify them without restrictions. The software also makes possible the sharing of copyrighted files, a use that JHymn's creators say they do not condone.
A federal law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, prohibits tampering with copy protection technologies. But JHymn's creators contend that the software, by allowing users to play songs purchased from iTunes on computers or devices that do not support Apple's system, merely enables a "fair use" allowed under traditional copyright law.
A JHymn representative, who goes only by the name FutureProof, however, acknowledged that using the software would almost certainly violate Apple's terms of service for iTunes.
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October 6, 2005
Now, Listen to Internet Radio on a...Radio?
By GLENN FLEISHMAN
Most of the 20 million people who regularly listen to Internet radio use a desktop, laptop or hand-held computer. SoundBridge Radio from Roku Labs (www.rokulabs.com) aims to remove the computer from the equation. This 70-watt tabletop stereo connects directly to radio stations that offer streaming talk and music.
The radio, which needs a Wi-Fi network to communicate, is expected to be out next month and to sell for $400, with a $50 discount for orders placed before Oct. 31. It comes with presets for 50 popular online stations. Listeners can browse for other stations by genre if Apple's iTunes software is running on a computer on the network, or they can manually enter station addresses through a Web browser.
The SoundBridge Radio can also play music stored on computers on the same network or on inserted flash memory cards. It supports the subscribers-only Rhapsody service from RealNetworks and most popular formats for audio files, including protected files compatible with Windows Media Connect from Microsoft, but not music purchased from the iTunes Music Store. It is also not compatible with networks using a form of encryption known as Wi-Fi Protected Access, but Roku says this will be fixed in a future free software release.
For those moments when analog nostalgia kicks in, the radio has a conventional AM and FM tuner. GLENN FLEISHMAN
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"One of the problems I see a lot is that people who are using iTunes-iPods have ripped their entire CD collection to the AAC format because that is the default setting in iTunes," said Grahm Skee, who runs the Web site AnythingButiPod.com, in an e-mail interview. "Now they are stuck with a format that can only be played on iPods."[/b]
I don't get this -- I can play MP3s in my iTunes. And I can also burn my songs in iTunes as MP3s onto CDs or DVDs. I've never encountered a problem (except for the occasional download that somehow becomes a Quicktime movie file when it downloads onto my iMac).
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you have to be really really dumb to not figure out how to flip the switch to mp3. i mean, cmon
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Originally posted by Bags:
I don't get this -- I can play MP3s in my iTunes. And I can also burn my songs in iTunes as MP3s onto CDs or DVDs. I've never encountered a problem (except for the occasional download that somehow becomes a Quicktime movie file when it downloads onto my iMac).
What he's saying is that most non-techie-light folks don't change the default setting in iTunes from AAC to MP3s for songs imported into iTunes. If you leave it as AAC, you can't play the songs you import into iTunes on many non iTunes devices.
I've seen this most often with folks who buy CD players for their cars that support MP3s or multi-disc home stereos that support Mp3 playback. They'll unknowingly create a huge libary in AAC using iTunes and then not be able to use the files on other players.
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cmon, if you're tech savy enough to have a car stereo that plays mp3s, you're tech savy enough to change the defaults on your itunes. that's a weak appleisevil argument
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Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
cmon, if you're tech savy enough to have a car stereo that plays mp3s, you're tech savy enough to change the defaults on your itunes. that's a weak appleisevil argument
Just because one has the money to buy a brand new car with all of the latest features doesn't mean that one knows how to use them.
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What I wonder is why don't the non-iPod players play AACs? Sure, I can see them not playing AACs bought from iTunes but those that are ripped from one's own CDs are not copy-controlled/protected. AAC is a semi-open format just like MP3--neither of the A's stand for Apple; the letters stand for Advanced Audio Coding. Apple simply chose AAC because, to their engineers ears (and mine), it sounds better than MP3. If anything, I'd be more weary of any Windows-media encoded songs.
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taking this only slightly off-topic
http://www.iwoodnano.com/miniot/index.htm (http://www.iwoodnano.com/miniot/index.htm)
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Originally posted by Jaguär:
Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
cmon, if you're tech savy enough to have a car stereo that plays mp3s, you're tech savy enough to change the defaults on your itunes. that's a weak appleisevil argument
Just because one has the money to buy a brand new car with all of the latest features doesn't mean that one knows how to use them. [/b]
uh, if someone can't use their car stereo, then they won't know how to burn mp3 cds either, i would assume. still not sure what the problem is
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Originally posted by beetsnotbeats:
What I wonder is why don't the non-iPod players play AACs?
Because Apple won't license out it's DRM.
Why pay to support AAC if only one company supports it and you can't play that companies DRM songs anyway?
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someone here can probably help me with this ... in converting m4a to mp3, how can i change the tags so that all the song info transfers. i use this program ImTOO, or something like that to do the encoding, but everytime i try to change the track info it tells me that i can't do it because i need to stop playback first, but i don't even know what's playing back! does anyone know what the deal is, or can anyone tell me of a good (free) program that i can download to do this sort of task easily? if this has been covered already in previous threads, i profusely apologize.
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Originally posted by vansmack:
Originally posted by beetsnotbeats:
What I wonder is why don't the non-iPod players play AACs?
Because Apple won't license out it's DRM.
Why pay to support AAC if only one company supports it and you can't play that companies DRM songs anyway? [/b]
I think you missed part of my point. Apple doesn't own AAC; it is an update, so to speak, of MP3. There is no reason for non-iPod players to ignore AACs that are not bought from Apple other than to thumb their noses at Jobs & Co.
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FLAC > AAC/MP3
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Originally posted by beetsnotbeats:
I think you missed part of my point. Apple doesn't own AAC; it is an update, so to speak, of MP3. There is no reason for non-iPod players to ignore AACs that are not bought from Apple other than to thumb their noses at Jobs & Co.
Actually, it's the exact opposite - Apple is the one thumbing their noses. If iTunes were to support other players (even without the DRM), believe me, 75% of the players out there would pay the money to support AAC.
The argument goes like this (and I'm not saying I support it, but this what the manufacturers of MP3 devices are telling me):
It's .75 cents per device to supprt MP3.
For AAC it's complicated, but Dolby charges:
</font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">For a consumer decoder product: $0.50 to $0.12 (volume-based) per channel</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda"> </font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">Royalty rates for PC-based software decoder products are $0.25 per channel, up to a maximum annual payment of $25,000 per legal entity</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda"> </font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">For a consumer encoder product: $0.50 to $0.12 (volume-based) per channel</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda"> </font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">Royalty rates for PC-based software encoder products are $0.50 to $0.27 per channel (volume-based), up to a maximum annual payment of $250,000 per legal entity</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda"> </font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">For a commercial decoder product: $2.00 per channel</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda"> </font>- <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">For a commercial encoder product: $20.00 per channel</font></li>
<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">
That's a tremendous difference in price, and most companies argue that AAC is not that much more superior sound quality to justify the cost. Since every media comglomerate wants DRM, why bother paying the high price if you can't support a DRM version of the most popular digital music retailer? (I'm not even going to open the argument of AAC vs. WMA, while relevant and a cheaper alternative, but their are some that are so opposed to MS that they wouldn't do it anyway.)
Then, they argue that they would have to explain via marketing that their players work with iTunes created songs, but not with iTunes, or they would be forced to create their own music file library program. Does the market need another music library program? Can it support it?
Anyhow, that's why folks haven't ponied up for AAC.
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Originally posted by distance:
FLAC > AAC/MP3
true but FLAC Size >> AAC/MP3 thus reducing the number of songs one can carry on their pods.
that said I wish there was a decent DAP that supported FLAC, would be nice to listen on occasion to a concert encoded in FLAC.
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too lazy to find an ipod thread (http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/one-more-thing-live-and-uncensored-130543.php)
new imac
new smaller ipods w/ video
new itunes 6.0
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Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
Originally posted by distance:
FLAC > AAC/MP3
true but FLAC Size >> AAC/MP3 thus reducing the number of songs one can carry on their pods.
that said I wish there was a decent DAP that supported FLAC, would be nice to listen on occasion to a concert encoded in FLAC. [/b]
i'm not saying that mp3 doesn't have its uses, but for archival purposes and as far as a format i would actually BUY music in, FLAC > mp3/aac. if i get an ipod or some sort of similar device i would probably rip my albums to mp3 for the convenience of use, but any live music i have is archived to flac. while i don't back up my regular cds to flac, i do make cdr copies of all the ones i buy and use those in the car and for playing rather than using the actual disc itself.
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totally understand your POV... I'd be more incline myself to buy the odd track off iTunes, etc if it were in a less compressed state i.e. FLAC
i do buy MP3s from eMusic but it's a lot less per track and free of DRM...