iRiver/iPod as source component.

Chris
I do think the media is on an iPod cull at present. But as you say the iRiver does offer more bells and whistles, you pays your money I guess.

As for cables, they were the cheapest ones from Maplins. Mind you the iPod was on some very good isolation.....my hands

 

Its very much like comparing a quality piece of HIFI to a 60 quid DVD player that will do photo CDS, etc.

If what you want is cheap with everything you are sorted with an iriver.

If you take the time to pick them both up and have a play you will see why the ipod is better, I did the comparison.

 

Garyi

I'd be interested in what you thought about the sound quality of the iRiver in comparison to the iPod. I've looked on various forums and they say they seem to sound very much the same (as lilolee says too) with a few exeptions (which i've already rejected) so if i'm paying out for a player and they all sound very similar, id go for the one whih offers the most features... am i right?


Rather than mud slinging can you give me a good reason to buy an iPod over an iRiver product? Who knows you may persuade me

Lilolee

Are you able to plug the Ipod into a PC and use it a a removable storage device? i've looked all over for this info and as yet not come up with anything, and can you use other programmes other than iTunes to transfer music over?

Sorry to be a pain with al these questions...

Chris

100th post :MILD:

 

I suspect the only way U will find out for sure is to try both out for yourself. Looking through the countless comparisons on websites there are some that prefer the iPod and others that prefer the iRivers. As U can tell from the difference of opinions between myself and garyi it depends on who's listening.

Try and find a large electrical outlet that stocks both, I'm sure they would let U demo them if U took one of your CDs.

My own personal opinion is that I wouldn't use my iRiver as my primary source component. I use it occasionally and it is fine hooked up through my gear, sound quality is very good IMO. If I have an album on CD I still use that in preference.

Assuming U already have a PC U could equally use that as your source component [maybe with a soundcard upgrade to a Terratec or similar].

U said that U intend on having 30-40 CDs in .WAV format, but unless they are quite short albums I think U will be hard pressed to fit them on 18 odd GB of storage [20GB formatted as FAT32] which means U might need a 40GB device [about 37GB formatted]. If it did fit it won't leave U any room for expansion, whereas on your PC U could add another 160GB drive with little hassle.

 

Chris.

I have heard both, and I guess this comes down to my last post, yes you will get the same sound out of each, and lets not kid ourselves here, neither will be winning anything for a HIFI product, they both sound middle of the road through a hifi.

1. But in terms of quality the ipod wins hands down and it works seamlessly with itunes. This means you can have half of them in lossless, half in MP3, or the whole lot in AIFF, or only one album in AIFF and the rest in AAC, you can have three albums on AAC 128, and 3 in 244, then you can have 10 albums as lossless. you get the picture.

2. You can set playlists and favorites from itunes, and use itunes to to sort out playlists for you, for instance all music created in 2004.

No other software I have seen allows this functionality.

3. You have access to the music store, 750,000 tunes to pick from, download and its straight on the ipod.

4. The ipod works just fine as a storage device, I back up my documents folder to it. You can set this on an Apple to do it at a set time.

5. The ipod has the dock, the output on this bypasses the sound controls so it becomes straight source, there is nothing easier than to just have a spare dock on top of your hifi, bang it in and press random

6. You can use it with apple Air Port express.

The ipod is clearly a far superior product, both in function and design.

7. Digital output is not all its cracked up to be, it just seems here and else where the assumption is that it must be better, those of use with record decks have different views, and the output on the ipod dock is Line.

8. The ipod has just dropped by 100 quid.

All I am saying is don't assume the iriver is better just because its cheap and has digital out.

 

This is correct, plan for one CD = 1 meg of storage space for stereo sources. Dominic

 

Yes you can use the iPod as external storage. It appears in Windows Explorer as IPOD.

I would not recommend putting wav's on any external player. The memory buffer will have trouble dealing with that amount of info. Why not try lossless, which will save you 1/3rd with no loss of sound quality or try 320 or 256 aac or mp3. You really will be hard pressed to hear the difference on anything except a very good hifi set up.

 

Well, having spent an afternoon playing with iTunes (yes i know it's nice and sunny outside ) i can honstly say thats it's a breeze to use, very user friendly and good looking to boot . Been ripping CD's, creating paylists and just generally messing about with it. A class piece of software.

Also looking on the Apple website i've seen a whole host of accessories which bring to it the functionality i'd like for an MP3 player.

One thing i wasn't aware of was that that decoding different formats on the players woud drain the battery at different speeds due to the processing required, and since Apple has its own lossless format i thought this would be very economic on this processing.

Garyi, looks like yourself and lilolee have done quite a good job of converting an ..ahem... anti-apple fellow (yes - ill admit to it) into someone who is very impressed on the WHOLE Apple package.

Still, i havn't heard either machines and i doubt i will untill one of the players lands on my doorstep. I'm happy knowing that both will sound very similar and in one way or another function as i expect.

Just ripped McFly with Apple lossless

CHRIS

 

Chris

The bells and wistles of the iRiver look great on paper. But in all honesty the only one I wish the iPod had was a digital out, and that's only for simplification of connection, as the sound from the line out was more than adequate. In many ways the more there is, the more there is to go wrong.

And isn't iTunes a breeze

 

Under UK Distance Selling Law U have the right to return goods within 7 days for a full refund when bought over the Internet. Therefore, funds permitting, U could buy both so U can do your own evaluation at home with your own equipment. Then just return the one U don't want.

 

Being fair I have hardly used any of the extras on the Iriver. I've used the fm radio ONCE on it (and THAT was for the news!). I got the Iriver because at the time it was about £40 odd cheaper.

J

 

It's just a question of the size of the files on disk and how often the system has to spin up the disk to read more into memory. The bigger the files, the more often the disk has to spin so the quicker the battery runs out. There's nothing Apple (or anyone else) could really do about this. Apple lossless is about a 2:1 compression ratio whereas 320kbps MP3 is about 5:1 so you're hitting the disk more than twice as often.

The success of the iPod has apparently done alot for Apple computer sales aswell as people see how great the "Apple experience" is.

Michael.

 

I swapped to the iPod from a PJB100 jukebox, the PJB100 beat the iPod for sound quality and battery life but the iPod's ease of use and small form factor were of more interest to me. An extra bonus was being able to buy a compact flash card copier for the iPod to copy my digital photo's to the iPod whilst on holiday enabling me to re-use my cards.

Regards
Gary