My iPod is blowing up

I have a lot of music. I think I mentioned that I have well over 4000 CDs. It has been said that "if you can't find something you like in my collection, you don't like music". I now add that even if you don't like music, I probably have something in there for you (Stockhausen, The Residents, Rap, and so on). I try to have a sample of pretty much everything out there.

That said, I bought the largest capacity mp3 player I can find on the market, the Apple iPod classic 160GB. I loath the thing since it is a pain to manage and crashes frequently. The advantage is that it does have a large capacity which allows me to carry a pretty good selection of music.

The most annoying aspect is the management, in particular playlists. You can only manage it on one computer, which is a total pain. This is especially true if you find you put the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" on say your "last Night of the Proms" playlist by accident. A proper version of "God Save the Queen" is OK in such a situation, but not the Sex Pistols' version. Likewise, I found that I had put some of The Move and Wizzard's music on an English Restoration Playlist which was fairly jarring. I mean jumping from Purcell (even if the song was "pox on you for a fop") to The Move's Omnibus really buggers up the mood.



DId you realise how hard it is to perform "pox on you for a fop"? I mean you have to belch and fart on cue.

Henry Purcell, epitome of "The Flowering of the English Baroque". The artist and composer of sublime secular and sacred music. The man whom John Dryden described as:

So ceas'd the rival Crew when Purcell came,
They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame.
Struck dumb they all admir'd the God-like Man,
The God-like Man,
Alas, too soon retir'd,
As He too late began.
We beg not Hell, our Orpheus to restore,
Had He been there,
Their Sovereign's fear
Had sent Him back before.
The pow'r of Harmony too well they know,
He long e'er this had Tun'd their jarring Sphere,
And left no Hell below.

Or just some twit who wrote puerile songs?

Anyway, back to my point. You find that some GMFU like this has occurred and the only way to deal with it is to skip the offending songs if you aren't near the computer one manages their iPod. I found that just using the "baroque" genre did the trick for the time being.

On the other hand, some people come up with fairly bizarre genres for their songs. Such as categorising Stockhausen as "blues" as opposed to "noise". OK, I don't know how you would describe "Hymnen", but it sounds as if someone is tuning a shortwave radio for 4 LP sides. I didn't bother with removing the record surface noise when I transferred THAT to MP3. In fact, isn't ambient noise part of the whole John Cage, Stockhausen, et al genre?

I am writing this as I synch my iPod. It has just gone from 148GB to 136GB as it "updates" my files. This is because I have a library of 45,000 songs! The iPOd can't handle a library like that even though it wants to synch your entire library to the iPOd, which is another reason the thing crashes. The best way to get the iPod to synch what you want is to use MediaMonkey for the bulk of your library, if you have a large collection. Put your songs into playlists and transfer the playlists to itunes.

In fact, delete your itunes library and just use playlists from MediaMonkey.

Unfortunately, you can't use RealPlayer or MediaMonkey to manage large files since the iPOd's directory crashes if you try that.

Please, please, please somebody come up with an MP3 player that can handle large amounts of music. As I said in a previous post, I like the Brennan JB7, but I don't think it is as portable as I would like it to be. Archos makes a media tablet with a 250GB drive, but I don't trust "media players" after my experience with the Argosy and IOmega versions which couldn't read elementary files for MP3 and DVDs. The ASUS O!Play sound like it could handle my video needs and possibly my mp3 needs, but it is also not portable.

Another possibility is to create a new OS for the iPod that allows for it to be managed in such a way that you don't have to use Apple's proprietary software with its encumbent problems. I haven't tried using MediaMonkey to manage the thing since I have had bad experiences with other programmes than iTunes to manage the iPod.

And while you're at it come up with a super open source OS that beats the crap out of Microsoft Windows. As I said before, I am switching to ubuntu before I move to another form of windows.

FInal ending note to this rambling rant: iTunes has just informed me that it cannot synch all my music, but will try to get as much on as it can.

I want this!

Well, the Brennan JB7 just came to my attention. It's a "CD jukebox" in that it is a CD player with a hard drive. From their info:

* JB7 holds your entire CD collection on a hard disk to give you instant access to any of your music and play unbroken music for as long as you want.
* You can choose and play an album or track without getting out of your chair.
* You get to see what is playing from across a room.
* One button plays your entire music collection at random - another turns it off - its what you need when its late and you just want to unwind.

I have been messing about with other media players such as the Argosy and Iomega, but they are slow and not really meant for music. What I am looking for is an "mp3 player" with a huge hard drive. At this point, the best bet is a large USB drive and media monkey software on my computer. Media Monkey is the best music management program I have found for a large music collection.

Nice feature, the JB7 backs up to a USB hard drive. I assume it can also copy from one as well. The big problem is how my music has gotten screwed up over time (track numbering, genres, etc.) if I make the move. The genres are the real piss off as I hate it when the track is something like Beethoven's fifth symphony and it gets tagged as blues!

A good feature is that the Brennan JB7 uses the Freedb CD database, one of the better music DBs out there.

Anyway, features are:

* Stores 1200/2500/5000 CDs on 80/160/320G (high compression typical CD)
* Stores 600/1200/2500 CDs on 80/160/320G (normal compression worst case CD)
* Total 60W RMS
* 32 key credit card remote
* 2.4 million album database - update on CD
* Text Search for Track or Album by remote control or front panel
* Segue - blends one track into the next
* 180 x 32 soft scrolling graphic vacuum fluorescent display
* Compact 4.8 x 16 x 22 cm
* 1.6kg steel and aluminium construction
* One touch startup - relax let JB7 pick the tracks
* One touch rip - transfer a CD track to MP3 player
* One touch record - convert vinyl to MP3s
* Loads CDs to hard disk at 12x - play music while loading
* Battery backed up clock with alarm
* MP3 encode at 128k, 192k or 320k - done automatically
* USB 2.0 Full Speed 12 Mbits / sec - compatible with USB Mass storage class devices formatted with FAT16 or FAT32 - USB memory sticks, Ipods, MP3 players, USB hard drives. Not MP4 players and Touch iPods.
* Rear connectors - loudspeakers, line in, line out, headphone, 24V DC
* Backup music and playlists to external USB hard disk for safe keeping
* 400MHz Blackfin processor with Dual MAC
* Find and play MP3s on MP3 players and USB drives as if they were internal
* Transfer MP3s to and from USB
* External laptop computer style 24V power supply / AC adaptor - included - works from 110V to 240V. Size 3cm x 6cm x 13cm. 3m overall lead length.
* Loudpeakers 22cm (H) x 14.5cm (W) x 18cm (D)

Price is a bit much at £339 to £409 (septics can go here for currency conversion).

OK, there may be some downsides, but I am waiting for a time when this type of device is much more common and at a better price point. Although, it does have some really nice features that pretty much outweigh any downsides I've read about.

You can read a couple of good reviews of it here and here.

Oh, yeah, and a plus for non-Euros, the JB7 runs on a switching external power supply, meaning it works anywhere in the world.

Copyright and my music and movies

One of the issues I find I am dealing with in regard to the iPOS and why it doesn't work with other programs than iTunes is DRM, or Digital Rights Management, and AAC/.m4p . The iPod is set up in such a way to try to prevent "piracy". Then again, so is the Toshiba gigabeat, but I don't have any problems with managing that unit. But the iPOS is a whole other thing.

I don't mind artists getting royalties for their work, but I do mind pieces of software telling me how to organise my music collection. Forcing me to use file formats I don't want and reorganising my music files on my computer. Even more so when the software is set up so that it constantly crashed my equipment.

On the other hand, I have 7 to 11 mp3 players (number depends on if you count computers). Fair use allows me to be able to listen to this music on any of these machines. As I have said before, I don't use file sharing programs, but I have an extensive music collection. I don't like being told to use one piece of software or equipment: especially if that software or equipment doesn't work for me.

Another headache I have is that some of the music and movies I want to see distributed aren't getting as wide a distribution, or even being distributed in a way that rewards the artists. Case in point are videos, especially those being pirated, sold in one region and not another, and so on.

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.

The problems is that there are now new ways of getting music, video, literature, and other art forms distributed. Yahoo had an article about how the music industry has missed the mark on the internet and using the internet as a method for distributing music and videos. That's really true.

First there were the peer-to-peer networks, which the Recording industry has basically shut down. On the other hand, there are now sites in places like the Ukraine (MP3 Fiesta) which distributes recently released albums for 99 cents a pop. This is opposed to other sites which charge as much for a single song.

But the real issue to me isn't so much the price of downloading as much as the access to material. Take Nikolas Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien's recording of Jan Dismas Zelenka's Hipocondrie. Das Alte Werke hasn't reissued this on CD, but it's available as a download on the internet. I've seen it for $2.99. Maybe that price is in Euros, but the point is that for anywhere from US$3-6, I can have a digital copy of a work. Das Alte Werke has caught up with this and say it will reissue this work, but how many people have downloaded it already.

And, I can replace a work that I sold from my vinyl collection despite the fact that I need to back up my downloads and don't get album art and notes (not much of a loss in the days of the CD) for much less than the price of a CD. Additionally, most of the cost of a CD is profit (and distribution costs). But, cutting out the middleman drastically reduces the cost of the music.

And getting material to the audience is the real issue. I was thinking of howthe Beatles came to the attention of Brian Epstein by people asking for copies of "please, please me" and Brian searching out the Beatles. A musician can use the internet to connect with his audience.

That's the real point of this post is being able to make music available to the audience should be the focus of the music industry.

More iPOS moaning

OK, I am frustrated as heck that I bought an iPOS and have had it for nearly two weeks. The iPOS is unusable as I am unable to load my music on and get the effing thing to work. This experience has confirmed everything I ever believed about iPOSs.

my message to realplayer support

Hi,
I have an iPod (iPOS or iCrash) classic 160 GB and I would really prefer to use realplayer to manage it rather than iTunes. First off, I don't appreciate how iTunes dictates what goes on my iPOS. It wants me to stick my entire music collection on my iPOS rather than what I want on it.

Anyway, I eventually end up with the message that my iPOS's database is corrupt when I try to load my music on with realplayer. Unfortunately, Apple's solution is to force you to wipe your disk and reload the music rather than just repair the database.

And, Apple refuses to support the iPOS if you are not managing it with iTunes.

Anyway that there could be a utility that repairs the song database rather than force me to reload my music? This is really annoying since I have to tie up my computer for days on end to load my music. It makes far more sense to just be able to repair the database like better MP3 players are able to do rather than force me to reload my entire music collection.

Follow up: Realplayer support wrote back that they have no power over third party vendors. I still hate iTunes which somehow managed to load a bunch of material I didn't want on my iPOS, namely the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Goon Show spoken word stuff.

I hate Ipods!

The ipod has always been overrated in my opinion. I am thoroughly convinced of this after buying an ipod classic 160 GB player. In fact, I call it the iPOS: i Piece of Shit.

I am using realplayer to manage my ipod, not itunes. I have a music library of well over 3000 CDs and my MP3 library is around 34000 songs! I still have around 100 vinyl records (from a time when I had around 800). Not everything I own is on my computer, yet. I can't really use things like napster, kazaa, morpheus, or any of those other file sharing databases because people will be draining MY computer. The first time I logged on one of these programs, some hog was downloading a whole album from me within the first minute. That stopped me from being able to do anything in the world of file sharing.

Now, Itunes will sync my unit with every song on my computer which is well over the directory capacity of 160 GB. Anyway, I don't really want to have my whole collection on disc, just a few songs (it was at 16k songs when my iPOS last crashed). The songs show up if I use windows explorer, but the iPOS won't recognise that they are there. It does recognise that there is data which is occupyiing 74 GB of space, but it refuses to be able to do anything.

The apple solution is to obliterate all this data and force me to reload. This is a task which will take me over two days. Even if I am not sitting at my computer, this occupies loads of computer time.

Now, I just called apple and they said that they do not support me if I am not using itunes to manage my iPOS. So, basically, they are not willing to make a unit that will self-repair the library from what I am understanding.

I own a couple of other MP3 players, and my living room computer is technically a giant MP3 player (with over 36k songs on it). Every other MP3 player can self repair the library, such as my Toshiba Gigabeat or creative zen nomad. Not the IPOS!

The worst part of this is that there are software programs out there which claim they can repair my song database, but they don't work with the iPOS classic. This is kind of amazing to me. Actually, I am obviously not alone as there are several programs out there and multitudes of posts from others who have lost their data due to a corrupt iPOD database.

On the other hand, I think the iPOS is one of the most over hyped units on the market, which is too stinking bad. I would strongly advise anyone not to get this, but Toshiba and creative are not the market force that apple is when it comes to MP3 players. And finding an MP3 player with this type of capacity is really difficult. That is the only reason I bought the iPOS, which I am truly regretting.

The other units with similar capacity are the Archos, DMC xclef, and Wolverine Data. You can find some creative zen nomads that have been rebuilt with larger drives. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the technology exists for me to carry my music collection with me, the marketplace hasn't caught up with it. Worse, its pretty hard to find other units besides the iPOS out there that do work in terms of having enough disc capacity for a minimum of songs, such as the Gigabeat or Creative coming in at 40-60GB.

So, the iPOS has mostly marketing working for it and not much else. In fact, the iPOS is pretty much another case of monopolising the market which is surprising coming from Apple, which tries to come off as not being Microsoft. In the case of the iPOS, Apple has done everything to hype its unit, but really isn't offering a product which is worth buying.

So, if you haven't wasted your money on a iPOS with a huge disc drive, don't. Go looking for a product which actually functions.

This is only a part of my anti-iPOS rant, but it is a very significant complaint, which I hope Apple, or some clever software developer will fix.