iPod as a home music centre?

ddebski_us

It's my birthday coming up and I've considered asking for an iPod (finally catching up with technology!)

At home, we don't have any form of music system (CD's get played on the DVD player as and when!) and so I was considering getting an iPod and a docking centre for home, with a radio. Are they durable and good enough quality for this? Probably won't take it out with me day to day as I tend to lose and break things, so it will mainly be for use at home, but with the occasional flexibility.

Thinking a iPod classic is looking like the best long term option?

Thanks

xDx

JasX

Most sound/speaker systems have a line in socket so one option is to just google for a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable (will cost about £2) and use that to connect your ipod into something suitable or even what you have now?

also good for hooking it up to a car stereo which tend to come with those sockets too these days

googler

If all you want is a player to load your CDs onto that doesn't leave the house, you might want to look at the Brennan JB7.

You can't put music onto an iPod without a PC to run iTunes, and - crucially - enough disk space to match the size of the iPod. Buy a 160Gb iPod classic, and, without 160Gb of free space on your hard drive(s), you won't be able to fill the iPod to capacity. Add all the complication if/when you change your PC, etc etc.

With the Brennan, you plug in, switch on, put a CD in to load it. Then another CD, and another until you play them back off the JB7's internal drive.

But then again, if you're currently playing your CDs in the house, why not just get a 'proper' HiFi to play them on? What do you see as the advantage of the iPod?

xbrenx

googler wrote: »

If all you want is a player to load your CDs onto that doesn't leave the house, you might want to look at the Brennan JB7.

Wow! Seriously nice bit of kit there. Going to have to save my pennies for that one

JasX

googler wrote: »

If all you want is a player to load your CDs onto that doesn't leave the house, you might want to look at the Brennan JB7.

[STRIKE]Does that use even a vaguely standard/transferrable format? I'd always written them off as some propietary dead end format that yes you could load your CDs onto but you'd never get them off onto anything else and if you ever wanted to or the device broke you'd be stuck needing to manually reload your CDs one by one onto something else.

At least with a PC (or I suppose apple mac) you rip them once, they're backed up and can be readily copied/converted onto anything else you might buy now or in future.[/STRIKE]

EDIT: it appears i'm wrong, they use standard .mp3 format and can be backed up to an external hard drive.

you still have limited control of compression options so might notice some quality issues....

I'll revise my opinion of them to "Not Awful but not to my taste" :A

googler

The Brennan stores them as mp3, with a choice of bitrates.

It's fitted with a USB socket for backing up to an external drive, but opinions seem to vary as to how usable this is.

It's no more likely to break than anything else with an HDD in it. If the electronics around the HDD break, I'm fairly certain merely swapping the HDD to a new box would fix the problem.

If you use your scenario of ripping CDs to HDD as a 'backup', then the only true backup is to rip them as lossless WAV or FLAC files. Ripping to mp3 is not 'backing up' a CD.

For the OP's scenario, if they were to build up a library of mp3s on an HDD and import that to iTunes in order to load it to an iPod, then yes - they will have a portable library, but that introduces issues such as having to keep the library in the same place in perpetuity, else iTunes loses track of where it is. It also introduces issues of creating a backup of that library of mp3s, else if the HDD goes, you're back to ripping the individual CDs again.......

JasX

googler wrote: »

but that introduces issues such as having to keep the library in the same place in perpetuity, else iTunes loses track of where it is.

I have no idea what you're getting at there... or see any problem in that area? never had any itunes library problems nor see any that can't be solved deleting/rebuilding your library...

usual backup advice applies to all cases JB7 or not.

.mp3 will be a fine backup to a CD so long as you've not turned the bitrate down to lose a noticable amount of data.... certainly sufficient to stuff them all in a box in the loft and forget about them

googler

I've got a 160Gb iPod Classic. If I load CDs directly to the iTunes library with my CD drive, iTunes stores the compressed file on my PCs HDD within the iTunes library in My Music folder. In order to make the most of my iPod, I need an HDD with more than 160Gb available, and the laptop on which I installed iTunes has a 60Gb drive, so:

The solution is to rip CDs to mp3 and store them on an external drive, and use the 'Import folder' dialog in iTunes to add a reference to the mp3s to the iTunes library, without adding the whole file into the library. This saves space on the HDD containing the iTunes library, BUT -

Let's say I put Dream Theater's album Awake in a folder called 'Awake' at first, but then later on when I add another Dream Theater album, and decide on a new top-level folder called 'Dream Theater' with two folders below it called 'Awake' and 'Images and Words'.

If I now try to play 'Awake' through iTunes, or Sync my iPod, iTunes will say it can't find 'Awake', because I've changed the location. The only solution from here is to delete Awake from the library and import it again. Either that or leave every mp3 in the original location that I ripped it to. The problem multiplies the more mp3s there are in the remote folders.

prowla

1. I don't think an iPod with amplified audio out is going to be good enough for a hi-fi.
2, You can store your songs in iTunes on an external drive; there is an option to set the location of the files to other than the default.
3. If you have the MP3s, you don't have to re-rip them; you can just drag & drop the files into iTunes. (If you don't select the option to copy them to the Tunes music folder, they will happily stay on the external drive).

googler

prowla wrote: »

1. I don't think an iPod with amplified audio out is going to be good enough for a hi-fi.
2, You can store your songs in iTunes on an external drive; there is an option to set the location of the files to other than the default.
3. If you have the MP3s, you don't have to re-rip them; you can just drag & drop the files into iTunes. (If you don't select the option to copy them to the Tunes music folder, they will happily stay on the external drive).

1. Depends on what the OP calls 'HiFi'

2. Yes, I'm merely making the point that if you move them around on the external drive, or move them to another drive, iTunes loses track of them when you attempt to play, sync or modify their info within iTunes

3. See 2.

Russel245

Sorry but that Brennan thing doesn't seem like a very good system, the hard drive space on it is tiny, 80gigs top and for that model you are paying through the nose. (I mean come on, a 20gig system thats easy to fill, or a 160gig system that might mean you have to fill it in a few stages)

ipod however will produce a bad sound quality due to the audio going through a single dual channel 3.5mm jack.

A media center PC may be preferable though would require a speaker system on top so would cost more than just a straight hi-fi system.



Overall, I think an ipod could work well, there are a huge number of potentially better solutions, but due to how much support the ipod has, while you may find better solutions on paper, I honestly don't think you'll find a truly better solution.

So overall "yes" I think this will work.