Iain Young

Well, I burn wma onto cds to play in the car, and as that has no connection to the internet (I've not found a wireless connection that's powerful enough) I've no problems about microsoft deciding I've played the file too much etc.

I've only heard a couple of cds encoded with aac on an ipod , but I wasn't impressed with the sound quality. The music was classical in style with a very broad frequency range. The upper range instruments (violins, top wind etc) sounded very thin compared with the original cd, and the bass lacked depth. I have the same cd encoded with wma, and it definitely sounds better than the aac version. Perhaps it was more down to the way that it was encoded, or the output quality of the ipod itself, than the format of the file, but I wasn't impressed.

I agree that it would be good to have an open source version of wma, free from the "big brother" influence, but until something better comes along it'll have to do, (plus my car headunit doesn't support aac - in fact I don't think any of them do).

angrynorth

Oh Dear

Iain Young

Why "oh dear" ? The file is burned onto a cd and played in the car. How is microsoft ever going to know how many times I've played it?

angrynorth

Its not now its in a couple of years time. If you support this product and you "opt in" to their forced DRM on Windows Media Player then when you come to play these CD's on your computer in the future, or write new ones in a year or so. You will be limited on playing the CD's you own and HAVE BOUGHT.

What I am saying is that everytime you copy a CD to your harddrive in WMP Microsoft stamps its DRM over it, thus disabling your future usage of the .wma files you have created. The CD's you have written now, will be fine (unless you write them back to another PC in the future.

You know what Microsoft is like, and if you want your music to be managed by them, by all means go ahead. Just don't say you weren't warned in a couple of years when all your CD's are unplayable.

Iain Young

That's true enough.

AllanB

Apple virtually invented this market. yes there were others player before but most were small capacity and quality.

If you cannot offord one buy an inferior product, don't moan about it. Quality is worth paying for.

I think you'll find HP would not have choisen to partner Apple unless they felt Apple technology was at the forefront of this market. HP will be making thier own ipod. Also the itune software is superb !


AllanB

Iain Young

Actually, I could easily afford one. I just don't think they're worth 400 quid. £150 for a 40gb model, and then I'd be interested

stevencotton

Market is still young, just a matter of time

ozzy

Steve,

You are quite correct, my comments weren't directed at you. It was merely an observation as too why the iPod has been so popular over Xmas (my Brother works for one of the largest Apple resellers in the UK). You really shouldn't take other peoples generalisations so personally; touchy

Stefan

ozzy

Steve,

The bit that was directed at you was

I still stand by that statement and why it goes to explain the iPod's popularity.

Stefan

stevencotton

I'm not touchy, merely sticking up for myself.

Personally advertising has no effect on me, I don't think one can attribute success purely to advertising. It helps but if a product is inferior then it won't sell, no matter how it's advertised. If however the product is good then it'll sell whether there's advertising or not, as with the iPod, which was selling fast way before it was advertised on TV/London Underground. Now it's being copied!

angrynorth

As above Remember the iPod has been around for some years now. The ones you see now are 3rd generation. They have been a revelation since they were first sold.

ozzy

Steve,

Yes, the iPods have been around for donkeys, but the TV ads have been a more recent thing. You may feel that advertising has no effect on you, but you can't tell me it doesn't have any effect on other people.

The Apple name has become more and more trendy and their adverts play on this. They remind me a bit of the Gap method of advertising.

Ask most people to name an MP3 player and I bet the majority would say iPod (assuming they've no spent the past year on the moon and know what MP3 is).

Your argument for the iPod on page 1 was simply that they were the market leaders, but you can argue whether they are the market leaders based purely on the technical superiority of the product, their price or their brand image.

My personal feeling is it's more of the latter right now if Xmas sales are anything to go by.

Stefan

angrynorth

The iPod is technically superior to its competitors though. It uses an independant codec, developed by one of the worlds biggest and most renowned audio specialists. Its a piece of cake to use and produces a great sound. Can there be any more?

stevencotton

It's success isn't purely down to the advertising, although you're right about "most people" only knowing about the iPod. Most of the iPod users are using Macs too, although I suspect it'll even out over time now iTunes is available for Windows (the amount of iTunes shares on my office LAN has tripled since the Windows version arrived).

OS X has been a huge success for the geeks and non-geeks alike - BSD back end with a nice GUI on top, ultra stable and finally a proper alternative to Windows on the desktop for the masses (even my parents use it). Apple have a great attitude towards their users although their support can be slow at times, this and OS X is having a halo effect on their other products. Everything works so seamlessly and without problem I think that's mainly why the iPod has been successful. I'm only a recent convert from using Linux as my desktop (just over a year), I couldn't get on with pre-10 versions of the OS at all but with OS X, and now my second iPod, it's almost flawless - and even better, it's still early days.

ozzy

Can you elaborate on this? (not being funny or sarcy)

To be quite honest I'd never heard off AAC until the iPod. I think it needs more than Apple to adopt this before it becomes the industry leading format.

At the moment it's MP3 or WMA. Whether that changes only time will tell and by then iPod will be cheaper or there will be even more competitors making better and cheaper alternatives.

I've no real need or want to carry my entire music collection around with me, so I'll wait and see on this one. Or just by a very cheap 128Mb/256Mb one for a couple of hours worth of tunes.

Stefan

angrynorth

Just because you had never heard of it, doesn't make it worse.

-AAC IS NOT Apple controlled,
-IS none profit,
-IS of greater sound quality than .wma,
-DOES have better compression rates than .wma
-DOES NOT have to be the industry standard to be technically superior
These are facts, research them as you wish.

And by the way I'm not telling you, you should go out an buy an iPod. If you have no need or want for one, then leave it on the shelf. What I am trying to do is quosh some of the ridiculous and careless rumours that the anti Mac brigade are spreading.

Iain Young

Excellent.

Even better

Debatable. As stated earlier, I've heard wma files that sound better than the same track encoded with aac. Just a shame about the DRM, which you can turn off in media player, but then it stops you from playing bought files which have the DRm enabled.

Agreed, although I suspect this may be part of the reason why some wma files sound better.

This is very true. However I could give you a huge list of truly excellent products that have appeared over the years which have been technically superior to anything else on the market, but they have gone under because they didn't have the marketing clout of the industry leader. I hope AAC doesn't go the same way.

AAC looks as though it could develop into a truly great format. What needs to happen is for the windows based players (winamp for example) to start supporting the format, and device manufacturers (other than Apple) to support the format in their mobile players, and then (I hope) it'll really take off big style. Having said that, Apple have done so much advertising for the iPod recently, that I think the format is pretty safe.

Btw, Macs are great. The only reason I haven't got one is you can't get all the software that I use it, and the majority of my development work is on Win32 platforms, so if I take work home I need a windows box. The right tool for the right job etc......

angrynorth

Sorry but, the AAC codec does have better sound quality at a technical level. It has more range, depth and definition. Through severe testing this has been proven. You may have heard a track encoded with aac and thought it sounded worse than the wma, but did they both come from the same source? Were they encoded at the same bitrate? Was the output device for each exactly the same? These plus other things would affect what you were listening to. I doubt if everything was identical you would have heard a better sound from the wma

It is fact that AAC is of better quality than wma, its simple.

It has already developed into a great format, and yes it does need more support from the blinkered wintel developers. Even HP's offering won't go all the way to giving full support.

Iain Young

The track I heard was encoded from the same source cd, but the aac was played back on an iPod, and the wma was played back though headphones on my pc, (which has a Creative Labs Audigy 2 platinum ex card in it), so I guess the pc soundard may have been massaging the sound slightly.

Iain Young

[Remove double post]

[Edited by Iain Young - 1/28/2004 1:02:01 PM]

ozzy

I never said it was worse (or even better) than any other format.
All I'm questioning is it's use now and in the future as a widley adopted encoding format. Is it going to rival MP3 and WMA formats or is it going to be another (possibly superior form) that was only adopted by Apple and a few others?

I guess if you only encode your own music and listen on your own personal player, then it doesn't really matter what format it's in.

If the whole concept of (legally) downloadable tracks is going to take off, then it will become an issue unless you are given the choice of either the music in raw format or a choice of MP3, WMA or AAC?

I'm not anti-Mac, so please don't attempt to partonise me as if I were. All I'm debating is the iPod vs other MP3 players. So far, I've not been convinced that it's technically superior OR is so, and quite rightly justifies the bulky price tag. Apple products have generally appeared expensive and I haven't seen anything to disprove that impression.

So, other than it's ergonomics, hype and factor what is so great about the iPod as apposed to a.n.other MP3 player? AAC?

Stefan

Oh, and BTW I have used an iPod myself, but I'm still wondering why everyone goes on about how wonderful they are. That's not being anti-mac, just confused and asking to be enlightened

angrynorth

In response ozzy
I am not trying to patronize you, all I am saying is that if you look around at the iPods competitors what do they all go on about? They sell themselves on GB per £. Yes you get more space for your money but at the expense of size, style, ease of use and factor. The fact that Apple can whack 40Gb into a tiny space, then make it beautiful to look at and easy to use is in itself a technological marvel.

I have only debated the technical superiority of the AAC codec, not the iPod itself. Although I do believe that more expertise is in the iPod than some of its competitors.

As for Apple products being expensive as a whole, well the G4 that I use at work which will be sold shortly is nearly 4 years old and has a teeny 400Mhz processor, yet it will still fetch 3-400 quid 2nd hand. They may cost more at the beginning but they do hold their value well and are excellently built. (Have a gander at a dual G5 desktops innards )

angrynorth

frickin double post

[Edited by angrynorth - 1/28/2004 1:53:14 PM]