iPod nanooooooo
by kurisu
So I am a music gear whore… so what ? I love to try as many guitar effectors/amps/strings/what-have-you as possible, and I love listening to music. And for doing both of that, I tend to be very picky when it comes to audio compression, DA converters, headphones… so much that by itself it generates a need for yet better gear…. it’s a vicious circle.
I’ve been well versed in the subject by my best friend Mike K., guitar player extraordinaire that can’t stop his search for the ultimate guitar sound.
I reached a compromise with myself and my iPod 1G, simply because of the lack of space… how do I pack enough music in 5GB of space and yet retain enough quality so that the music doesn’t sound like crap through my big AKG headphones ??
That was 2001~2002, and most of my music was still in mp3 format, so I could pack maybe 400 songs in there, the battery life was reaching somewhere around 6 hours, and my AKGs were somewhat happy. Things were OK.
Then came the iPod mini, with its 4GB of space. At first, the reduced size and weight in my pocket won over the reduced disk space : I mean, I would recharge/sync the iPod mini anyways before I even could listen to the total of the songs present on the device.
Then well, I bought a Firewire audio card for my modest guitar recording needs. It has excellent D/A converters and heck, it made me realise how much either MP3 and AAC compression were taking away in terms of dimension of the sound.
That’s when an all lossless setup started to sound enticing, but that would cut very much into my iPod mini disk capacity as well as battery life… tough break.
2 days later I was re-ripping my entire music collection to Apple’s lossless codec. Happy as a clam after having inserted and swapped a few hundred CDs and having built a 200GB iTunes library, I happily synchronised my iPod mini and went out for some shopping… and the battery went flat some 3 hours later.
I decided to live with it and assume my choice, in hopes that someday Apple would come up with a bigger capacity iPod mini with a better battery… I skipped the 2nd generation mini… and here we are, the iPod nano.
I got mine on the same day they were announced (thank you time zones and Ginza Store) and the next day I was ready to see if the 14 hours of battery life was anything I could count on.
106 songs, 86.4 MB free.
OK, well, this doesn’t change from the mini, but the battery is supposedly better, and there is no hard disk to spin in this thing, so this ought to be good !!!
well, next morning the battery indicator was already in the red…
So I think I am doomed.
And yesterday I received my Shure E4c in-ear phones and they are amazing… (but cost almost as much as my iPod nano 4GB… damn…)
[edit] the iPod nano battery went flat after 5 hours and 40 mins (give or take 10 mins) [/edit]
September 21st, 2005 at 15:30 CEST
Very interesting indeed. The whole story. But we still miss the main point, it seems. How long did the nano battery last in the end ?
September 22nd, 2005 at 03:07 CEST
Arf ! yes you are right… I was on a roll and I forgot to mention the main point !
5 hours 40 minutes (+/-10mins) compared to the 3 hours of the mini … a welcome improvement indeed but clearly still dismal…
cheers !
September 22nd, 2005 at 11:42 CEST
Thanks for the info ! Almost twice as much autonomy, not too bad… In the end, isn’t it enough for a one day listening need ?
September 22nd, 2005 at 21:47 CEST
Only 5 hours? Wow, I get 2 from my 3G, 3 hours at the most. Is the nano worth getting for the battery life?
September 24th, 2005 at 00:04 CEST
well “only” is perhaps not exactly correct, considering ALAC playback consumes more power than other codecs apparently…
But well, I cannot deny the battery life is much better than my 1st generation mini. I do not know if it is due to the new chipset or the lack of hard drive… or a combination of the two.
October 11th, 2005 at 14:38 CEST
Have you tried AIFF format? Since battery life seems more important to you than file size, I’d be curious to see it uncompressed files give you longer battery life.
October 13th, 2005 at 12:18 CEST
I did… give or take 20 mins it’s the same, actually… and in AIFF, with my music collection, the nano can barely hold 40 songs… so for commuting it’s ok (I’m lucky enough to live 20 minutes away from the office door to door by subway+walk) but anything longer than that, and “shuffle” loses its meaning ;-)
October 15th, 2005 at 06:43 CEST
My gess is that, more the ipod read data for x time of music, more it consume energy from battery.
So it’s not “battery autonomy”/”played time song”, but “battery autonomy”/”amount of data red”
I do no think the kind of decompression method eat more or less energy with a dedicated DSP
Je peux la refaire en français si c’est pas clair :)
@+
October 26th, 2005 at 07:13 CEST
[...] I initially wanted to post this on the Hardmac blog but this seemed way out of place ! That is actually the main reason for me to have created this blog… I wanted to publish that album review somewhere. Hiromi is one of my top three favourite artists, and her work is present on my iPod nano at any given time. So, consider this post as my modest attempt to convey my feelings. [...]
February 12th, 2006 at 21:30 CET
I got my 4G Nano in Oct. and I fill it up every night with 160kbs mp3s. Batt lasts 14-15 hours while I do my delivery job. The sound is fine but I have heard the lossless is better quality. I’ll have to try it. The larger bit-rate really eats up that much more batt life? I’d just rather live with the more compressed file.
February 12th, 2006 at 21:32 CET
Oops. wrong link to my website. Its http://chrismtp.blogspot.com. The above link is a porn spoof of my site. Sorry. I mistyped.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:37 CEST
Hi,
I think the iPod is just the best tool you can have. Independent from some problems there might be connected with it is the most convincing player.
Regards
Dave