A Little Crowded
June 8th, 2006 | by Tony Steidler-Dennison |I started to realize this week that the iPod’s getting a bit crowded. It’s a 60 GB Photo, right around a year old. As advertised, they hold roughly 15,000 songs. I’ve got right at 8,000 with a lot of it at very high encoding rates. I created a smart playlist in iTunes to see how many song I have in the library over 192 Kbps - almost 1,600. Most of those were at 320, including the vast majority of the Allman Brothers Band collection (27 CDs - and you know those ABB boys like to go long with their songs! A 22-minute version of “Whipping Post” at 320 Kbps is a huge file.).
I’ve listened to loud music for so long that my ears really don’t register a difference at anything above 192. So, for the sake of iPod space conservation, I started converting the really high bitrate stuff to 160 AAC. I’ve listened to some of it already, and it sounds perfectly good to me. And, I’ve managed to free up about 5 GB on the iPod, nearly 10% of my total storage. That puts me back in free space double-digits and relieves a bit of the feeling of being crowded.
A couple other quick iPod notes.
The thing is freakin’ indispensible. I have mine going 6 hours of every 8-hour workday and at least a few hours on the weekend. Occasionally, I’ll forego the Sirius radio on the way to or from work, and patch the iPod directly into the auxilliary input on the car radio. I’d be seriously lost without it.
Also, I couldn’t imagine a year ago that I’d be within 8 GB of filling the thing so quickly. Then again, I didn’t really know how easy it is to spend .99 on singles. I’ve spent way too much money in the past year at the iTunes store. Nor did I know that I’d be getting 3-5 CDs a week from blues labels for The Roadhouse. That’s anywhere from 40-75 new songs a week. Those CDs generally go into iTunes before I ever even listen to them.
Apple’s strategy of giving away the razor blades to sell the razors has certainly worked for me. I can’t imagine owning any other brand of portable music player.
[tags]Apple, iPod, music[/tags]
2 Responses to “A Little Crowded”
By Erik Weibust on Jun 12, 2006 | Reply
One of the few remaining things for me to figure out is the iPod on an ubuntu machine. I’d love to know what you’re using as I haven’t seen a linux version of iTunes.
Erik
By Tony Steidler-Dennison on Jun 12, 2006 | Reply
Funny you should mention that. I installed GTKPod on the laptop yesterday (brand new Dapper install). It’s a completely different approach than iTunes, and a little hard to adjust to. But, I think I’ll be able to use it full time once I figure out the interface and the process.
I also installed Sharp Musique (from DVD Jon). That provides access to the iTunes Music Store, allows listening to previews and purchasing. Better yet, it doesn’t slap the DRM layer on the purchased songs. He’s provided a deb for download on his site.
And, I installed CastPodder for podcasts. There’s a deb available for that, as well. If I can figure out how to make all these pieces work together smoothly, I’ll be able to blow away the Windows install on the laptop altogether.