ipod and dac?

This is an excellent thread! Great points both pro and con.

As a daily working Mac pro, it's amazing that I've totally missed out on this. Probably from being overworked and not watching TechTV enough! You guys have given me much to think about. It'll be interesting to see how the tech trends develop and what the next CES Macworlds reveal.

Thanks for educating me!
Dean

OK, I'm getting ready to pull the trigger.

I guess I'll have to experiment with different compression schemes [uncompressed, better quality v. compressed, more songs] to determine what works best for me.

But I'm wondering, are you iPod users happy with the supplied Apple earphones or do you use something like the Grado SR60s I use at work?

Thanks.

Awesome, thanks for the help!

I was talking with a friend of mine at work regarding the issue of hard drive based music sources, and the question came up about fragmentation.

He's a graphic designer and I am a retoucher and all our work is created using Macs with tons of RAM and fast hard drives. Because of the nature of our work we wage a constant battle with disc fragmentation.

However, since the small hard drives used in devices like the iPod just store and play back music, am I correct to assume fragmentation shouldn't be a problem since files are not being written, read, deleted and re-written on a constant basis?

Or, do these devices have the ability to delete music files and have those same spaces/blocks re-written over which could prevent future files from being written contiguously and therefore leave open the possibility of fragmentation down the road?

Thanks.

Thanks for the response Onhwy61.

You mention that fragmentation with 2-channel playback isn't an issue, but what happens to that drive when songs are written, then deleted and other songs are written over the same blocks where the deleted files once resided?

I realize that when a large number of songs are written/downloaded to device like the iPod, they are initially done so in a contiguous fashion. But what happens when songs are deleted from various points in the middle of those large blocks and new ones written/downloaded? I'd imagine those vacant areas of the drive will eventually be written to, and in the case of large sound file not in a contiguous manner. When repeated over and over, fragmentation will eventually occur.

In my field I work with multiple drives and many of my files can exceed a gigabyte. When diagnosing and testing for problems on my drives, the ones that store the large files experience less fragmentation, but take a while to get into a severe state. The drive that always has the most fragmentation is the start up drive which in my case I've counted up to 200,000 miscellaneous small files scattered all over the place. Severe fragmentation can occur in a few months.

Since my computer doesn't support enough RAM to hold an entire file in RAM, we use large fast scratch disks with speeds in the 10,000-15,000 RPM range. Since these disks temporarily hold information and release it once the file is closed, fragmentation isn't an issue with them. However, a small number of invisible files are still written to them. This is something I can see when running a test using a disk utility like Norton's. Since a scratch disk won't incur the level of file residue a storage sevice does, I don't defrag these devices, but instead wipe them of all files.

However, isn't the iPod basically a storage device no different from any hard drive? I'd think a 40GB iPod that can store up to 10,000 songs [according to Apple] is prone to the same negative issues as any hard drive storing thousands of files.

The reason I raise this issue is that I have owned a DirecTivo unit for two years and have noticed hitches, stalls and pixelization while using the navigation tools. This was non-existent for the first 6 months or so, but has increased greatly with time and usage. This has nothing to do with recording a dropped out transmission because of poor dish to satellite viewing at the time, because this is happening on already recorded programs and doesn't happen in the same place twice.

To me an iPod would be similar to a Tivo unit or any other hard drive. They all store data, are read from and re-written to in a permanent manner. Wouldn't they all be vulnerable to fragmentation and eventually need optimization?

Please let me know if I'm completely wrong or just not getting it.

Thanks!
Dean

Rsbeck,

After searching around a bit, it seems the iBook doesn't have a Cardbus slot like the Powerbook, so an expansion card for this area is out.

According to Apple Developers info, the AirPort card does support DSP so it's possible this area may work.

I also did see some cards for digital processing that can be used via USB connections.

Now, for the downer. I don't know if any company makes such devices that are iBook compatible.

Anyone out there know?

Thanks guys for putting the proper perspective on everything. Like anything I guess, it all comes down to smart usage and good file management.

Onhwy61, using your scheme of mass copying and deleting, fragmentation should be quite minimal. And, if it does happen to occur, Stefh42's advice oughta clear things up.

One thing I will avoid though, is the practice of combining music files and high traffic data files on the same iPod. I see some people doing this, and this is an instance where fragmentation could easily rear its fractured head.

Thanks again!