ipod and dac?

I like to think I have quite a fine home system, and there's no doubt my iPod doesn't come close for critical listening. Nevertheless, I LOVE MY IPOD. I have the 40GB version and have ripped over 900 CDs into iTunes at 128K AAC files. There's no doubt that AAC is better than MP3 (much like MP3Pro).

I could have gone to a higher bit rate, but bear in mind where I listen to my iPod - during ny commute, on the train mostly - 45 minutes, twice a day (plus some time at the office).

I think the buds that came with the iPod are nice, but I chose to add a pair of Etymotic ER4P in-ear phones. For those who don't know about these, they're wonderful. They actually insert into the ear canal, so they block ambient noise beautifully (very important on the noisy train filled with noisy people). I can actually listen to gentle, quiet music and read in my own little world.

The purpose of a device such as an iPod is to allow you to enjoy your music collection, with the best fidelity available, on the road. I would only use it at home as a music server for a party.

One added benefit: since I have most of my music collection on the iPod (over 8200 songs and growing) I have a ready reference when I go into a record store shopping for new CDs. No danger duplicating titles, as I can quickly check to see if I already own a disk. Maybe that's not an issue for some of you, but I've passed on a title more than once, thinking I may already have it, only to find that it was the ONE title from a given artist that I don't yet own.

To me, the iPod is a lifestyle item - like a dishwasher, or automatic garage door opener. Now that I have one, I would HATE to give it up.

Well said Johnmcelfresh.

However, I think we are underrating the iPod as a critical playback source. I have heard much worse. I have it feeding into my system via the Monster cable (which is the best available for the iPod) and it is pretty close to my standard cd playback. Again, I don't think it can compete with my turntable, but then again, I don't even use my regular cd player much anymore for "critical" listening.

If you're afraid of fragmentation on the iPOD, just copy all the files onto your desktop computer, wipe the iPOD clean and copy the stuff back to the now empty iPOD. Then everything will be stored in nice continuous chunks.

Any idea which filesystem iPOD uses? Microsoft (as usual) did a pretty bad job in this area. Both FAT and NTFS are very prone to fragmentation, but maybe Apple did a better job here...

Gunbei, you need to take into account how most people actually use their iPods. To get music into the iPod you need a computer that already has the ripped CDs. I use iTunes and the computer stored music is organized into various playlist (by artists, genre, favorite tunes, etc). When I want to transfer music to the iPod I typically select a group of playlists from the computer and wholesale replace those existing on the iPod. A month could go by before I alter the iPod again. Effectively I'm swapping 28Gb (the actual storage capacity of my 30Gb model) of data at a time. It takes 15-20 minutes for the entire process. So even though files may be written and rewritten over and over fragmentation just doesn't become a practical issue.

Thanks for sharing Onhwy61. I guess the next step is figuring out what kind of soundcard to get that has digital outs. Since I have a laptop, I'll have to find either a USB card or a pcmia card. In the limited research I've done, it seems USB cards suffer a little sonically.

Looking around the web, I've been seeing professional systems from Digidesign, tascam and others that are geared to digital multitrack recording with Pro Tools. They feature a/d, d/a converters and de-jitter devices, and come with plenty of analog and digital in/outs. Digidesign, in particular, has a unit that looks pretty good, and at about $450 on e-bay, comes with Pro Tools. Since I'm a musician, that would be a FUN accessory.

Any experience, thoughts on these recording-based systems as a way to get a digital stream out of my laptop?

D