Stephen Mejias

Hey Stephen,I can see you and your camera in the reflection of the rear case! Glad you are enjoying it... load up that music and have fun! Thanks for posting, Vinnie

Stuffed Boned Rabbit - Coniglio Disossato Ripieno. "Put the boned rabbit on your cutting board, pressing the flesh of the legs into the cavity so as to obtain what looks like a slab of meat." A lossless recipe? I think the rabbit might stutter - lossy.

>I can see you and your camera in the reflection of the rear case! O, so symbolic, isn't it?>load up that music and have fun! I really couldn't have imagined how much fun it actually is to load an iPod with music. It's a pleasure to search through my collection of CDs, deciding which is next to be added to my iTunes. And iTunes, itself, is a pleasure to use. I love watching my iTunes library grow, I love the collection and organization of data. There's me and there's my music, and iTunes and the iPod are bringing us together in a new way. Which is a lot of fun. It's silly, but I've already found myself forming a relationship with the device. I'm still trying to figure out what to name it.

I'm sure you probably already know this, but make sure you go into your itunes preferences and select advanced. Then click on importing and set it to apple lossless, or better yet, AIFF. Either that or just get a turntable and relax. (just kidding Vinnie...)

Thanks John. I appreciate the help, especially with the basics, because I am pretty clueless. I'm coming at this as a complete beginner, which is kind of embarrassing. But, hey. Whatever.I'd also like to learn more about the different file formats. Why do you recommend AIFF over Apple Lossless?

As a student without any money and the inability to buy an iPod over 30 gigs, or even a new one at that, I find no period more stressful in my life than when I have to load music onto my iPod. So many artists to choose from, and I have to edit it down to such a small amount. Yes, I should make the investment on a newer and higher-memory iPod (but I have to pay the rent first).

Hey John, Well I know what portable audio player you are using... I found it over here: http://www.sonicflare.com/archives/the-only-portable-audio-player.php And where is a link to that shirt that you were wearing when I saw you at HE2007 :-)Hey Stephen, AIFF is just like WAV... it is a fully UNcompressed music file. Apple Lossless is lossless compression, meaning that the music files are compressed by about 30 or 40% in storage on your hard drive, but are converted back to the original file upon playback. In therory, they should sound identical. Lossless lets you fit more music files onto your hard drive. It is kind of like a ZIP file... compressed during storage, but when you open it you do not lose a thing. -Vinnie

I remember reading somewhere about a test done showing some data changes after music files were put through lossless.Heck, it's like chopping the file up, folding all the pieces really small and cramming them in a little box. Then unfolding and gluing them back together. It might all be there, but I wouldn't want someone to do that to my sneakers...

I saw a magician do this with a rabbit. Afterward the rabbit looked the same but he stuttered.

>Heck, it's like chopping the file up, folding all the pieces really small and cramming them in a little box. >I saw a magician do this with a rabbit. Afterward the rabbit looked the same but he stuttered.Soooo, you guys are saying I shouldn't do it?

Stephen,Apple Lossless is converted back to the original WAV file, bit for bit, before it is passed into the DAC and converted to analog (and fed to the line-out or headphone output).What you should try is ripping a song using Lossless, and ripping the same song using WAV and listen to both. I am using WAV files because they can be used with everything (e.g. to/from my Olive Music Server and iPod) and because it is fast to burn them onto CD-R (no need to decompress the lossless data to WAV before burning).Vinnie

Argh! I didn't mean for the text to be all bold like that :-)

Maybe you didn't mean it Vinnie, but it sure made you sound authoritative.

Apple's lossless format returns the original file unaltered. As Vinnie pointed out, it is similar to Zipping or Stuffing. The difference being Apple's lossless codec was specifically designed to optimize digital music files. So no harm in lossless compression in the digital realm but never try to zip your sneakers of stuff your rabbit.

stuff your rabbit with what?

All that said, I do remember a test that discovered "harm" done to music files passed through Apple Lossless. The real test of course is listening. After all, there is still no scientifically agreed upon reason for why CD players or amps sound different. Just remember, don't believe all the hype: "perfect sound forever"

...right...

John,What about CDs burned onto Verbatim "Vinyl CD-R's?" They do some more analogue-like :-)

Doh! There is that bold again... I was trying to do a line-break, not sound authoritative. Let me try this testing, testing, bla bla bla

My bad! Vinnie didn't mean to sound authoritative. I totally misled him! He asked me how to make paragraph breaks, and I told him how to make stuff bold. I'm
horrible.Good grief. Sorry Vinnie!!!Anyway, I once stuffed my sneakers into a rabbit. That didn't turn out too good, either.

Hey Stephen,
No problem... maybe I really did want to sound authoritative and didn't even know it! ;-)
Thanks for the help, and no more stuffing rabbits into sneakers.
Vinnie