Serious lust for an iPod

The 1 drawback to the iPod is the lack of an FM tuner (I like to listen to Howard Stern in the morning on the train and don't want to lug to players with me). The same company making the iTrip are also developing an FM Tuner that plugs onto the iPod remote.

I am sure this is a nice player, but I have yet to have ANY problems with my iPod whatsoever.

 

I've been listening to MP3 in the car over a portable Panasonic, thru a cassette adapter, for the past few months. As such, I found a heck of a deal last week on one of those FM-modulated changers for the car...much easier to operate while driving. Since it will also play MP3 discs, it will be neat.

BUT, I'm finding more and more that the sound quality of MP3 is gettign on my nerves. I've been using the 192k rate, but even there I'm hearing a lot of shortcomings. Most annoying, during something percussive like a maraca, the sound of the maraca actually turns into a "chirp". It very well could be the Panasonic's MP3 decoder as it could be the encoding on the computer.

My next MP3 disc is going to be at 256k. I'll see if that helps. After that, 320k. If that doesn't do it, then I'll go back to straight CDs. If I can hear this through a cheap portable Panasonic, playing through a cassette adapter stuck in a factory-stock Delco head unit over $5 speakers, then it MUST be bad. Headphones? Don't even want to think of how horrid it sounds. The proximity to the ear magnifies EVERY sordid little detail.

Don't get me wrong--I know enough not to expect perfection, and live with it during my daily listening. It's only bad when it is distracting...and listening to MP3s is becoming just that.

NP: "Born To Be Alive", Patrick Hernandez

 

The only time I ever really hear any distortion or anything on my iPod is because it is a "modern" mastered CD compressed at 192kbps. The Donnas new one being a prime example.

I just loaded up the new Zeppelin 3CD set and I am curious what that is going to sound like. The waveforms were hugging the 0db line.

 

Ugh...and darn it. I was hoping that set would have been mastered better.

I'll be curious to see if this crappy Sony changer I bought has a better MP3 decoder than the Panasonic. I'm noticing a little bit of a "garbly" sound in the midrange in addition to chirping.

 

What are you using to encode with? If you aren't using LAME, you should try it. It has never really given me any noticeable problems at 192 other than what I just mentioned.