iPod - song capacity

[jimdonnelly]

I am thinking of buying the iPod Classic 160GB. I have approximately 1000 cds that I would like to download on to it. I know that the best format is a lossless file and that this takes up substantial storage space, but I have no idea how much.

Is lossless much better that 320kbps?

Will a 160GB memory hold 1000 cds in lossless format?

If yes will I have space for anything else?

I am new to the iPod arena and would appreciate any advice you can offer. Cheers

 

[Anonymous]

Im not a total expert on everything that you have asked but ill tell you what I know.

Apple lossless can fluctuate anywhere between 900 and just over 1100kbps (on my iPod) this is down to the complexity of each song. However it can drop lower if the songs are less complex.

I think that an uncompressed song on a CD is 1411kbps, and I have also heard that when you import your songs into iTunes using Apple Lossless you should expect to loose roughly 45% of the bitrate. Although from my experience iv lost between 30 and 40% of the bitrate.

So when you put a CD into your disc drive and view it in iTunes before importing it, it will say how many MB the disc contains (where it say the amount of time on the disc etc) at the bottom of the screen you then need to knock off between 30 and 40% of the size in MB.

 

[jimdonnelly]

Thanks ben_12, that is useful information. I asked an "expert" in a large retailer - I left the shop quickly as I knew more that they did (which is a worry). I then called Apple who cut me off. A visit to the Apple store was not much better.

I am getting very frustrated with this and I am close to abandoning the idea of buying and iPod as I cannot establish if it will suit my needs. Not exactly a good way of selling their products!

 

[jimdonnelly]

Can anyone else offer an opinion. This is driving me mad!

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="jimdonnelly"]

Will a 160GB memory hold 1000 cds in lossless format?

[/quote]Let's see...on average my losslessly ripped songs take about 25 mb of digits. 160 gb = 160.000mb -> 160.000/25= 6400 songs. Average cd contains about 12 songs-> 6400/12= 533 cdsconclusion: 1000 cds won't fit in lossless format on a 160 gb ipod. [quote user="jimdonnelly"]Is lossless much better that 320kbps?[/quote]Don't know, but according to others there isn't much loss in quality. Try it out on your mac/pc with some headphones.I guess my question for you is: what do you want to use the ipod for? Storage or serious playback? Does it need to be mobile? If so, do you really need all your cds ripped onto it. I own hundreds of cds but only have 20 or so of my favorites ripped on my ipod in lossless.

 

[Anonymous]

i ripped 55 CDs to my 60GB iPod yesterday in lossless format. It's taken up 18GB.

With my rough maths, I reckon you might be looking at getting around 450 albums on to a 180GB iPod. Obviously, that's only half of your collection, but its still a hell of a lot of music!

I'd mistakenly imported those same CDs onto the iPod last week at the default iPod setting of 128 which took less than 4GB, so lossless takes up 5 times as much memory.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a listen to the quality of 128 as my headphones have broken.