10 GB iPod Mini & 80 GB iPod?

[Yvan256]

I for one am waiting for an 80gb model before I upgrade my 3g 40 gig. I use about 35 GB now, but 80gb would allow me to compress my entire cd library with Apple lossless.

If you could fit your entire CD library in 80GB with Apple Lossless, and already have 35GB right now, that means you must be using 320kbps. Am I right?

Of course, using Apple Lossless on the iPod would absolutely kill the battery in a few hours. Not important if you mainly use it in a car, though.

 

[patrick0brien]

I love my Company

Woo hoo! A 10GB mini would be awesome... Especially if the size were to stay the same, or even get smaller! 😱

-Ahh, so nice to finally be able to talk to you guys about this 😀

Note that the Microdrive is actually 20% smaller because of the move to the ZIF standard rather than the CompactFlash standard for interconnect. So the idea that a company could take two and put them into a single body is entirely possible.

I've got a few new Micros around the office and I can say these things are really tiny. The possibilitie are getting incredible.

And let's not forget the other end, the 500gb Deskstar: oooOOOooo!

To give you a picture go here .

NOTE: Aside from the official released information here, this is speculation and not meant to be confirmation or denial of any additional information that may exist.

Sorry guys, I can only talk about things officially released, and I like my job. I want to keep it. 😉

 

[Surreal]

i import my cds as apple lossless.

80 gigs is beautiful.

and before anything is said about how you can't tell the difference; i can.

i accidentally imported rebirth of the cool as mp3. as i listened to it on my speakers i thought the computer speaker, i thought that was the culprit. so i put on my headphones, which are what i usually listen on. well...after a few tracks i just decided that the cd was reorded horribly. i wasnt that happy, but i didnt think much of it. about 20 minutes later i notice my import settings are on mp3. i delete the files with extreme prejudice and import as lossless. much better.

i have only imported a 3rd of my cd library..at MOST and i am at 20 gigs.

i WANT 100. but 80 will "suffice" 😉


P.S.

they had BETTER put the 80 gig in the iPod as well as the iPod photo.
i do NOT need a color screen. andi do not WANT a color screen.

 

[Surreal]

Of course, using Apple Lossless on the iPod would absolutely kill the battery in a few hours. Not important if you mainly use it in a car, though.

are you trying to make me cry?
what do you mean by this?
explain yourself.
the battery life is less with lossless?
woe is me.
oh..woe...woe..is me

 

[patrick0brien]

are you trying to make me cry?
what do you mean by this?
explain yourself.
the battery life is less with lossless?
woe is me.
oh..woe...woe..is me

-Surreal

Simply put. Lossless - or AIFF files, are larger, and contain more information for the DH to read, and the Cache is used far more heavily. Therefore, al of that extra HD usage, uses battery time. The iPod pre-caches as many songs ahead in the arrangement as can fit in the cache. If you do lossless, it can do that.

Additionally, all of that extra HD reading will shorted the HD's lifetime.

 

[Linkjeniero]

are you trying to make me cry?
what do you mean by this?
explain yourself.
the battery life is less with lossless?
woe is me.
oh..woe...woe..is me

Of course the battery lasts less with Apple Lossless, because each minute you hear takes more space in the hard drive, and so it needs to spin more than it would with a 128 kbs encoding.

 

[shamino]

Of course, using Apple Lossless on the iPod would absolutely kill the battery in a few hours. Not important if you mainly use it in a car, though.

It wouldn't make much sense for the car either. Road/wind noise will almost certainly drown out any improvement in the audio quality.

But that's not the only place to use an iPod. I suspect many people leave convenient cables/docks attached to their home stereo systems, in order to use the iPod as the main source of music at home. For this, lossless would definitely be worthwhile, as would digital output.

 

[JonMaker]

You can even imagine a scenario where you have two of these 1" drives built in for 160GB of data. But the biggest barrier to these going into laptops is the speed. 4200 rpm just doesn't cut it any more.

RAID them. 😱 (RAID 0)

Use both drives for storage (have a total of 160 GB), but distribute it over the two drives in such a manner that both can be accessed at the same time, thus doubling (theoretically) the speed. Access times would still be an issue, but I'd buy a 'book with a built-in internal RAID just for the cool factor. 😎

 

[Yvan256]

i import my cds as apple lossless.

80 gigs is beautiful.

and before anything is said about how you can't tell the difference; i can.

Ok, so you can hear the difference. I won't try to convice you otherwise, because I don't have your ears (and I know mine are crap).

But did you at least try other settings? Especially, did you try AAC instead of MP3? Both are lossy, but AAC sounds a LOT better than MP3. Also, you can try higher bitrates (did you try AAC 320kbps?).

Maybe you already tried it all though, and you'll be staying with Apple Lossless anyway.

 

[Yvan256]

are you trying to make me cry?
what do you mean by this?
explain yourself.
the battery life is less with lossless?
woe is me.
oh..woe...woe..is me

Well, the battery life for the iPod is based on 128kbps file. This is important, because the iPod needs to read data from the HD and then put it into its internal RAM (32MB buffer, I think).

A 4-minutes song at 128kbps means around 4MB for the file. Which means the iPod can spin up the HD, buffer 8 songs, then stop the HD. That's why there's a delay when you skip "next track" too fast (the iPod has to reload since you skipped over songs it had already buffered).

Now, a 4-minutes song in Apple Lossless means around 20MB for the file. Sure, the iPod can put a bit more than one song in the buffer, but this buffer will get emptied pretty fast, so the HD runs about 5 times more often.

And the HD is probably the main thing that kills the iPod's battery (not sure the % of the power required for the HD vs the other parts though).

So, in the same general idea, the battery will last more for 128kbps than 320kbps, but will last a whole lot more if you used 64kbps, etc.

 

[Yvan256]

RAID them. 😱 (RAID 0)

Use both drives for storage (have a total of 160 GB), but distribute it over the two drives in such a manner that both can be accessed at the same time, thus doubling (theoretically) the speed. Access times would still be an issue, but I'd buy a 'book with a built-in internal RAID just for the cool factor. 😎

How about this though: the next PowerBook upgrade could have both a Dual-Core G4 from Freescale AND two laptop HDs in Raid 0. 😀

 

[Vector]

I have a little over 40Gb of music right now and of course my 40Gb iPod only holds 36.5Gb or so. I encode most of my music at 196kbps, so it isnt just those who use lossless encoding who need larger iPods. I have a lot of music that i still haven't put on my computer so i could really use an 80Gb iPod. I'll settle for a 60Gb iPod that is not an iPod photo.

I hope Apple doesn't wait until next fall to up the hard drive sizes in the regular iPods.

 

[Surreal]

hmmm thank you for all the replies

i havent had the money for an ipod so i havent really thought about it too much.

and i actually havent tried higher than 168..or something liek that. but the main thing that informs my saying i can hear the difference is stereo image. so my question is does the higher setting help that? i will check but you might answer before i get around to it and save me the trouble. 😉

dag. i wonder what the battery life is with lossless...anybody know? checked the website and nada.

i don't listen on the train (live in NY and use earplugs on the train to keep the sounds from hurting my ears)

 

[Yvan256]

and i actually havent tried higher than 168..or something liek that. but the main thing that informs my saying i can hear the difference is stereo image. so my question is does the higher setting help that? i will check but you might answer before i get around to it and save me the trouble. 😉

Well, my tip is to try only a single song. Take the song you think sounds the worst in 128kbps MP3, then do multiple compressions of it (always from the CD/WAV/Apple Lossless).

A lot of people have good ears and stick with AAC at around 160 to 192 kbps. And as I said, MP3 sounds a lot worst than AAC, so ditch MP3 and try only AAC.

Me? I can barely hear any difference between 64 and 128kbps AAC. 😱

 

[Penman]

well, 80 gigs wouldn't be used for music, but files and photos. 🙄

My GF just bought me a 60GB iPod and I still need more room just to get my music in. It's all 100% ripped from CD's of mine too. We're a minority but there are a significant number of music fans with more than the 1500-2000 CD's it takes to fill a 60GB ipod with tunes ripped at 160 kbps. I'd love a 200GB iPod so I can store all my music and some video and still content at decent quality. You'll all laugh in 5 years at doubting the space could be useful. With new formats and lossless codecs TB are going to be used eventually.

 

[weldon]

My GF just bought me a 60GB iPod and I still need more room just to get my music in. It's all 100% ripped from CD's of mine too. We're a minority but there are a significant number of music fans with more than the 1500-2000 CD's it takes to fill a 60GB ipod with tunes ripped at 160 kbps. I'd love a 200GB iPod so I can store all my music and some video and still content at decent quality. You'll all laugh in 5 years at doubting the space could be useful. With new formats and lossless codecs TB are going to be used eventually.

This is an involved solution, but I would recommend that you buy a couple 300GB drives and rip all your CD's to Apple Lossless. Then use iTunes to transcode from Lossless to 128kbps AAC. Then set your iPod to synch only the 128kbps AAC files. That way you can keep your lossless files and reduce the space used on your iPod.

I've always liked the way that Windows Media Player did the transcoding to lower bit rates for portable devices. I wish there was some seamless handling of multiple bit rates within iTunes.

 

[Yvan256]

I've always liked the way that Windows Media Player did the transcoding to lower bit rates for portable devices. I wish there was some seamless handling of multiple bit rates within iTunes.

I've sent this very idea to Apple a few months ago...

In fact, I've sent a LOT of ideas to Apple since the last few months. Never received any reply (not expecting any, but still, for the dozens of ideas I've sent...)

 

[dlisle20]

i think 80GB is silly and an unecassary amount of space for music, what is that, 30,000 songs? its bigger than my bloody hard drive!

powerbook g4 17' 1GHZ 512RAM 60GB

 

[Vector]

i think 80GB is silly and an unecassary amount of space for music, what is that, 30,000 songs?

As many people including myself have mentioned, it is not unnecessary amount of space for some people. While most people couldn't fill that space up with music, therre are some that can. I have a 40Gb iPod that is full and i have a couple of Gb that are on my computer that won't fit. I still have many more cds that i want to burn, but i dont want to have to get a 60Gb iPod Photo when i wouldn't use any of the extra features.

 

[Yvan256]

i think 80GB is silly and an unecassary amount of space for music, what is that, 30,000 songs? its bigger than my bloody hard drive!

Apple states the 40GB as being able to hold 10 000 songs. So a 80GB one would be 20 000. However, these numbers are only for songs that are 4 minutes long and encoded at 128kbps.

If you encode at 256kbps, cut that number of songs in half (you end up as if your iPod was 40GB instead of 80GB). If you use Apple lossless, cut that number by 5.5! (same as a 15GB iPod!)

Yes, 80GB might seem big for an iPod, and it's also the same size as my desktop PC. But capacities always go up year after year, it's nothing new (my iPod has 10GB, same as my IBM Thinkpad 760XL laptop).

Even my desktop videocard (Radeon 9600XT) has twice the RAM (128MB) of my laptop (64MB)! 😱

 

[shamino]

and i actually havent tried higher than 168..or something liek that. but the main thing that informs my saying i can hear the difference is stereo image. so my question is does the higher setting help that? i will check but you might answer before i get around to it and save me the trouble. 😉

I don't know for sure, but if your big problem is stereo image, another experiement would be to rip with the stereo mode set to "Normal" instead of "Joint Stereo". This is an MP3 option you can set (but unavailable for AAC. I think AAC uses normal stereo at all times.)

In joint stereo, the file doesn't store left and right audio channels, but insteads stores left+right and left-right composites (which are converted back to the original left and right channels on playback). Doing this tends to give better quality compression with the MP3 algorithms, which is why it is commonly used. It may be contributing to the stereo image problems you're noticing, however.

 

[BWhaler]

When Apple releases the modest update to the mini soon, I will try to resist the urge to upgrade my current mini and hold out for the 10 gig model.

Honestly, the 1 gig bump means nothing to me, I just want longer batter life since I do a lot of international flying. But hopefully I can fight the urge and do the practical thing.

But I am not optimistic. the draw of new Apple products is simply too strong. And too easy to rationalize.

 

[air23cary]

is the new ipod mini still going to be released this january? anybody know how much it will cost? what colors it will come in?

 

[3Memos]

i think 80GB is silly and an unecassary amount of space for music, what is that, 30,000 songs? its bigger than my bloody hard drive!

powerbook g4 17' 1GHZ 512RAM 60GB

Mr. Lagerfeld would strongly disagree with you. 😉

 

[edwardcheah]

I'm think of getting the $99 ipodshuffle and an ipodmini gen2 when it comes out.

i think having an 80Gig ipod or even a 40gig for that matter is too much for me, i don't have like so many songs, i bet i haven't heard 80gigs worth of songs in my life.