i thought of this the other day-- while not new to many it is an interesting thought. my observation is the higher the bitrate of the songs the less your battery will last. This is due to 2 things: o longer hardrive spinup for larger files o processor/system will have to work harder to decode larger bitstream So keep this in mind when you rip songs from CD (or the alternative ).
This is why I almost always store songs on my iPod at MPEG 2 audio to save a huge loss in battery power. Encode the songs from a CD using the following custom import settings in iTunes: Mono: 32 Stereo: 64 Use highest VBR The rest of the settings are up to you. The result is a 4 minute song is encoded at MPEG 2 audio at a little more than 64Kbps and takes up 1.8 or 1.9MB of Hard Drive space. iTunes can read MPEG 2 audio, and so can your iPod. Basically, it sounds like MPEG 1 audio at 128Kbps (or higher), but takes up about half the space. This is how you can get your Hard Drive to store 10 or more songs at around 4 minutes for a decent quality. Did you ever observe that, mc68k?
interesting, KC i didn't know thjat the iPod could do mpeg2 audio. i don't think i'd go lower than 128k encoding but your point is interesting. when the firmware is updated to accomodate mp4, then we'll have the best of both worlds: more quality w/less space and more battery life. it's nice that the device has so much flexibility (and quality)