January 31, 2006
New Toys
New Toys
This has been a season of new toys in the Adams' house -- and I'm not talking about the things for the kidlets. We've been fortunate enough to acquire some nifty electronic gadgets. The newest one -- which I bought by saving up my credit card points until I had enough to get several gift certificates from Best Buy -- is a 30 gigabyte iPod.
I don't really think of myself as a music person, so for the last many years I didn't see much value to me in owning such a thing. I'm not going to be jogging along listening to it, since I'm not going to be jogging along at all. However, when I discovered that I could beam it through the radio in the car and carry every CD we own in one tiny little gadget, I suddenly looked upon the thought of such a thing in a whole new light.
And thus, after securing the requisite gift certificates we got the iPod and all the other things that one needs to go with it. Then we started transferring all our CDs to the computer. I don't think of myself or my husband as "music people" but for non-music types we sure own a lot of music. We're up to 2000 songs and haven't transferred everything yet. It's interesting to take a look at one's whole collection of music -- the good and the bad. My husband mocks my Abba album and my collection of Kingston Trio CDs without mercy, but someone has more INXS than strictly necessary and what is London Beat? It's been interesting to realize how much kiddie music we own. We're up to 8.5 hours on that playlist and I think I still have another Wiggles CD stashed away.
Toot toot chugga chugga!
Forgive the iPod illiteracy (or should I just call myself dumb?), but do you have to convert all the songs to MP3 or will it accept the .wav files? If it does take .wav and MP3, have you thought about converting the .wav files to MP3 so that you can fit more songs?
And finally, have you considered trying to convert music from LP's to your computer?
Posted by: MarcV at January 31, 2006 11:50 AMMarc, I'm pretty iPod illiterate too, since I've just been sticking the CDs in and iTunes has been doing all the converting/cataloging/etc. I think iPods use something proprietary and not MP3 files, but I don't really know.
As far as LPs go -- I haven't got any. Most of the things I used to have on records have been rebought on CD. Some things never got released onto CD and my dad digitized them and made his own CDs. I do have some tapes I would love to have a song or two from. I think once we get all our CDs put on the iPod, I'll have to dig out the tapes from the attic and do a little shopping at the iTunes store since we have a couple gift certificates to the store already.
Posted by: Jordana at January 31, 2006 01:10 PMNow that you mention it, I do recall hearing about a proprietary conversion/file extension for iPods. I keep forgetting that I've got a few years on you so that you may have not collected as many LP's as I have (+200).
Posted by: MarcV at January 31, 2006 04:06 PMThey're fun aren't they? I got a Nano for Christmas and I've been enjoying walking home from campus everyday with all my favorite music in my pocket and earphones...
Posted by: Ellen at January 31, 2006 05:15 PMiPods play .mp4 files, most other players use .mp3 files, and as far as I know, none on the market can play .wav files, they're just too huge. Even for our audio at the radio station where I work, we don't actually play .wav files on the air. We edit sound (I'm talking about news here, not music) in .wav format, and all of our phone interviews are recorded as .wav files, but sound collected in the field and sound ready for air is the smaller .mp2 format.
Posted by: ninaradio at January 31, 2006 06:22 PMWe haven't bitten on the iPod thing yet... although we've had several "we could turn that extra computer in the office into a music server" discussions. I suppose it'd be a non-portable iPod. We're so retro.
Ditto on the music collection. We weeded out some CDs for resale the other day, but the thought of ripping all those suckers makes my eyes cross.
Ah well. Technology rocks. So does Abba! ;)
Posted by: The Cryer at February 1, 2006 09:47 PM
Jordana Adams, Chief Pontificator