I-pod - Classical Music -

[fificat]

I am completely new to this. Want to buy my son ( who is a classical music fiend) an I-pod. Can you download classical music from i-tunes? Or can he get classical music from other sites. Sorry to be so dim but any advice appreciated....

[stevelup]

Hi

If you download iTunes (you don't need to set up an account, and it doesn't matter if you haven't got an iPod yet), you can browse and take a look.

I've just looked and there appears to be absolutely masses of classical stuff on there.

Regards,

Steve

[justdoit]

You dont need to re-purchase the music if you have the CD's simply rip them to the player using a pc. That said I wouldnt recommend an iPod for classical music as the gaps between different movements will drive him mad. May I suggest a Sony player as Atrac (the compression format they prefer) is the only gapless format out on the market at the moment. The supplied software isnt as good as iTunes (either Sonic Stage or Connect depending on which player you buy) but is fairly easy to cope with.

Originally Posted by justdoit

You dont need to re-purchase the music if you have the CD's simply rip them to the player using a pc. That said I wouldnt recommend an iPod for classical music as the gaps between different movements will drive him mad. May I suggest a Sony player as Atrac (the compression format they prefer) is the only gapless format out on the market at the moment. The supplied software isnt as good as iTunes (either Sonic Stage or Connect depending on which player you buy) but is fairly easy to cope with.

Let me emphasize this. Gaps are a big issue. I'm a big fan of classical music, one of those that have multiple recordings of many pieces (like eight of Bach's Mass in B minor, ten of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, four of Mozart's Don Giovanni; all pieces that require gapless playback), and I can't stand the gaps between tracks, as I can't stand the idea of joining everything in big files and losing all individual track information and immediate access to each one (part of the joy of a classical music fiend is comparing interpretations, and for that you definitely need easy access to individual tracks). So consider that. Despite having a browse by composer option, the iPod is really geared towards people who listen to songs, not albums.

[extremelydodgy]

Beethovenian's right in theory, but I have found it not that much of a distraction in use (my listening is balanced betwen classical, jazz, electronica... all in theory gapless-heavy genres). Ripping into a totally proprietary format doesn't appeal (MP3 for me... and both Sony and Apple are gappy in this respect), and the gaps in classical usually occur inbetween movements where the only thing you're interrupting is coughs. Given the versatility of the iPod in other respects and it's far more complete software, it's a better choice IMO.

It's true that some gapless compositions do actually have brief pauses, and not necessarily music going on (like Beethoven's String Quartet Op.131). But many others really have continuous music that's annoyingly and blaringly disturbed by gaps (Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most obvious example). And how distracting it is will depend on each person. Musical preference will also play here: Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, Vivaldi are mostly gapless-free; Beethoven has gapless pieces in almost all genres; Wagner, Verdi, Mozart and other opera composers obviously suffer from gappy playback; Stravinsky, Richard Strauss composed lots of pieces that are big chunks of continuous music; modern composers like MacMillan and Tavener also use continuous flow etc. I actually counted some time ago all my classical albums that require gapless playback to see if I was exaggerating with my obsession in having it: 360 CDs at the time, certainly a little more now, out of about 1,600 CDs. I can fill up a whole iPod with those.

[docmp3]

Er, couldn't you rip the whole of say Beethoven's Fifth as a single mp3 file. I know you would lose the ability to see which movement you listening to, of course.

I find listening to "classical" music on the iPod a pleasure, no bass bias here as found on some Sony players, just a natural flat sound stage. Also since I listen to the whole piece at once, as it was intended by the composer I do not need to find say the 3rd movement.

Just my thoughts, please feel free to shoot me down.

David

[KJ_Palmer]

Well, it is a definite shortcoming of MP3 players that they can't do gapless properly, and it certainly can spoil the enjoyment of the music. It's possible to live without it of course, even for classical or other forms of music, but I wouldn't want to give it up, and really they (manufacturers) should have done something about it by now...

Originally Posted by docmp3

Er, couldn't you rip the whole of say Beethoven's Fifth as a single mp3 file. I know you would lose the ability to see which movement you listening to, of course.

I find listening to "classical" music on the iPod a pleasure, no bass bias here as found on some Sony players, just a natural flat sound stage. Also since I listen to the whole piece at once, as it was intended by the composer I do not need to find say the 3rd movement.

Just my thoughts, please feel free to shoot me down.

David

I suppose it's a matter of choosing the least annoying compromise. To me, dealing with a program like SonicStage and a proprietary format is much less of a problem than losing track information and access and listening to iFermatas. (I also happen to dislike iTunes's interface.) And it bothers me immensely that Apple can't use a tiny portion of the billions they profit from the iPod to solve this obvious flaw. I'm still waiting to hear some convincing argument that this is too difficult to achieve (and the argument that most people don't care is too silly to consider).