Using Itunes With A Nw Hd5

davisneil

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Hi everyone,

I've perfected a good way to integrate itunes with a nw hd5. To those who are new to mp3, itunes is the software that apple developed for the ipod. The ipod has been criticzed recently because of its sound quality and battery life, but it is generally agreed that itunes is a intuitive and very powerful software and is very easy to use. The NW HD5 on the other hands seems to win hardware wise, but the software is a bit awkward to use.

So how can you get the best of both worlds?

Well, i recently discovered that it is a simple case of drag and drop to get the two pieces of software to talk to each other. The idea is that you can create, rip, edit, name and sort your music using itunes, then transfer the resultant organised files over to the sonicstage 'My Library'. Heres how I do it.

1. Download itunes from the apple website. Its totally free. You will also be offerd free updates every few months but usually these are just minor updates to ipod drivers, functions and bugs.
2. Import any existing mp3 files you have into itunes. In the preferences menu, you can get Itunes to organise neatly all your files into artist and album folders which look really good on your hard disk. Also you can ask itunes to update these folder and file names when you make changes to names etc. Very smooth. The final thing you can do is when you import a file, it will automatically create a copy of that file and add it to the itunes library, so they are all in one place. You can delete the original file if you wish especially if you have music files scattered all over your hdd.
3. Before ripping cds, you need to go to preferences>importing/ripping and select the encoding you want. You should select mp3 or wav. aac is NOT supported by the hd5. A standard bitrate for most is 128kbps. I use 192 for a bit of extra quality, but it depends on how many cds you have and hard disk space. NEVER go below 128k. it sounds awful.
4. You can use various organisaton features to catalogue your music. Have a play and see what works for you.
5. Now the clever bits. Open sonicstage while itunes is also open. Select all your mp3s on itunes so they are highlighted in blue. Then, point at the highlighted songs and, HOLDING THE LEFT BUTTON DOWN, drag the mouse pointer slowly over to sonicstage's 'My Library' space. The computer will now update sonicstage with all your songs. it may take a moment.
6. Go back to itunes. It would be a good idea to keep track of the songs that have been xported to ss, so now you need to put some kind of label on all those tracks. So, with all the tracks still highlighted, press ctrl i. This is the get info command. A box will pop up with information about the track. select the page with the info about name, album, etc. DO NOT write anything in the artist, track name or album boxes...it will label all your tracks with that if u do. Simply go to the 'comments' box and type something like 'added to sonicstage 19/6/05'. Click ok. It will now label the tracks highlighted (a hence the tracks exported) with added to sonicstage.
7. Your now covered if you subsequently added tracks to itunes, because you can keep track of anything not added yet. Heres another clever tip. Go to FILE menu and 'create smart playlist'. It will then come up with selectable criteria and if any tracks satisfy the criteria they will appear in the playlist. The smart list will also update itself as files change. So if you enter 'Comments do not contain the word sonicstage' and keep live updating ticked, itunes will constantly maintain a list of all the tracks that are not on sonicstage. So as you add tracks with the comment box still blank it will queue them up on the smart list. Then you just need to drap and drop from the playlist to ss, and then label them up as exported, and they will disappear from the list.
8. With your songs in ss, you can then choose to transfer as mp3, or convert to atrac3. In the settings menu of ss, choose 'as is' transfer to have the mp3s directly on the hd5. To convert to atrac, go to advanced setting, and select 'always convert'. select your required bit rate, and tell ss if you want the shadow atrac3 files on your computer as well. its a good idea but if you need the space, you can ask it to keep just the file on your walkman. If you are converting to atrac3, its a good idea to keep the quality of the original file as high as possible. as said before, i use 192kbps with good results.

i hope this all makes sense. any q's please ask.

:)
 
Oh buy an iPod, you know that you should have. The iTunes/iPod system really is very good. :smashin:
 
davisneil said:
i had an ipod and it was rubbish.


I have one and it is excellent, so who is right and who is wrong?

What you should say is I didnt like it.

Many have picked Sony because they think it sounds better and that is there opinion. Many like myself picked the i-pod for the same reason (yes I listened to the HD3).
 
Do you know, I sometimes wonder if Sony Training employees hang out here incognito.
 
davisneil said:
8. With your songs in ss, you can then choose to transfer as mp3, or convert to atrac3. In the settings menu of ss, choose 'as is' transfer to have the mp3s directly on the hd5. To convert to atrac, go to advanced setting, and select 'always convert'. select your required bit rate, and tell ss if you want the shadow atrac3 files on your computer as well. its a good idea but if you need the space, you can ask it to keep just the file on your walkman. If you are converting to atrac3, its a good idea to keep the quality of the original file as high as possible. as said before, i use 192kbps with good results.

davisneil - does this part actually work?

With SS 3.1 I've never managed to get it to convert to ATRAC as a default it always wants to transfer MP3's native.

This would help me greatly if it worked.
 
possibly - but it doesn't change the game - I listened to my friend's iPod this weekend, he is a hardcore audiophile and was mesmerised by my HD5. The iPod's bass was anaemic. To say the least. iPod is rubbish. It is for sheep. Just follow the nice shiny adverts and you will be happy. ********!

Oh and the age old issue of not even being able to play a cd that requires gapless playback like it was intended to be played.

Come on - I thought that was one of the most basic requirements - for a personal stereo to play your cd's like they were intended to be played...
 
I couldn't stand the tinny, distorted sound and the frequent lockups, so in the end I got myself an HD5. That's some great info regarding iTunes, although personally I didn't like it very much either...
 
When I used to use a .NET minidisc player I used some third party software that was made by people out of desperation due to SonicStage being so poor. Such methods can be found amongst this website.

Anyone know of any similar wheels in motion for the HD(5)?
 
johann1979 said:
possibly - but it doesn't change the game - I listened to my friend's iPod this weekend, he is a hardcore audiophile and was mesmerised by my HD5. The iPod's bass was anaemic. To say the least. iPod is rubbish. It is for sheep. Just follow the nice shiny adverts and you will be happy. ********!

Oh and the age old issue of not even being able to play a cd that requires gapless playback like it was intended to be played.

Come on - I thought that was one of the most basic requirements - for a personal stereo to play your cd's like they were intended to be played...


In your opinion it is rubbish. :mad:

Many others including myself think the opposite so please stop the sweeping statements mate as it is getting a tad boring.

Gapless isnt that important for many of us who listen to proper music and not awful boring dance music. Also if you like listening to a distorted base then enjoy your Sony Johann but please stop idiotic comments like the i-pod is rubbish wheen it quite clearly isnt.
 
gerbilly said:
In your opinion it is rubbish. :mad:

Many others including myself think the opposite so please stop the sweeping statements mate as it is getting a tad boring.

Gapless isnt that important for many of us who listen to proper music and not awful boring dance music. Also if you like listening to a distorted base then enjoy your Sony Johann but please stop idiotic comments like the i-pod is rubbish wheen it quite clearly isnt.

If you read perhaps a little further than my reply only you will quite clearly see other people on this forum who defected to Sony from Apple call it exactely what I called it - 'rubbish'.

I'd like to point out that I listened to my HD5 this weekend with my friend's B & O earphones (a lot of people might say B & O is style over substance, but equally as many will dispute that vigorously), cranked the bass all the way to the top - tested it on some funky house tracks with really fat bass - and guess what, NO distortion - maybe you tried listening (if you did) on a faulty player or perhaps your headphones were cheap.

My statements can't be too boring as you feel the need to respond to them every single time.

I would like to point out that it is not only or even nearly mostly dance music that requires gapless playback but many others including rock (Pink Floyd), The Beatles Abbey Road (medley second half), tons of live performances where applause is punctuated with a very long (in iPods) silence before the music starts, the transition from track 6 to track 7 on Tools Lateralus and much, much more. Perhaps your music library is too limited for you to have noticed.

Get the facts here: --> http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/

This is a forum and forums apart from being a places where people can find help for technical problems is a gathering of opinions. In my opinion you can only be offended by my opinion if you are not 100% sure that the iPod is right for you - if you were confident about iPod and what it's capable of, you would just disregard my opinion and assume I don't know what I am talking about.

A lot of people slag Sony off - I even slag Sony off. I am always willing to give my opinion and I will often post links to sites with different information regarding the subject, but I will never get defensive when people air their opinions about an mp3 player.
 
Johann you said

"if you were confident about iPod and what it's capable of, you would just disregard my opinion and assume I don't know what I am talking about"


The thing is I am very happy with my i-pod and the sound, but I don't want you putting people off from buying an I-pod when they are excellent devices which offer the best recording (AAC files) and the best software, I however will not say it sounds better as it is only in my opinion. Something I think you should acknowledge.
The fact that you are cranking up the base to max I think shows you don't really know what sounds good or not, heavy bass doesnt equal good quality sound.
My musical taste is quite diverse from Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Juliet, Cocteau Twins, Audioslave, Kraftwerk, Arab Strap, The Clash, The Smiths, Morrissey, Led Zepplin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Love, Nick Drake, The Stranglers, Stone Roses, Stina Nordensram, Bjork, Gus Gus. Albums such as Daft Punk's discovery bang along with such a heavy bass it would test any stereo and it still sounds great on my i-pod. :D
 
Perhaps the problem is that the original author contradicts himself more than a little with the crack about iPod = rubbish, as iTunes is an integral part of the iPod system.


When I sit the iPod in the dock as of today, a number of things happen without any manual intervention:


The following is synced from the iPod to the PC:
1. Information on what I played at what time/date on the iPod since the last dock is synced with the iTunes, which is used to increment the play counts in iTunes.

The following is synced from the PC to the iPod:
1. Podcast updates using iPodder, which hooks into iTunes and automatically generates playlists, updates the iPod automatically with the latest podcasts I'm subscribed to. The iPod also allows me to skip boring bits on the Podcasts and also re-listen to bits easily by using the scroll wheel, unlike the HD5.
2. A playlist called "Last 15 days, play=0", which is a Smart Playlist based on two rules... added in the last 15 days, and having not been played before.
3. A playlist called Last 30 days, which will contain dupes of the above + another 15 days of new music, but without the played limit.
4. 5Gb of random music, sorted by album, with the genre containing the words Jazz and Easy... so it could be Acid Jazz, Jazzy Techno, Easy Listening Classical, etc is synced.
5. 5Gb of random music containing the words Tranc, Dance, Electr, IDM, Indust, Tech in the genre is synced, sorted by album.
6. 5Gb of random music containing the word Classical in the genre is synced, sorted by album.
7. 5Gb of random music (of any genre) which I haven't played in the last 60 days is synced to the iPod, ordered by album.
8. iRadio15Dayspc=0, a playlist containing recordings of Internet Radio that I've made in the last 15 days and haven't listened to yet, is synced.
9. A playlist named Focus is synced. This is a manual, bog-standard playlist which allows me to drag anything I'm specifically interested interested in hearing.


I have a number of other playlists to pick music in a variey of other ways, and if I want something different, it's the work of two clicks to enable them and to have the iPod automatically pick up the music on that playlist as well. The above mentioned uses are only scratching the surface of Smartlists and autiomatic updating on the iPod.


Using the Sennheiser HD25-1 and Sony Qualia 010 headphones with both iPod and HD5, I have no real complaints about the bass on the iPod (the phones, both of which are 70 ohms, bypasses the bass fall-off very acceptably), while the iPod has more "air" and clarity... particularly noticeable with classical tracks.


Thing is, some of us do a hell of a lot more than listen to trance mixes and Pink Floyd all day.
 
Incidentally, this tip works for Creative owners too, only they have reasonable playlisting facilities built into Mediasource already so it's not so urgent a need.


The major difference with Mediasource for this tip is that you can drop contents of iTunes playlists straight onto the player, unlike Sonicstage.
 
johann1979 said:
This is a forum and forums apart from being a places where people can find help for technical problems is a gathering of opinions. In my opinion you can only be offended by my opinion if you are not 100% sure that the iPod is right for you - if you were confident about iPod and what it's capable of, you would just disregard my opinion and assume I don't know what I am talking about.
Yes, but the problem with forums like this is that members often make subjective statements about quality in the guise of objectivity which are nevertheless mere opinions, without recognising themselves that they *are* just subjective statements. Your statement earlier:
iPod is rubbish.
is the perfect example. Yes, it may be *your* opinion, but it is certainly not fact, and may even be construed as misguided in the least, if not capricious.

Personally, I'd always advise that members look wider and seek professional opinions too, where they would find that many more qualified than the majority of us forum members here see the iPod as having very good sound quality.

On the other hand, as you say, the good thing about forums is that despite feeling a need to answer your subjective statements without being any less than 100% sure that the iPod is the best player, those who disagree with you can of course assume - as you *are* quite correct in saying, and here at least there is agreement - you don't know what you're talking about.
 
gerbilly said:
Johann you said

"if you were confident about iPod and what it's capable of, you would just disregard my opinion and assume I don't know what I am talking about"


The thing is I am very happy with my i-pod and the sound, but I don't want you putting people off from buying an I-pod when they are excellent devices which offer the best recording (AAC files) and the best software, I however will not say it sounds better as it is only in my opinion. Something I think you should acknowledge.
The fact that you are cranking up the base to max I think shows you don't really know what sounds good or not, heavy bass doesnt equal good quality sound.
My musical taste is quite diverse from Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Juliet, Cocteau Twins, Audioslave, Kraftwerk, Arab Strap, The Clash, The Smiths, Morrissey, Led Zepplin, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Love, Nick Drake, The Stranglers, Stone Roses, Stina Nordensram, Bjork, Gus Gus. Albums such as Daft Punk's discovery bang along with such a heavy bass it would test any stereo and it still sounds great on my i-pod. :D

I can't believe you are so honest! You love iPod but you don't want me to put people off buying them when they are excellent devices?? If you really cared about iPod, the sheer amount of people buying units wouldn't be in your best interest, but rather the device's reputation. Unfortunately that reputation seems to be sinking faster than the HD5 with its cracking buttons.

I am HAPPY to put people off iPod so that they realise that iPod might not even be able to play a simple cd as it was intended to be played and like I said earlier, this is by no means confined to dance music. In fact, the link to the site I posted earlier is of a site created by a guy that doesn't seem to like dance music at all - he was just so annoyed that some of his cd's couldn't be played properly that he ended up putting a website out.

I am on the other hand no audiophile myself. So you are right when you say I don't care too much about the sound. That however does not mean that I am saying I don't care at all. I am happy with Sony's sound, because you have to be honest and realistic here - it is a DAP made by Sony and the sound can just not be that bad. My ears are just not tuned finely enough, nor can I afford a pair of EC5's to hear the subtle difference. However I can hear the massive difference in bass with any pair of headphones - simply because the difference is so big. Do you seriously think all the ordinary people out there would be able to tell you they can hear a difference between the Sony and the iPod apart from the bass? I think the answer is no. These are the same people that rushed out to buy what was clearly the trend at the time and therefore just proved my point that they couldn't care less whether there were subtle differences in sound that needed to be measured by a computer and are almost too small to hear.

Similarly, a lot of people would buy an iPod and be extremely annoyed when they find out it can't play their cd's like they were intended to be played. It is only fair that they are warned before they buy it, especially with tons of better options out there, as taking the player back on grounds of the gapless playback problem could prove difficult.

gerbilly said:
The fact that you are cranking up the base to max I think shows you don't really know what sounds good or not, heavy bass doesnt equal good quality sound.

Like I said; I am not an audiophile - I simply want to feel and hear my music as it was intended. That means thumping bass, without distortion and no gaps between tracks. You use this as if it is something that's wrong with me, the joke of course is that the majority of people feel like me. Unfortunately that majority will get a shock when they find out iPod can't handle their cd's... Only a very small percentage of people comparitively call themselves audiophiles and they of course are more than welcome to put up with gaps in between their tracks with a lower bass output, if so they choose and they feel that the overall sound is better on the iPod. Good luck to them, I personally feel that the majority of people would care more about bass and gapless.

I am very open minded if you would like to prove me wrong.

Oh and sorry, just edited this reply - I would like to clarify that my argument is not an iPod V Sony one - I don't want to get people to necessarily buy a Sony instead of an iPod, in fact as an HD5 owner I just handed my report in on my own player's buttons cracking - this is however a little bit of a wake up call - see my advice is simple, DON'T just settle for the trend of yesterday, look further and there might be something far more suitable...
 
extremelydodgy said:
Thing is, some of us do a hell of a lot more than listen to trance mixes and Pink Floyd all day.

I hope that wasn't aimed at me - I wouldn't get near trance with a bargepole...it's actually quite a personal insult :)
 
okay so 1) if you say 'how was that movie last night' and i say 'it was rubbish', am i making a factual proven statement that that movie is officially poor? Its just my opinion.
2) all i was aiming to do with this thread is to help people who have chosen to buy sony to make the most out itunes. its a brilliant piece of software. i observed that you could make a bridge between the two. you know sonicstage is bad, i know its bad, so i thought that these forums are for people to share knowledge. People are so touchy about ipods. ifeel that some people are trying to justify to themselves this purchase and resent the fact that there is now evolution.
3) Sound quality. Its as good as you think it is. If you think lots of bass is not good quality does that mean it is? How can anyone say, buy this its got good sound. Then you listen to it and you think its awful. If a person likes his midrange cranked up and feels thats the best quality for him, then to that person, sound quality is good. Who can then argue with that? If you are listening to a player, and feel that the unit is struggling eg, loadsa distortion, weedy sound, compression artifacts, etc, then that is a technical issue. It is not able to provide what you want. Bit like a can opener thats blunt. you can say that it does the job but with great difficulty.
4) I dont work for sony. I dont want to work for sony. I think there are issues with the player, but were supposed to work together to minimize the trouble.
 
KeanosMagicHat said:
davisneil - does this part actually work?

With SS 3.1 I've never managed to get it to convert to ATRAC as a default it always wants to transfer MP3's native.

This would help me greatly if it worked.

yes it does. on the transfer screen with my lib on the left and atrac hdd on right, in middle there is setting box. click it, select the 2nd option ,then click advanced. click on the selection that says 'always convert to atrac' and select your bit rate.
 
davisneil said:
yes it does. on the transfer screen with my lib on the left and atrac hdd on right, in middle there is setting box. click it, select the 2nd option ,then click advanced. click on the selection that says 'always convert to atrac' and select your bit rate.

I have the same problem as Keanus and have even emailed Sony - they admitted it was a problem and they would pass my complaint to the developers for future versions of ss. I have done exactely what you recommeded - but it still does NOT transfer everything in Atrac.
 
mick's cat said:
Yes, but the problem with forums like this is that members often make subjective statements about quality in the guise of objectivity which are nevertheless mere opinions, without recognising themselves that they *are* just subjective statements. Your statement earlier:

is the perfect example. Yes, it may be *your* opinion, but it is certainly not fact, and may even be construed as misguided in the least, if not capricious.

Personally, I'd always advise that members look wider and seek professional opinions too, where they would find that many more qualified than the majority of us forum members here see the iPod as having very good sound quality.

On the other hand, as you say, the good thing about forums is that despite feeling a need to answer your subjective statements without being any less than 100% sure that the iPod is the best player, those who disagree with you can of course assume - as you *are* quite correct in saying, and here at least there is agreement - you don't know what you're talking about.

Well of course if you are going to quote me saying; "iPod is rubbish" it would be a subjective statement, but that is because YOU quoted me totally out of context - which was a not a very clever thing to do. Any reasonably intelligent person, and by that I mean any person capable of switching on their pc and being able to read these forums will know that that is my opinion and my opinion only. Nobody would consider it fact. If you cared to quote the sentence before you would notice that I said I listened to my friend's iPod this weekend with good phones and any reasonable person would know that my opinion followed.

As I have discredited your first point, I am afraid your second point is no longer valid anymore. So sorry, I can't comment on it.

If iPod wasn't that bad I am sure it it wouldn't have ended up LAST when the panel for Cnet did a blindfold test... find the info here --> http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-6247126-1.html
 

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