Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 25 Apr 2005 18:24:46 GMT
When I bought my new iPod a few weeks ago, I decided to get a Griffin iTrip FM transmitter to go along with it. My car still has the stock CD player in it, and there’s no option for any sort of external audio input. If I want to listen to my music in the car, then I have three choices:
- Burn lots of CDs.
- Replace the stock stereo with a model that has a line-in for the iPod.
- Get a FM transmitter for the iPod.
I’ve tried approach #1 before; it hasn’t worked very well for me. I’m too cheap for approach #2 right now–I’d start with just a cheap receiver, but I’d end up getting new speakers, an amp, and a ton of other stuff that I don’t really need, and it’d take me weeks to get it all installed right because I’d freak out over the bill and decide to save money by installing it myself. Besides–I like my stock stereo. The sound quality isn’t that great, but the user interface is nearly perfect–it dedicates a big button to each function, and doesn’t try to do too much. Most of the replacement models on the market look like they were designed to win a feature-list battle, so they’re covered in dinky little buttons that lead to menus that lead to more dinky little buttons. I’ve reached the point in my life where I’d rather have simple tools for most of the things I do. That way, I can concentrate my efforts on managing the inate complexity of the things that I really care about, without wasting my time fighting with overly complex distractions.
So, that leaves me with an FM transmitter for my iPod. The iTrip is kind of cool–it has no user interface at all. You just plug it in and it starts broadcasting. To change the broadcast frequency, it iTrip comes with a CD full of little MP3s with names like ‘87.9’, ‘88.1’, ‘88.3’, and so forth. You just pick the frequency that you want, hit ‘play’, and the iTrip will switch frequencies. Once it’s been set, you can just leave it alone.
I’m generally happy with my iTrip, but I have three concerns.
First, there aren’t a lot of vacant FM frequencies in most big cities. Seattle isn’t huge, but I could only find 4 or 5 completely unused frequencies on my dial. In LA, NYC, or Chicago, I’d be surprised to find any usable channels, and that’d make the iTrip largely useless.
Second, because there aren’t a lot of vacant channels, it’s not uncommon to run into other commuters with FM transmitters on the same channel. On today’s drive to work, I passed at least two other cars with FM transmitters set to the same frequency as my iTrip. They were both going the opposite direction, so their interference didn’t last more then a couple seconds. Two weeks ago I spent 10 minutes stuck in traffic behind some guy listening to a sermon or something; the next day I was stuck at a light with a Snoop Dog fan. It’s not a fatal problem, but it can get annoying.
Finally, the audio quality of the iTrip isn’t all that great. It doesn’t bother me that much because my car stereo is pretty weak, but if you’re an audio purist with a decent set of speakers in a quiet car, you probably won’t be happy with the iTrip. Cheap speakers in a loud car make the audio quality less of an issue.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the iTrip, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. It works well enough for me, although people in bigger cities or people with more discerning ears will probably want to find a better way to connect your iPod to your car. I’ll probably end up replacing my car stereo sometime in the next year or two, if I can find a car stereo receiver that has a decent UI and doesn’t look like it was designed by hyperactive 13-year-olds. For now, though, the iTrip works well enough.
Posted in Music | Tags fm, griffin, ipod, itrip, transmitter | 5 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:05:53 GMT
I didn’t really start out Saturday planning on dumping $500 at the Apple Store, really I didn’t. I planned on spending the day cleaning up around the house and playing with the kids. It’s just that things never work out the way you expect them to.
One thing I discovered a while ago is that I’m much better at cleaning and doing yard work when I have music to listen to. An iPod and a good set of noise-blocking earphones makes it really easy to concentrate on housework while avoiding all of the little distractions in life. The problem is that I’ve been iPodless for months now–my wife appropriated my 15 GB iPod when her original 5 GB model died.
One thing you really, really don’t want to do when you’re suffering from phantom iPod pain is agree to meet your wife at the mall, right next to the Apple store. I’d been successfully fighting the ‘buy a new iPod’ urge for months, but it finally overcame me. So what did I do? I skipped the $99 iPod shuffle, went right past the $199 iPod mini, and grabbed the enormous 60 GB iProduct iPod photo.
I’m such a sucker for color displays. I keep telling myself that a 60 GB iPod is perfect for backing up by 60 GB laptop, but I don’t think I believe myself. It’s just another iProduct.
But it’s such a shiny iProduct.
Posted in Mac stuff, Music | Tags apple, ipod, ipodphoto, iproduct, itrip | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 26 Oct 2004 19:11:31 GMT
Looks like Apple added color and photo playback to the iPods. That’s interesting, but I’m not really in the market for one right now. On the other hand, CNet coverage of the announcement includes this fascinating little piece of text:
In addition to the new iPods, Apple also introduced a set of colored socks for carrying iPods. Apple will sell a set of six differently hued socks for $29.
WTF?
Posted in Music | Tags apple, ipod, ipodphoto | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 01 Sep 2004 17:11:27 GMT
According to CNet, Apple is launching an iTunes affiliate program.
Essentially, you post iTunes Music Store links on your website and collect a 5% commission. I haven’t ran through all of the details yet, but I’m kind of fascinated. Since Apple themselves can’t be making much more then 5% per song, it’s entirely possible that an affiliate could set up a front end to Apple’s store and actually end up making more money off of it then Apple is. Admittedly, the total amount of money involved would be fairly small, and I doubt Apple is giving the affiliates a cut of the iPod sales (which is where Apple really makes their money on music), but it’s still an interesting concept. At the very least, blog-based music reviews and experimental music recommendation systems are going to get a boost.
Of course, knowing Apple, there’s something unpleasant hidden in the terms of the affiliate program. Either that, or they’ll change the program mid-stream and leave people screwed. Apple occasionally rivals Microsoft for the “world’s worst business partner” title.
Posted in Mac stuff, Music, Blog stuff | Tags affiliate, apple, itunes | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:35:45 GMT
Maybe I missed it, but it looks like Apple is listing some tracks now for over $1. Specifically, the page for this Russian National Orchestra recording shows up at two tracks, one for $7.49, and the other for $4.97. Each “track” has 3 additional tracks collapsed underneath it, outline-style. The outline thingy is new to me, too.
Admittedly, the $7.49 track is over 40 minutes long, so that’s not a bad price, but it’s surprising to see Apple going this way. They certainly don’t lower prices for short tracks. See the recording of Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, for example–it’s full of short tracks (as short as 13 seconds) for $1 each. In fact, if you were to buy the whole album one track at a time, you’d pay over $46.
Posted in Music | Tags apple, itunes, itunesmusicstore | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 30 Dec 2003 20:04:55 GMT
Hmm. Everyone’s abuzz about Apple’s pending release of “mini-iPods” with 2-4GB drives and a smaller formfactor. Most of the rumors suggest a $100-$200 price point for the 2 GB model.
MacRumors notes that the 3 current iPod models are 3 of the 5 best-selling MP3 players:
- 10GB iPod ($299)
- 128MB Digitalway ($140)
- 20GB iPod ($399)
- 128MB iRiver ($119.99-$139.99)
- 40GB iPod ($499)
Given this, I’d be surprised if Apple released the 2 GB model for under $150. I mean, given the choice between a 128 MB flash player for $120 and a 2 GB hard drive player for $150, who’d buy the flash player? Since no one really knows where they’re getting their drives from, it’s hard to see where they’re going to find a drive cheap enough to let them sell for under $250, but they’ve pulled rabbits out of that hat before.
Posted in Mac stuff, Music | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:08:43 GMT
So, Apple released a new version of iTunes (with Windows support, gift certificates, and a bunch of minor stuff) a half hour or so ago, along with an upgrade to the iPod’s firmware. I’m such a sucker, I’ve already downloaded and installed them.
This was actually a rather painful upgrade, by Apple standards. The iTunes update is over 9 MB, and the iPod update is over 16 MB. My powerbook crashed in the middle of the iPod update install (admittedly, I was burning a CD, copying 1 GB of data over the network, installing two programs, and trying to run 600 MB of apps on a 512 MB laptop, but it’s still irritating). After I rebooted, everything re-installed correctly, but it took three tries before the iPod update program successfully found and upgraded my iPod.
The new “music quiz” game isn’t all that hot (it plays clips of one of your tracks, and shows you 5 track names. The faster you pick the right track, the more points you get. Just hope you don’t get a song with 5 seconds of dead space at the beginning.
I’m off to play with the new, improved music store. Apple is making an incredible push to own the online music market, partnering with Pepsi (100M track giveaway) and AOL (use your AOL ID to buy, no credit card required).
Posted in Mac stuff, Music | 4 comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 27 Aug 2003 19:34:18 GMT
Okay, I’ve decided that I like the Shure earphones that arrived on Monday. They’re kind of slow to put on and take off, and it’s hard to interact with people in my office with them in, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing :-). On the other hand, once I switched from the rubbery earpieces for it to the foamy earpieces, it’s a lot more comfortable and it sounds better. It’s still not quite up to the sound quality of my Grado SR-60 headphones, but they’re still pretty good, and the extra noise blocking means that they’re a lot more comfortable to use. Plus, I used the Shures for ~6 hours yesterday (in <2 hour chunks), and I didn’t feel beat up at the end of the day; the Grados might sound a bit better, but the earpieces are kind of uncomfortable and the utter lack of sound shielding on them means that I have to turn them up to get over the background noise in my office. The combination of loud and uncomfortable gets tiring after a while.
Strangely, the Shures seem to sound better with the iPod then the Echo Indigo. I need to do more testing (laptop/ipod, shure/grado), but all in all, I’m pretty happy with the iPod/Shure setup.
Posted in Music | Tags e2c, earphones, grado, gradosr60, ipod, shure, shuree2c | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 26 Aug 2003 18:30:31 GMT
I suckered in and bought a refurbed iPod from store.apple.com yesterday. I was weak, and I was getting tired of not being able to listen to music away from my laptop. That, and it was $70 off.
Say what you will about Apple, they know how to package products. This is our second iPod (I got my wife the original 5 GB model shortly after they were released), and I was deeply impressed with the packaging and Apple’s general attention to detail two years ago. The new model is even more refined the the original. The new dock is perfectly weighted, the package itself is a work of art, the remote is cool looking. Heck, even the hold switch on the new iPod looks perfect.
They’re expensive, but somehow it all seems worth it once it’s in your hand. It doesn’t feel cheap like so many products do these days. Frankly, that’s one of the reasons that Apple is still around after all of these years. More then any other computer company, they care about little details, and it shows.
Now if they could only make Safari faster and keep it from crashing once or twice per week.
Posted in Mac stuff, Music | Tags ipod, packaging, refurb, refurbished | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 26 Aug 2003 02:38:37 GMT
A few months ago, I came to the conclusion that I’d never get any work done when constantly dealing with all of the little distractions that come from working in a shared office space. I miss my private office. Oh, well. Anyway, I bit the bullet and bought a set of Grado SR-60 headphones. They sounded nice when I was trying them out, but I wasn’t all that impressed with them when I plugged them into my PowerBook.
First, most headphones claim need a few hours or even days of use to “break in.” After a day or so, the Grados did sound a bit better, but there’s no real way to quantify or repeat that, so it might just be Audio Lore. Second, I discovered that the Grados sound better if I shift them up and back a bit on my ears from the Position of Maximum Comfort. They sound better then, but they’re less comfortable. They still didn’t sound all that hot with the laptop, though, and I was starting to regret buying them. Interestingly enough, they sounded better with my wife’s iPod. So, apparently my PowerBook has a cheap headphone amp. Apparently that’s normal; most consumer electronics equipment comes with cheap headphone amps.
Fortunately, the electronics industry is just great at building new things to sell to work around problems like this, and $99 later I was the proud owner of an Echo Indigo PCMCIA (CardBus actually) soundcard for my laptop. The Indigo is sort of an interesting beast; it’s a soundcard designed for headphones. It has a pair of 1/8” headphone jacks on it and an analog volume dial. It has drivers for most recent versions of Windows as well as OS X; unfortunately the Mac drivers would crash your box if you ejected the card until a month or two ago. Grrrr. It works perfectly now, though.
Sound quality-wise, though, the Indigo has been perfect from day one. It’s clearly better then the built-in headphone jack. Everything sounds way clearer. Music is more enjoyable. The Grado/Indigo combo sounds way better then any home stereo I’ve owned.
The only real problem is comfort–the Grados get uncomfortable after a couple hours of listening. They’re a bit scratchy, and they start to feel oppressive after a while. Plus, they don’t block any of the ambient noise in your environment, so the only way to block noise is to turn the volume up louder. I like loud, but then everyone else in the office gets to share, and I get a headache after an hour or two.
I should probably mention that my office is especially loud right now–I have a pile of Cisco gear 5-10 feet from my desk, including a 7505, two 7204s, a Cat 6505, and a couple PCs with industrial-grade cooling fans. It’s loud. It’s hard to conduct conversations at normal volumes.
So, I just bought a set of Shure (yeah, the microphone people) E2c earphones. They go in the ear, not on it. Think “earplugs with speakers in them” and you’re won’t be far from the truth. The jury’s still out on the Shures; they’re reasonably comfortable, and they block lots of noise, but they don’t sound nearly as sweet as the Grados.
Posted in Music | Tags echo, echoindigo, grado, gradosr60, headphone, indigo, review, sr60 | 4 comments
