iPod Classic, Slackware-12.1, ripping, tagging, etc.
 

Hi everyone!

Despite listening to digital music for years (mp3, Ogg, shn, flac, etc) I have only just now acquired an mp3 player - iPod Classic 80 GB.

I'm fairly happy with the player itself and the sound, but the iTunes software is really crap (nowhere near as bad as the Zune software though). When in windows I used MusikCube to play my mp3s.

I had the player 1/2 filled with music via iTunes and then connected to Amarok only to see all my music vanish. Some googling explained why to some degree, but I realized I needed to learn a bit about the options for managing the iPod in Linux. There's alot of choices and info out there and I was hoping you could give some opinion with respect to the following:

1. Preferred software for managing the iPod in linux - including what you lose in functionality with that choice. For example, I've seen that Amarok will work, but the album view will be lost. I have gtkpod as well and I think I read something similar with respect to it. Also, is it possible to use iTunes and another linux app at the same time to manage the ipod or are you stuck with the one you decide to use.

2. ID3 tagging software - I've tried easytag and tagtool in the past as well as juk and amarock. I think I'm a little stupid when it comes to this because I don't always get the results I expect to get.

3. mp3 ripping - I've tried a number of apps with varying results. Ogg is out of the question of course, but I knew that going in. But what do most feel is a good compromise between file size and sound quality with mp3. I've had good results with VBR at times and bad bitrates other times despite my settings. I've have a number of mp3s that sound like crap despite being encoded at a bitrate of 320 (not my rips) and mp4 files that sound great at 128.

4. Is it possible to "fix" a badly encoded mp3 with something like audacity. I know this is a somewhat stupid question due to the lossy compression and what is or isn't available to work with but I'll ask anyway.

These are mostly subjective questions but I am looking for opinions to help direct my research so I don't waste too much time on dead ends.

Thanks!

Well, since you after opinions I shall give mine without the burden of being too objective :-).

I personally am not too keen on ipods for the horrible DRM thing it can impose on you. One should never be confused about whose 'Rights' are spoken of in DRM.

A little research showed me that there are ogg players available, a little late for you since you have your player already. I purchased an iRiver X20 and loaded it with ogg files. Beautiful sound and there is the slightly smug feeling of using an open source format.

Ripping is a pleasure with abcde, and this will work for mp3, ogg vorbis or flac and should be able to tag all your files in one go.

Well thats my 5 cents worth :-)

Andrew

That's what I'm lookin' for. :)

I don't disagree. I'm aware of this and the cowan players. My choice came down to capacity (80 gig was a min). Most of my content is mp3 as well. If most of my content was ogg it would be a different story I suppose.

I'd seen this before - app and webpage - but had forgotten it. Reminds me a bit of a perl script I used ages ago that came with Suse called ripit. I'll check it out.

Thanks!

I have the same model 'Pod, so will be interested in your findings.

I haven't tried hooking the thing up to any of my non-Windows systems yet ... this is one of the two reasons I keep WinXP around. Bleah.