iTunes and What Else?

jakelm

My son just got a iPod Nano, for Christmas.

Him and I have tons of music already on the Pc in MP3 format. What else becides iTunes can we use to transfer our music to the iPod? I use WINAmp to listen to all my music. Can WINAmp be used or do I have to use iTunes?

This iPod is not as easy to use as the "drag and drop" MP3 player we have. So this is all new to me.

Do all the songs have to be converted to Quicktime? Or some type of Apple .****?

There is alot of info on the iPod subject , but not much on this one.

Thanks

Jake

hoosier21

I don't know as I don't have an Ipod.

Did that Nano come with a manual? Try looking there.

But I think your stuck with Itunes.

jakelm

Manual says iTunes. Which is expected since its all Apple.

BaggedLancer

itunes is easiest when dealing with the ipod.

DufferDan

I'm not a fan of iTunes, so I use MediaMonkey; http://www.mediamonkey.com/

The free version works well for me.
Fairways and Greens,
DufferDan

bobman1235

iTunes deals in MP3s just fine, so if you're just trying to switch because you don't think you'll be able to use all your old MP3s, give iTunes a try.

If you just don't like iTunes, yes, you can use WinAmp to sync with your iPod. A Google Search turns up a few helpful links :
here, and here in particular.

BottomFeeder

I've found iTunes to be incredibly easy - just drag & drop as well.

Good luck.

Oh yeah, you can go Apple's web site and find tutorials there.

bigaudiofanatic

use itunes ull love it it orginizes your music and all click file and click Add Folder
and search for the file that contains ALL your music. your done.

jakelm

Well since I am already pretty familiar with WINAmp I thought it would be just as easy to use with the ipod. But I will give iTunes a go.. Thanks for the help

Sherardp

Drag and drop songs into the library in Itunes, then send them to the Ipod by drag and drop as well. Very simple.

jakelm

Ok ,,,getting used to iTunes.

One more quick question. I bought a few songs. All are 128 bitrate. Is there a way, when purchsing songs, I can get them at a higher bit rate? Also, they are all m4p file. How do I change it to mp3 so I can play it in WINAmp or another application. M4p doesnt seem to play in Winamp.

nms

Any songs you DL with iTunes are in a protected format that limits the number of times the songs can be copied / put on different devices. And no, I do not think you can get tham at any higher bitrate - most people who use itunes don't know or care.

When I first got my ipod I hated itunes, and still do - it was completely incompatible with how my music collection was organized (Ripped CDs in folders organized by CD, w/ playlists for individual disks). It took me a long time to develop a system to get the music organized in itunes the way I wanted it. What was fun was importing mp3s without metadata, so itunes' method of sorting by artist or album scrambled all my files together. I think it's a terrible piece of software that is poorly written and prone to freezing and hang-ups.

jakelm

nms wrote: »

Any songs you DL with iTunes are in a protected format that limits the number of times the songs can be copied / put on different devices. And no, I do not think you can get tham at any higher bitrate - most people who use itunes don't know or care.

When I first got my ipod I hated itunes, and still do - it was completely incompatible with how my music collection was organized (Ripped CDs in folders organized by CD, w/ playlists for individual disks). It took me a long time to develop a system to get the music organized in itunes the way I wanted it. What was fun was importing mp3s without metadata, so itunes' method of sorting by artist or album scrambled all my files together. I think it's a terrible piece of software that is poorly written and prone to freezing and hang-ups.

Well I can say this, in regaurds to song listing. iTunes SUCKS AT IT!! In WINAmp, if the song is filed like.

Example: Nickelback - Rockstar

Then WinAmp can tell that Nickelback is artist and Rockstar is song. And will list it (group it) under Nickelback.

With iTunes, if the Artist part of the file is not filled in, then iTunes will ship it to the bottum, instead of listing it as it should. Very aggrivating.

nms

With iTunes, if the Artist part of the file is not filled in, then iTunes will ship it to the bottum, instead of listing it as it should. Very aggrivating.

That was precisely my problem. When I first started ripping CDs I used software that didn't fill in the artist, album, genre, etc. I eventually resorted to clearing all the check boxes in itunes, importing another folder of music, then hunting through all the music listed until I found the ones with checks - very time consuming and error prone.

bobman1235

SO because you guys didn't rip your music in a way that is the industry standard, it's iTunes fault for using the standard? Thank God none of you work in software.

iTunes has a lot of faults, but the way they organize the music isn't one of them. You can't expect a music player to guess what the artist and song title are based on some arbitrary name you gave the mp3 file when there is a real way to set that information within the file.

jakelm

No Bob, not blaming iTunes. WinAmp and WMP and other programs seem to have no problem reading and listing my music, just iTunes. Sometimes, following industry standards and ONLY that standard can be a bad thing.

jakelm

And Bob, you have to admit, iTunes software could be alittle more flexible.

bobman1235

Oh, dude, believe me, I think iTunes has a LOT of faults, I just don't see that as one. Having used WinAmp in the past, I don't think that does exactly what you think it does either, but I could be wrong.

nms

SO because you guys didn't rip your music in a way that is the industry standard, it's iTunes fault for using the standard? Thank God none of you work in software.

No, it's my fault for ripping the music without the metadata (but I never needed it before to organize my music), but it IS itunes' fault for not failing gracefully when the metadata was not present. There is no option to group music by folder, for instance. It all gets dumped into one pile and then you have to create playlists out of the big jumble. I have to agree that itunes is EXTREMELY inflexible in how it allows you to organize and handle your music.

TroyD

iTunes blows.

BDT

bigaudiofanatic

there is no way that there is any other better music sorting library out there PERIOD. Use is and enjoy how easy it is to find the songs you want if you want to up the bit rat go to Edit - Preferences - Clicke Advanced Tab - Click Importing Tab. and change it to what bit rate you want I use Apple Lossless it's AWSOME. Enjoy it better than any player out there o and for the people that use another prgram for the ipod IT VOIDS YOUR WARRANTY AND my freind used another program for about a mounth than it crashed his ipod.

nms

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

there is no way that....... [deleted for brevity]

What are you, an apple employee or something?

jakelm

bigaudiofanatic wrote: »

there is no way that there is any other better music sorting library out there PERIOD. Use is and enjoy how easy it is to find the songs you want if you want to up the bit rat go to Edit - Preferences - Clicke Advanced Tab - Click Importing Tab. and change it to what bit rate you want .

Does this work when buying songs? I tryed, my songs are still 128bit.

bobman1235

Nope, w hen buying songs you're stuck with what they give them to you in. I vaguely remember hearing of someone offering higher bitrate songs, don't remember who or when.

jakelm

bobman1235 wrote: »

Nope, w hen buying songs you're stuck with what they give them to you in. I vaguely remember hearing of someone offering higher bitrate songs, don't remember who or when.

Gotcha....Thanks Bob.

PolkThug

iTunes and iPods suck, proprietary FTL.

cmy330go

I have my gripes about iTunes, but must say that it is the best way to organize large amounts of music. I've tried Real, WinAmp, Media Player, etc... and have yet to find a program I prefer overall.

I would do a little more research about available bit-rates. I remember reading not long ago that iTunes was going to start offering higher bit-rate options.

cmy330go

OK. I found some info on their website you might want to check out. Hope this helps you some.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305567

bigaudiofanatic

Nope not an employe just a guy that knows what works and what SUCKS