DVD quality ipod or something similar???

[ericblam]

Anyone know of a good quality portable digital player (ala ipod) that plays 96khz 24 bit waves.

I don't care how many mp3s it'll hold, I just want something that sounds good.

thanks.

eric@blam

[Family Hoof]

Doesn't the ipod play 24-Bit wavs? I don't have one to verify but I don't see why not. I suppose it probably wouldn't have the 24/96 D/A converter to match. Is this what you're asking? Another factor for my assumption is that the ipod can mount like a hard drive and store potentially anything. Many other players cannot. I'm curious too. I hope somebody who owns one will chime in.

[ericblam]

My girlfriend bought me an ipod as a gift. So i tried to copy over some 24 bit waves and it wouldn't do it. I converted them to 16 bit and they copied over no problem. So i was thinking if there was some other player that would play 24/96 wav files, i'd return the ipod and get that instead. sorry for not being so clear in my last post.

eric@blam

[versuviusx]

i don't think what you are looking for exist?
even cd players are 16 bit.
this means that you would have to find a player that has 24b ad converters to be able to play 24 bit files. right?
that sounds like something custom. do you know what i think would help you though. sennheiser HD 580s. god damn do those things sound good. that would dramatically change evrything. so you could use the IPOD and convert 16 bit at 196 khz(sample rate) or is it 192? i can't remember. just rip the songs at a very high sample rate@ 16 bit and use the sennheisers and i think you will not be dissapointed.

[versuviusx]

also if you find something that lets you play at 24 bit let me know. i'd love to be able to check that out. but it kind of is pointless unless you have the origional 24 bit files. this means that you would have to download the 24 bit files from the artist web page. because this is what you are doing. you are ripping a cd which is 16 bit and then you are converting it to 24 bit. this isn't going to change anything. at least logically it shouldn't do anything. i'm not sure but you should be permanently limited to 16 bit quality because the origional came from the 16 bit cd even if you convert it to 24 bit. see when the band is making the music in the DAW they can be recording 24 bit but then they dither and master down to 16 bit> cd. so i think it's impossible to retrieve that information and go back to 24 bit, because that information is gone for ever. So making a player that would play 24 bit files would be pointless unless you could download the origional artist mixes in 24 bit or if you are making your own music and recording in 24 bit and you want to play it on your 24 bit ipod that doesn't exist. also 24 bit files would be fucking insanlye huge. and it's just not practical...unless a manufacturer can make a 500 terabyte hd that is as small as the ipod. my 24 bit mixdowns can be like 40 mb- 100 mb. so having a huge collection of songs just wouldn't happen. think about all the bands you want to listen to. i think the most practical approach is to forget 24 bit for now and figure a way to play them with a lossless codec instead of mp3. if you can find a player that will do that then you will get just as good as CD which is probably what everyone generally uses a reference of quality. the other thing that could happen is this. if you were able to download the 24 bit files from the artist web page you would get a program that could play 24 bit files and use a portable dvd player that load the software so you can play 24 bit files. this would also probably have to be something custom, but i bet if you look around the web you can find some software that an individual developed that will play 24 bit files. but i think if i were to do it i would make a program that would allow integration with a dvd player as dvds can hold 4.7 gigs and the double disk can hold more...the japanese just came out with this new blue laser which can allow them to burn close to 50 gigs on a DVD! the time will come one day when you will be able to hear it all in 24 bit. btu the artist are going to have to make their songs available for 24 bit downloads...and these songs will have to be very big which means they will have to have some crazy bandwidth. it doesn't sound like it is something that is really simple. if you find a solution let me know.

[versuviusx]

http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html
here it is:
but only 64 mb card. that sucks.

[dynomike]

Honestly, is the 96db dynamic range of 16 bit really gonna be a limitation when you're listening on the bus or whatever with a practical snr of like 50 db? A properly dithered 16 bit file sounds fine. Ipods will play wav's... and I think the aac "lossless" encoding isn't bad. Using up all your memory on some 24 bit wavs kind of negates the usefulness of a small, portable unit with a large library of songs.. well, to each his own.

[Electricide]

http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html
here it is:
but only 64 mb card. that sucks.

yeah, 137 minutes at a 64 MP3. It's probably 3 minutes of 24 bit!

[ericblam]

versuviusx-

<rant>
I hadn't really done any research into portable digital audio players. I just assumed that they would play 24 bit files. I guess that was pretty naive since the manfacturers of thes products market the quantity of songs you can fit on their hard drives over the quality of the audio they spit out? So it goes. I wasn't really interested in it for the CDs that I already have. I was really more interested in being able to mixdown 24bit 96k files and then play them back on my ipod at home or in the car. I was just hoping there would be something like that out there.

As engineers shouldn't we be concerned about the quality of the audio that we're listening too. MP3s are compressed audio. And I know people say that it's CD quality.....but we can tell the difference....right!!! You wouldn't send out an MP3 to get mastered. No, you'd send out your 24 bit wave file. Is it so much to ask for a player that i could listen to my mix on outside of the studio in the real world?

</endrant>

eric@blam
---------------------------
www.blamrecording.com

[konabuzz]

http://www.edirol.com/products/info/r1.html
here it is:
but only 64 mb card. that sucks.

yeah, 137 minutes at a 64 MP3. It's probably 3 minutes of 24 bit!

The 64Mb card is just a starter card that they include with the package -- it'll take up to 2Gb Compact Flash cards, which are cheaper all the time. I'm actually very intrigued by this thing -- very viable high res alternative to minidisc for show recording.

[percussion boy]

Too bad it's 1/8" ins and 44.1K top sampling rate.

Wonder why they didn't use 1/4" (or even xlr) and 96K, seems like their users would want that stuff.