Re: [tlug] iPod nano and Linux

[Dave Brown <dagbrown@example.com>]

On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 01:21:54PM +0100, Godwin Stewart wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Nov 2006 20:32:08 +0900, "Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > > Basically, I'm on the look-out for a reasonable solid-state music
> > > player
> > 
> > Well, what do you need in the way of features?
> > 
> > 1. Audio codecs? e.g. MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AAC, FLAAC, etc.
> 
> Ogg vorbis would be nice but I've pretty much resigned myself to the
> fact that only very few manufacturers provide that codec.
> 
> MP3 is the de facto standard nowadays (more's the pity) and LAME is a
> pretty good encoder - better than bladeenc for example.
> 
> I don't have any music encoded in WMA, AAC et al.

AAC sounds quite a lot better than MP3 for the same amount of disk space.
Also, crosscoding from ogg to AAC works acceptably well.

The iPod nano is supported fine in Linux, if you use gtkpod to sync your
iPod.  There are other tools, but gtkpod works great for my purposes.
It's never given me any problems.

Yesterday I installed Rockbox on my nano to give it a whirl.  It offers
gapless playback and support for Ogg Vorbis (and a bunch of other
codecs).  It's quite good, although not as pleasant to use as Apple's
firmware.  Unlike the default firmware, it doesn't support features like
cover artwork (not entirely sure why), and it's rather more
temperamental--it's crashed for me on several occasions, and there seems
to be a bug upon disconnecting from USB where the paleolithic Apple ROM
reasserts itself to complain that your iPod's battery is dead and it's
going to shut down.  Hard-resetting the iPod brings it back (and reboots
Rockbox), but it's still weird.

Also, it doesn't have suspend support so when it auto-shuts down, it
shuts down all the way (scribbling some notes on the filesystem about
where to resume from when it comes back up again) and when you wake it
up, you get to watch boot messages scrolling past.  Also: it doesn't
think much of UTF-8 filenames--they show up as mojibake (although it
gets the tags right).  Still, it's an alternative if you don't mind a
bit of hacking and really want to listen to oggs gaplessly on your iPod.

Oh, and Rockbox has no support for the second-generation nano yet.  You
have been warned.  (On the other hand, gtkpod supports it without any
problems.)

> What *is* important, however, is the comfort of the ear buds. IIRC,
> those supplied with the iPod are quite reasonable. Those that came
> with my current music player[0] are rather uncomfortable.

Oh, I just use after-market earbuds (or my trusty Sennheiser PX100s, if
I feel like a nice listening experience).  Although Apple's earbuds
*are* very comfy, and are about as good sound quality as you can get
with that style of earbud.

--Dave