Having over the last couple of years accumulated a large quantity of music files on my laptop, I'm now seriously contemplating buying an Ipod (30 or even 80gb, to allow room for growth).  Given that gapless playback is for me absolutely essential, I guess that the 5th generation Ipod is the only game in town - as far as I can tell the opposition simply doesn't offer it.

But I am concerned about the tales of Ipods that permanently freeze just after the guarantee runs out, or whose batteries fail after a few months.  Do these stories match board members' experiences?  And are any of the other manufacturers (Creative in particular) about to offer gapless playback? If so, would it make more sense to wait?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts!

My tuppence worth:

The problem with gapless playback isn't so much the iPod's fault, as a fault inherent in mp3s themselves. Any solution (such as whatever iTunes does) is always going to be something of a compromise, leading to unpredictable and imperfect results. According to this link, the simplest solution is to ignore mp3s entirely and encode your music as Ogg or FLAC. Not a bad idea, although iTunes (and hence iPods) won't play Ogg or FLAC out of the box and need some extra third party software to do so.*

My wife has been an iPod junkie for a five years now (and you are a junkie - once you've spent enough money at the iTunes store on files that won't play on any other brand mp3 player you're essentially hooked for good) and certainly at first the reputation was well deserved: she's had several major freezes on her machines (I think the current is no.3), two of them catastrophic and requiring complete replacement. The latest one seems a bit better though, so maybe they've ironed out the problems. I can say though that if you're still in warranty, Apple's after sales service is very efficient (they've had plenty of practice).

Given my wife's experiences, plus a personal disgust at Apple's bend-over-and-take-it approach to major label demands for excessive DRM controls, plus wanting to buy an mp3 player that played music well rather than looking good, I went with Cowon's iAudio X5. I've plugged it before on these boards, but it really is an excellent machine. Plays every major music format (including lossless FLACs and WAVs), has apparently superior sound quality to the iPod (although I've never compared), has built in FM radio and microphone and will record from both, and the battery lasts a massive 14 hours between charges. Best of all, I think, is that it doesn't rely on any intermediary software like iTunes to load it up with music, photos, text or video - you just connect it to your computer (or camera or anything other storage device with a USB socket) and drag and drop the files/folders you want. So you don't get accidents such as plugging your iPod into someone else's computer and accidentally overwriting your entire music library, eg. Makes it a very handy back-up drive too. (You can do this with an iPod, but it needs some fiddling first.)

My advice would be to look beyond the iPod hegemony. They've very successfully monopolised the market, but there are plenty of smaller alternatives that might meet your needs.

*One example of such third party software is Rockbox, from which that link came. I have it installed on my iAudio (which admittedly comes with a very clunky interface) and haven't looked back. Does everything you want and nothing you don't.

As far as gaplessness goes I can't offer mroe information than this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

I recently went down the 80GB iPod route and I'm pleased with it. I couldn't get gaplessness to work at the beginning with a couple of things (I still don't know why; I'd ticked all the boxes I'm ticking now) but now it's working fine. It's a preference you have to turn on in iTunes, as far as I can tell each time you import a disc (if there's somewhere I can click to make it a default I haven't found it yet).

I use 128kb/s AAC compression which Richard Barrett recommended as the best compromise between file size and quality; the quality of the D/A converter means putting things on as WAV files or whatever doesn't make sense for listening from the pod itself. (In fact it's better sound than the discperson I previously had, whose shock protection worked by pretty crude compression which left squittering artefacts everywhere.) If you were to do a lot of listening from the files on the computer then it would perhaps make some sense but for example Apple Lossless seems to be about 10x the file size of 128kb AAC; having 100+ CDs in your pocket without giving people the impression you're ecstatic to see them is of course already lovely but 1000+ is even better.

What I don't like is having to do everything through iTunes but having changed over to Apple not so long ago I'm resigning myself to the fact that the price you pay for everything working straight out of the box is that you have to do things the way the chap who put the stuff in the box wants you to do it. This seems to involve a lot of things beginning with a lowercase i followed by a capital letter. (Don't get me started on iPhoto.) I don't for the life of me see why importing a CD and loading it on to the pod involves so many separate steps since surely that's what the whole thing is supposed to be for...

At least for Mac users the freeware senuti is highly recommended (another Barrett tip). iTunes only puts stuff on the pod, it won't load files from the pod to the computer; senuti can do that.

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Having read Tim's post:

I can't see myself ever buying stuff from the iTunes site (the iTunes I was talking about is just the support software for the pod). I don't see the prices as being worth it to get a compressed file with no physical support - I can go to a bargain retailer and get comparable or better prices for the real thing. I still get the feeling I'm picking the bones of my own dying industry but not quite to the same extent.

After this thread:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F2620064?thread=3819465

I went for the iriver option.

Sadly, I didn't go for the H120, H100, or H300.  I went for the H10.  (I mistakenly thought that technology progressed, so a newer model would outdo an H300....)

It's a bright red and very stylish, winning me admiring glances on the train.  But it's not exactly as user friendly as I would have wished.  It came with iriver plus - the software equivalent of itunes - which creates wma files and isn't compatible with itunes or last.fm.  And it went funny after 2 days.  So occasionally you have to do an manual update rather than rely on autosynch.  (I couldn't work out what I should do, so contacted both iriver and the retailer - after a month or so, I just tried some stuff and ended up working it out before iriver told me the helpful answer of 'Do a manual update'.  I still do not know why 'autosynch' isn't good enough).

And gapless? My arse.  My Havergal Brian Violin Concerto is riddled with hiccoughs.

Anyway, I am a beginner, so maybe I am doing things not quite right. When I convert my vinyl collection to file format I think I will try gapless ipod - and then last.fm might be a possibility too.  But this thread will be useful in telling me what the better answer is, and this time I might actually follow it to the letter.

Tommo

And how about your hovercraft?

Thanks Tim... you have just cost me £200 !! and I am very pleased about it too. I had serious problems with my 30gb ipod .. or should I say with itunes. I lost the library twice and restored it ( eventually) the final straw came when all the files had exclamation marks after them and I couldn't move anything. Following instruction from apple I put my library on the desk top and fiddled, nothing happened... 'Put it all back from the desktop if this doesn't work' they said, so I did , and it all disappeared and won't move from the desktop.

So, that was the last straw, I now have my ipod as a completely frozen music library to listen to and - on your recommend - I have a wonderful Cowon iaudiox5... no itunes !! bliss !!

So... thanks Tim 

A

Tim and/or A, can you advise whether this Cowon iAudio X5 can handle mp2 files properly? I am tempted to get one for the FLAC compatibility, but if they can handle mp2, then that woud be the clincher.

Unless you count windows as a piece of software... .

I'm still looking forward to the coming-out of Media Monkey 3, but it seems it's not quite ready yet and won't be for a while, so.