Music?!?!

[jack.pe]

I would like to be able to listen to music while riding and would like it to be fairly of listenable quality,( ok, never as good as a car system but ok..), what options do i have??

What is the best thing for the helmet? ear plugs with speakers or speakers in the helmet?

and can I just rn the whole thing of a cd platyer or is a special system needed??


Cheers

 

[rdover]

I spend amny hours and £££ on autocoms, etc over the years and technoclogy has come up with the answer - the Ipod or equiv.

I've got a 40Gb Creative nomad which does the job perfectly but is way too quiet so I'm getting some custom earplugs from Ultimate ear or similar and then I'll be sorted. total £400 but given that I have over 300 albums on the Nomad adn I use it in the car mainly it's not bad VFM.

I'll let you know about quality once I've got the plugs.

 

[Fanum]

Custom moulded ear plugs come with a standard 3.5 mmm stereo jack plug, so you can use them with pretty much any music souce.

Forget a CD player for a bike though....even with jog protection it's likely to be jiggled around too much.

MP3 players like the Ipod are solid state and thus can't be skipped, and are likely to be more reilient in the long run too......

I use a 100 quid MD player which I find very good, no skipping, excellent quality.

I've also been using a 5 quid FM radio from a petrol station for the last few weeks.......perfectly adequate as long as I stay in a region and don't have to retune as i move transmitters .....plus a a fiver it's throwaway cheap.

lots of different options, but I'd definately say go for custom plugs rather than helmet speakers....the latter are fine up to a point (about 65 point 5 MPH ) but after 70 or so , forget it........custom speaker plugs though , perfect sound at max speed no worries.

HTH

 

[Greg Masters]

I agree with all that Fanum has said, above.

For me, the best value £££s spent were on the speaker-in-ear plugs. There are several decent suppliers, including Ultimate who advertise at the top of this page.

Don't get too hung up about sound quality - given the 'noises off', what amounts to S-2-n ratio is all important.

Whatever music source you choose, make it solid state and, if you can, bike powered (as batteries can become loose).

Greg

 

[richie]

So guys and gals, toying equally with the idea and in need of a memory stick for work. Why don't I buy a cheap MP3 player with 256MB of memory. Not a lot I know. But how much time in minutes worth of music will I get on it. And how easy is it for me to copy one of my paid for CD and convert it to mp3???


Answers please...

 

[Repoman]

Richie

Firstly, go here for some inspiration -

http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/

and then use them when you buy. Their service is asbolutely superb.

On regular compression rates MP3 files are about a meg per minute of music so a 256mb player will store about 4 hours of music.

Most players come complete with CD ripping software and it is very easy to use.

I recently bought a 512mb Monolith II player which at £144 is excellent value. Info here -
http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/product_info.php?products_id=311

Excellent spec and its metal, not plastic.

And whatever everyone else says, anything with a hard drive in it will skip and is thus worthless for any mobile application such as running, gym or even just walking around...

 

[mikeh501]

Most players come complete with CD ripping software and it is very easy to use.

Dont worry about the ripping software as there are plenty of completely free rippers on the internet.

I recently bought a 512mb Monolith II player which at £144 is excellent value.

At that kind of price I would definately go for a hard disk type MP3 player as you get bags more space.

And whatever everyone else says, anything with a hard drive in it will skip and is thus worthless for any mobile application such as running, gym or even just walking around...

TBH, thats just BS I have an Ipod Mini which I use on the bike a lot and it doesn't jump at all. You will find that any MP3 player with a hard drive will have a solid state buffer in it. The one in mine is 32mb which means that in real terms it can buffer at least 5 entire songs! Thats a buffer of at least 10 minutes!

 

[Greg Masters]

And whatever everyone else says, anything with a hard drive in it will skip and is thus worthless for any mobile application such as running, gym or even just walking around...

TBH, thats just BS I have an Ipod Mini which I use on the bike a lot and it doesn't jump at all. You will find that any MP3 player with a hard drive will have a solid state buffer in it. The one in mine is 32mb which means that in real terms it can buffer at least 5 entire songs! Thats a buffer of at least 10 minutes!

The point is that if you buy an MP3 player with any sort of disk, it might skip, whereas if you buy one with solid state memory, it cannot skip.

I now have a couple of these MP3 platers - at £30 a go, they are almost disposable!

The amount of music that you can load into an MP3 player depends on the stripping rate and the music style. For the bike, I generally strip at 96 kbit/sec which gives perfectly adequate quality. At this rate, the MP3 file sizes are around 800-1000Kb per minute of music. So a 1Gb CF card (which I use) would take about 20 hours of music.



Greg

 

[mikeh501]

I think the risk of skipping is extremely small compared to the benefits of large storage devices like disks as opposed to solid state. Each to there own etc

Also, I encode at the very minimum of 192kbps and more usually at 320kbps VBR, so my MP3's are CD quality and therefore much larger. I'm guessing that 92kbps sounds OK when on the bike, but I listen to the same MP3 at work, in car and at home so I need them to be good quality.

 

[BigBadBen]

The point is that if you buy an MP3 player with any sort of disk, it might skip, whereas if you buy one with solid state memory, it cannot skip.

Greg, most if not all of the HD type players buffer the music into solid state memory.

I believe that the IPOD buffers something well over 3 minutes of music (or perhaps even more ).

The music that you are actually listening to has been in the solid state memory and skips and jumps have been dealt with by the software! Therefore you can supposedly do what you like and never hear skips or jumps!

Clever little gizmos hey!

(By the way check out the Creative Zen Touch. IPOD sized, 20 GB, 24 hour battery ~£160... IPOD killer!)

BBB

 

[BigBadBen]

I've got a 40Gb Creative nomad which does the job perfectly but is way too quiet

RD,

if you download and install the latest firmware from the Creative Nomad website, it'll fix the quiet audio volume!

BBB

 

[mikeh501]

Greg, most if not all of the HD type players buffer the music into solid state memory.

I believe that the IPOD buffers something well over 3 minutes of music (or perhaps even more ).

The music that you are actually listening to has been in the solid state memory and skips and jumps have been dealt with by the software! Therefore you can supposedly do what you like and never hear skips or jumps!

Clever little gizmos hey!

(By the way check out the Creative Zen Touch. IPOD sized, 20 GB, 24 hour battery ~£160... IPOD killer!)

BBB

Yup, thats what I said. The Ipod has a 32mb buffer BTW which is way more than 3 mins.

 

[Greg Masters]

Yes, I know that many (most these days) have buffers, but my CD player has a 40 second buffer and, apart from at traffic lights, skips all the time (it's a useless format for a bike anyway - too big and bulky without much music capacity).

But if this unit skips with a 40 second buffer, it'd probably also skip if it had a 3 minute buffer. Reading head stability is surely just as important, even more important, than buffer size.

I've never used an iPod, so can't offer any comment about how well suited they are to bike use, but I'll repeat what I said earlier ie, if you have a device with solid state memory, it cannot skip.

It makes no difference to me what you use - if you can make a wind-up gramophone with 78 rpm records work for you, I'd be delighted. But I specifically opted for a CF card/MP3 unit with relatively large buttons and it works well for me.

Greg

 

[mikeh501]

Yes, I know that many (most these days) have buffers, but my CD player has a 40 second buffer and, apart from at traffic lights, skips all the time (it's a useless format for a bike anyway - too big and bulky without much music capacity).

Agreed, CD players are not suited to mobile use really. The tech which has come along like buffers is to fill holes in what is really an unsuitable technology for mobile applications.

But if this unit skips with a 40 second buffer, it'd probably also skip if it had a 3 minute buffer.

Thats a big jump of logic, especially considering that the buffers could store up to 15 minutes of music!

Reading head stability is surely just as important, even more important, than buffer size.

Agreed, but again your comparing apples and oranges. Just because they both have spinning platters doesn't make them the same. Hard disks have minute tolerances, run much faster and run in floating bearings, they dont have the mass either, which makes them far far less susceptible to shock than a large platter like a CD running very slowly

I've never used an iPod, so can't offer any comment about how well suited they are to bike use, but I'll repeat what I said earlier ie, if you have a device with solid state memory, it cannot skip

Then dont comment

It makes no difference to me what you use - if you can make a wind-up gramophone with 78 rpm records work for you, I'd be delighted. But I specifically opted for a CF card/MP3 unit with relatively large buttons and it works well for me.

Now that would be funny