Really off topic

[Steve G.]

Sorry guys, really off topic. But I know there are people on this forum that know way more about this than me.

I'm looking to get a system for listening to music by earjack while riding on the bike. I know, some will say a Guzzi is music enough, I agree. But on at least 2 of my major tours/rides this year, I will have to spend a bit of time on the highway/motorway. Can't avoid it.

So I'm no electronics guy, not even close. I've been looking at 3 formats. 1 is the MP3 player. 2 is the minidisk player. And 3 is the I Pod. While I have a basic grasp of the MP3's and the minidisc, I know nothing of the features of the I Pod.

What do any of you use if any right now? Any thoughts or recomendations?

Ciao, Steve G.

[kenr]

Hi Steve,

 

IMO forget mini-disc - you won't want to be trying to change disks while on the bike and carrying a bunch of disks isn't too convenient either.

 

The main difference between MP3 and Ipod is that Ipod uses a proprietary codec with copy protection built in. What this means in practise is that while you can freely transfer your mp3s wherever you like your Ipod becomes 'married' to one PC. You can transfer your Ipod music to another PC (and play it using Itunes which is a free download) - if you want to use your Ipod with this new PC its not a big deal - when you re-associate your Ipod with the new PC it wipes it and re-loads the music from scratch (takes a while but you can just leave it until its done).

 

If you go for mp3 the downside might be needing to carry mulitple memory cards -not a big deal but again a bit of a hassle on a motorbike.

 

 

Whichever way you go I would check out :

 

1. Cost of memory cards you will need if you go mp3

 

2. Sound quality - often can be improved by upgrading the headphones that ship with the player.

 

3. Battery life (obvioulsy dont want to be fiddling with this on the road - but you can probably rig it up to run off the bike battery).

 

4. You definitely want to be able to put together a playlist on your PC before you set off. (Itunes does - most mp3 players too).

 

 

I have a 40Gb Ipod which I am very happy with - I have hundreds of albums on it and still its less than half full - there's nothing additional to take with you (minidisks or flash cards) and I can set up a playlist from any of the albums I own without having to change media.

 

I didn't look at mp3 players for a while since I bought the Ipod but I remember the IRiver players got a good write up at the time.

 

Ken

[GuzzTim]

Steve

 

I have an iPod that I've used on three long distance rides, 2 were 1000 miles in 24 hrs, the other was the 50hrs coast to coast when I rode San Fran to Orlando and back last January.

 

I took all of my CDs and loaded them onto my home PC (a lengthy process) and then sync'd it to my iPod. Over the last year I've also bought a lot of music off of iTunes and find the whole setup seamless and reliable.

 

For the SF to Orlando trip I considered hooking up a power plug to keep the iPod running off the bikes 12v system. In the end I bought an auxilliary battery pack for the iPod (from Belkan) that uses 4 AA batteries. I went through a lot of batteries as the iPod was basically running for about 48 hours straight.

 

One of the nice features of the iPod is that the click wheel can be used with gloves on. If you mount the iPod on top of your tank bag, or in my case on my belt, you can just hit the Fast Forward button to get to the next song using the shuffle feature. The shuffle feature just basically chooses songs at random, and with 2100 songs on my iPod I was endlessly amused at the next song selected. Again, if you don't want to hear what it chooses, you just hit FF.

 

Prior to going to Orlando, I bought a Chatterbox thinking that I'd use that to feed the iPod signal into the headphones. I didn't get it set up in time, and didn't like the feeling of the speakers that came with the Chatterbox, so I bought some Sony headphones.

 

I forget the model of the headphones, but they were about $40-$50.. I bought those particular ones because they had soft rubber "gaskets" on the ear pieces that fit snuggly into your ears and therefore blocked out a lot of the ambient wind noise. This meant I didn't have to have the volume cranked up to ear damaging levels.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers, Tim

[staedtler]

you can try this too, it's a pc ipod...

there's info there to get you started. if you have a mac get the pod!...

 

 

once you use this set up you'll never buy cd's again, but you will subscribe to

an online music service (just like me). It's not expensive, like $10 a month, but,

it depends how much music you download...about 75-90 cents a song, you don't

need to burn a whole album, you can just burn the songs that you want and put

together a tailored library,...it kicks man

 

there's itunes, real rhapsody(which i use)

and a handfull more...trust me is amazing! you'll love it.

[bento]

happy ipod whore reporting.

 

yeah, the 40 gig is like a tiny musical god.

[dlaing]

Has anybody tried it with with noise cancelling ear phones?

The soft rubber earphones that Tim recommended sound like a good idea, but noise cancelling ear phones could be an even better idea...If it works in a helmet at hurricane wind speeds...

I saw some at MacWorld Expo, but did not bother to ask them how they would work in a helmet.

[GuzzTim]

I looked into the whole noise cancelling thing awhile back, particularly since I was doing a lot of flying for business and wanted some way to cut out the noise..

 

Basically there are two ways of doing it... plug your ears (and go nyah nyah nyah if you're a child) or cancel ambient noise. Even good noise cancelling headphones (like the Bose) require sound blockage which is why their headphones cover the entire ear.

 

In the end I chose to block ambient noise and got the Sony headphones. If you want to go really expensive you can also use Etymotic... www.etymotic.com

 

 

Cheers, Tim

[Guest robbrugg]

This is a good topic I think - especially since I just finished the research! I recently picked up the Rio Carbon: 5 gig (1 more than Mini-IPod for the same price), 20 hours battery life (that's a long ride!), and good sounding earbuds (aftermarket always better, but these are decent enough to keep), and still a small sized player. $250 from Best Buy. It is really fun listening to your fav tracks while carving around!

 

A couple questions/things to consider:

 

- How long do you ride?

- How many songs you want to fit on the unit (there's small 128 flash players all the way to mind-boggling 40Gig drives)

- Will you want to fool around with buttons, or just turn it on and leave it alone?

- GET A WARRANTEE

- Try checking out cnet.com - they are great for reviews (editors and user opinions)

 

E-mail me if you have any questions. I love this stuff.

Robb

[Motomonster]

I don't listen to anything. Music along with road noise would be too tiring. I just stick in some earplugs and enjoy the scenery.

[Guest Fox]

I use an iPod myself but not for riding (I tend to lose concentration), but I know a few people who do ride with one and they love it. If you're looking for something cheaper and are happy with 240 songs try the new iPod shuffle, it's tiny and anly $99 - http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

[Guest Steve_W]

The main difference between MP3 and Ipod is that Ipod uses a proprietary codec with copy protection built in.

Er, no. My iPod has nothing on it except mp3s ripped from my CD collection. There's no copy protection on it. Stuff you buy from the iTunes Music Store is in AAC format with a copy protection wrapper on it. The copy protection is proprietary, the AAC format is not. The iPod will also play AIFF (basically uncompressed) files, .wav files, pretty much any sound file except .wmp, which is Microsoft's proprietary codec with their proprietary copy protection wrapper.

 

What this means in practise is that while you can freely transfer your mp3s wherever you like your Ipod becomes 'married' to one PC. You can transfer your Ipod music to another PC (and play it using Itunes which is a free download) - if you want to use your Ipod with this new PC its not a big deal - when you re-associate your Ipod with the new PC it wipes it and re-loads the music from scratch (takes a while but you can just leave it until its done).

 

Well, the iPod wipes itself, not the PC. I think you meant that, though. Otherwise true.

 

I have an iPod myself, but I'm not sure I'd want to listen to it on a bike unless I'm on a truly mind-numbing road, a U.S. Interstate for example. I'd also want some serious outside volume reduction; there's no use having music if you have to turn it up so loud you go deaf trying to hear it over the wind noise.

[Steve G.]

Thankyou very much for the info guys. Looks like the I Pod format for sure.

When I ride, I tend to do those 10-12 hr runs, and batteries are an issue I never really thought of. Maybe rechargable batteries?

As for ear jacks, I really would look for something that has an ambient sound deadening feature. Turning the baby up, over and above the wind noise and engine noise would kill what little ears I have left.

Ciao, Steve G.

[GuzzTim]

Steve

 

on batteries.. the aux battery pack (www.belkan.com) is the best way to go unless you wire up a cigarette outlet (Powerlet ? try www.casporttouring.com) directly off the guzzi battery.

 

try the Sony's or the Etymotics. the Sony's I have are these puppies:

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP....pia%2e%2fEarbud

 

They are way different than the standard ear buds and really do a good job of blocking background noise. The Sony's come with a couple of different size ear gaskets.. pick the largest one that'll fit (in your ears of course)...

 

Good luck

 

Tim

[badmotogoozer]

I've just been using a crappy little MP3 player 128M I think... with some decent ear buds. Works fine, batts last (less features = longer batt life) Load it with music and go.

 

As an alternative to the ear buds (which you do have to turn loud) at the M/C show there was a guy who was selling super thin speakers that stick inside the helmet (about as thick as a couple sheet of paper). Sounded good and were $30. Could be an improvement over having the earbuds cranked right at the drum.

 

Wish I'd remembered to go back and buy them...

 

Rj

[badmotogoozer]

http://www.bikeintercom.com/products/helmet_speakers.html

 

 

 

I think these are them...

 

Rj