James Mok’s Soliloquy

The iPod nano noir was ordered online through the Hong Kong Apple online shop the first day it was launched and it got here last Saturday around noon. Had it polished with Nu Finish car polish before I found a clear screen protector type skin for the entire front and back as well as a rubber jacket for it yesterday.

It sounds good with the original earplugs if you have a good recording encoded with at least 224kbps bitrate. 192kbps is also fine for Rock music but for “lighter” genre like Jazz, Vocal, and Classical Solo or Concerto, higher bitrate is needed. Any lower bitrate than 192kbps – forget it. Since the iPod nano noir is my first iPod and I have never really listened to M’s iPod mini, I have no idea how it compares sonically with other iPods.

Which brings a dilemma to such a small storage as to whether to encode higher bitrate for the quality or lower for more songs. I have a mix of 192/224/256/320 kbps recording with a few podcasts and the 4GB (a little less including some overhead) is now only left with just over 150MB! To give you some idea on what the percentage of my CD collection works out to, I have just over 10GB of songs in my PB17 iTune library and I have only gone through about 1/4 of my CDs. I also have tens of Vinyl and tens of cassette tapes which I intend to digitize “eventually”. Not to mention the LaserDisc concerts I have which I should also re-digitize into another format and could also RIP the audio tracks off like I did with a couple of DVDs I have.

I friend bought the 2GB version who called me just before he bought it saying how 2GB is already too much for him. He called me a few hours after he bought it and had some songs uploaded saying that even the 4GB would not have been big enough. As for my ideal need on having my entire audio collection Poded in 320kbps for easier management and search for listening, I am guessing I would need at least 40GB. By the time they renew the big iPod would be a good time to do so.

In regards to the earphones, after tested a few and bought one each mid-high quality earplugs between my friend and I, as you can see the Ethymotic ER-4P in the photo, I am hoping I could put my thoughts down sometime today or tomorrow as I still have one more source to amp cable that my friend bought this afternoon that I want to take a closer listen to before I write them down. In the mean time I am leaving the nano noir on almost round the clock running in itself, the amp, as well as the ER-4P.

Stay tuned.