i-Probs

November 6th, 2004

iPod miniOver the last few weeks I’ve had plenty of time to play with Lara’s new iPod mini. Although in many ways it’s a lovely piece of kit, I’m starting to feel that the iPod is not quite all it’s cracked up to be…

We all know how the player is widely praised for its design and interface so I won’t waste my breath on these here. My beef isn’t with superficial aspects like these but rather, quite simply, with the way the player plays music. When you strip away the window dressing of the sexiness and status appeal, playing music is the sole function of the iPod. To find that it doesn’t do this very well comes as something of a shock.

So why do I have a problem? It’s down to the type of music that I like.

Amongst all kinds of electronica and dance music, I listen to a lot of mixes: DJ sets, mixed cd’s …that kind of thing. These are continuous pieces of music, usually about an hour in length, which are unbroken by gaps between tracks. If you’re not a dance music fan then you probably don’t have many cd’s like this and can breathe out in relief. But I am affected, and quite severely at that.

It’s important to understand how fundamental to the music this continuity is. As a mix segues from track to track the music evolves, breaks-down, builds-up again, and eventually crests in some sort of aural pay-off. The experience becomes a journey for the listener with the DJ in the driving seat. There may be index points, track markers on the cd, but the music is a single integrated piece with no breaks between tracks, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be listened to.

iPods insert breaks. Example:

[ …um-chika um-chika um-chika [click] um-chika um-chika… ] Whoa? what was that?! … {rewind, play} [ …um-chika um-chika um-chika [click] um-chika um-chika… ] Was that a gap? That was a gap! Why is there a bloody gap?! Curse you Apple! Curse you all!!

To wildly exaggerate for a moment, let me draw on the world of art to construct an analogy. Imagine if you will that the Louvre arbitrarily decided to draw a fine 4×3 grid over, say, the Mona Lisa. She would be neatly divided into 12 squares and although this would barely disrupt any single detail of the painting, you simply wouldn’t be able to admire her without seeing the grid. Your experience of the piece as a whole would be ruined.

And so it is that the iPod fillets my mixes. Every few minutes a distracting gap will come along to break my enjoyment and remind me how stupid the little machine is. It’s distracting, then maddening, and then I’m distracted again by how annoyed I am. From a mental calmness point of view I would quite honestly prefer to resurrect my c-90’s.

There are workarounds of course, but all that I have found are unacceptable:

  • You can select a gap-time of 0s, but a small audible skip remains. Unacceptable.
  • Your iPod can be set to cross-fade between tunes, removing any silent gap. Headz however, will immediately see the problem with this: If two tracks are beat-matched when played normally, cross-fading will alter their relative timing and jarringly mismatch the beats. This is amusing if you want your iPod to emulate the shittest DJ ever, but is useless for me. Unacceptable.
  • Cd’s can be ripped as a single track (advanced > join cd tracks in iTunes). Whilst this would definitely solve the gap problem I would lose the ability to skip to specific tracks in the mix, and all the indexing information (track names, artists etc.) that makes the interface so good would be gone. A clear baby / bathwater scenario. Unacceptable.
  • Finally I read that there’s an arcane firmware hack which will get the iPod to behave well by keeping the hard drive spinning continuously, a solution which offers an interresting insight into the root of the problem. Quite apart from the fact that I don’t want to start mucking around with re-engineering the thing, it apparently cripples the already poor battery life (relevent thread, look for Grimmet). Unacceptable.

The bottom line is that although I love it’s style, and although I certainly could do with an mp3 player (maybe something that supports Ogg Vorbis), this issue is a deal-breaker. I’m not going to be picking up an iPod anytime soon, and dance fans should think seriously before going with Apple.

Comment and feedback is definitely invited on this issue >

That’s enough Apple baiting for now, but it’s not the end. Coming soon:

  • Replacing Apple’s awful white earphones
  • The problem with iTunes
  • iZealotry. Why hadn’t I heard about the mix problem before buying?

One Response to “i-Probs”

  1. Robotperson » Blog Archive » Digital Audio Player Says:

    [markup=][…] I’ve finally taken the plunge and ordered a digital music player. Sharp-minded readers will recall that I’m not a fan of the iPod and so for some time I’ve been looking out for an alternative. And for anyone who needs reminding, my beef with Apple’s player is that it inserts short gaps between tracks. This isn’t a problem if you’re enjoying the latest from Side Guitar Fretwank* because there are gaps between the tracks anyway and a little extra goes unnoticed. But should you have matured beyond angst-ridden-teen and are listening to some proper music, an audible break in an otherwise seamless mix of wholesome house is very, very bad. Why, Apple, why?! Shortly after discovering this whilst listening to Lara’s iPod I realised that I wasn’t going to be joining the white ear-bud brigade anytime soon (not that I would anyway though, those earphones are awful). […]

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