My iPod and/or Rhythmboxplays somehow convert oggs to MP3
I wiped and reinitialized my Mac-controlled iPod 30 GB player (circa 2005, it does play video) the other day to be controlled by an iTunes instance on a Windows PC so I could have a FAT filesystem and then ... are you still with me?? ... manage it in Linux, which really doesn't like to write to the HFS+ filesystem that Macs dump onto an iPod.
So I've been using Rhythmbox to drop stuff on the iPod, and I put a few albums encoded in the freedom-loving ogg format.
I didn't expect them to play, but they do.
I Googled for iPod and ogg, and this doesn't seem possible. So I dug a little deeper and started poking around the iPod's filesystem. You can do that sort of thing with an iPod in Linux.
At some point, I don't know where, either Rhythmbox or the iPod itself are converting the ogg files into MP3s. That's what's on the iPod: The audio files that live as oggs in my Fedora system can be dragged into the iPod in Rhythmbox and subsequently played on that iPod. Except that what I'm hearing through the iPod's headphones are MP3 audio files that somehow, somewhere were converted to MP3.
Maybe that's why it took so long to transfer an album's worth of oggs to the iPod.
Does anybody out there know what's going on?
8 Comments
Leave a comment
About this blog
That sounds really awesome... and kinda strange because I havnt heard of it. Sadly I can't test it, but it sounds awesome. Congrats :) OGG FTW!
I've revised the post above. Somewhere along the way the oggs are being converted to MP3. I don't know where or how, but that's what's happening.
I'd love to see a solution for running ogg natively on iPod touch. For "older" ones there is Rockbox.
Converting lossy to lossy format is not an option (at least if you care a little bit about sound quality).
You should try www.rockbox.org !
I've been meaning to try Rockbox. I do have an el-cheapo MP3 player (Centon Craze) that plays oggs natively, but not FLAC. It's just too hard to use in comparison with the iPod. The one thing the iPod does that I like is make it very easy to switch from one album/track/podcast to another, and it remembers where you last were in a given track if you come back to it — very important for listening to podcasts if you want to switch around a bit.
As long as I can rip to ogg in Linux and have those tracks play on the iPod, thus far I can't detect any problems in quality of the track that has been converted to MP3. If I manage to find a good enough player that plays both ogg and flac, I'd definitely move to that and begin ripping to flac.
Maybe look at the id3 tag for clues?Rhythmbox has ipod support but I dont know to what extent.heres;
https://bugs.launchpad.net/rhythmbox/+bug/190818
an old bug that says it does a conversion as You said.Dont know if it works right though.
Steve, there are a ton of good players supporting OGG and FLAC. I personally prefer the COWON devices, they have a very detailed and natural sound by default and plenty of options for tweaking. I own a D2 8GB, but I'm planning to buy a J3 32GB. Both are "extendible" via SDHC cards. Both have a mammoth playing time (D2 52h, J3 60h). They are detected as regular mass-storage devices, so all you need is drag your music to the player/SDcard and let the player build the media database. I think there is some Windowssoftware included for videoconversion but I never touched it (and the J3 is promised to playe more file formats "natively").
FURTHER DEVICES:
- Several iRiver devices support ogg and FLAC (in fact most of them, only some do not ...).
- Some Archos devices are pro OGG and FLAC as well.
- I think *all* Samsung-Players are in as well.
ROCKBOX:
You can dual-boot your iPod with Rockbox, if you want to keep it.
I've pretty much focused on SanDisk players. It's nice to hear about other players that support ogg and flac. I will definitely be taking a look at what's available. I think ripping to flac is the way to go.
In order to save space, my wife and I ditched the jewel cases for our CDs and put the discs in one of those huge disc-holding notebooks from Fry's. We have the booklets filed in a box meant to hold CDs. We saved a ton of space that way and even sold the huge cabinet that used to hold most of the CD cases (which we had arranged in about 20 or so 25-CD boxes from Ikea).
I'm still holding onto the discs because I'm not currently ripping to a lossless format (FLAC) but still have a motley mix of MP3, M4a (from the accursed iTunes) and now ogg.
I wondered about as well. Rhythmbox uses gstreamer to convert non-compatible audio files to the ipod.
If you drag a ogg-file (or flac) on the iPod, Rhythmbox converts the file to m4a format. These can then play with Rhythmbox, but maybe not from the iPod!
Solution: With gconf-editor and select "system -> gstreamer -> 0.10 -> audio -> profiles -> aac-menu and then remove the checkmark next to "active". Then Rhythmbox converts to the iPod in the mp3 format.