Possible Ipod owner to be

[DKRY_UK]

hey,

After posting this in the mac section by accident i hope i've got it in the right section this time.

I'm looking at buying the 15gb(3rd gen) ipod, although i have a few things i'm trying to find out about first. Any help would be really appreciated.

I was wondering whether or not my audigy soundcards firewire port is ok to use with the ipod for transfer and charging?

If not should i invest in a firewire pci card rather than the usb 2 cable.

I also have loads of wma's in my music collection which are my own recordings , and i know that the ipod doesn't support this format, is there any way of converting them to one of the formats that ipod will support. Just that the only way i could think of was to burn them to cd and then rip them again.

As before any help would be really appreciated

Cheers

[SouthsideIrish]

Originally posted by DKRY_UK
I was wondering whether or not my audigy soundcards firewire port is ok to use with the ipod for transfer and charging?

It works for some people, and doesn't for others. It would be better to get a firewire card, but you can try the audigy card and see what happens.

If not should i invest in a firewire pci card rather than the usb 2 cable.

Depends. I prefer FW, but others like USB 2. Do you have any idea of you future needs? I happen to like Sony video equipment and since Sony uses FW it was the obvious choice for me, but maybe it isn't for you. Either way you will be happy.

I also have loads of wma's in my music collection which are my own recordings , and i know that the ipod doesn't support this format, is there any way of converting them to one of the formats that ipod will support. Just that the only way i could think of was to burn them to cd and then rip them again.

You can do this with Musicmatch Jukebox, which comes with your new ipod.

Hope this helps,

Bill McNair

[AMG]

I would definitely avoid the Audigy SB1394 port. They only very rarely work well with the iPod. If you don't mind the iPod not charging while it's connected to the PC, grab the USB 2.0 cable. I've found it to be very fast and not have a lot of the issues that FireWire on Windows systems does.

blaze media convert or dbpoweramp are two great programs for converting your WMA's to MP3's. Die-hard audiophile's will recommend against this (for potential quality reasons), however, I've always found that the resulting MP3's sounded fine.

[gquiring]

I have the first generation Audigy card and the firewire port works fine. I use WinXP. I did recently upgrade to a CompUSA branded card to have more firewire ports. The CompUSA card is $29 for 3 ports.

[sparks9]

Most Audigy cards works fine with the iPod, don't buy a new firewire card before you are sure that the audigy doesn't work. Remember on websites most of the times you hear complaints, when everything works fine people rarely post it.
Don't get a USB2 card, firewire is superior. USB2 can't charge the iPod.

[DKRY_UK]

Thanks for the replies,

I'm sold on getting the ipod now, i'll buy it and see if it works with the audigy and firewire and my existing mp3's and see about the converting wma's later with the programs mentioned.

I'll let you know how it works with the audigy once i've got the ipod.

Thanks again

[rt297]

Siig makes a card with 2 firewire ports and 3 USB 2.0 ports, but it is $80.00. You can get it at CompUSA.

[IronSerif]

I just recently purchased an iPod myself...along with an Audigy 2 card.
My main reason with the Audigy 2 card was for the firewire and soundcard combo, I didn't want to take up an extra PCI slot for the firewire.

I then read some complaints about how the Audigy FW didn't work with the iPod...but so far everything has been running smooth for almost 2 weeks *knocks on wood*

Good luck :)

[RollerMog]

A nice program to convert your wma's to mp3s is DBPowerAmp. (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) It allows you to right click on a file and convert it on the fly. Very fast, friendly, and even has plugins to encode mp4, ogg, and other cool filetypes.