If you bought into the hype that Itunes is the only way to load your Ipod with music, you're not alone. Many other people also think that is the only way.
Fortunately for you (the person who actually owns the device), there are many third party programs that work with windows to allow dragging and dropping of anything you want into an Ipod.
Here is a brief list of some of my favorites, (Though I don't own an Ipod) that I use when helping friends build their library.
Ephod, Poddox, and Jhymm.
You can drag and drop virtually any file that can play in an Ipod with no hassle at all.
There are also many third party apps for Zune as well, all you need to do is google Zune converter.
Did I mention, I don't own an Ipod?
Well there are several good reasons for that.
Here are just a few:
1. Ipods are prohibitively expensive in my opinion.
2. All MP3 players are fragile and easy to break
3. Ipods by their very nature require you to pay more money to use them.
4. For what you pay, their lifespan just isn't worth it.
What do I own?
1. Ipod clones which play movies and have a built in camera
2. MP3/Video players that are also cell phone watches
3. Phones that play MP3's, Videos, and have a built in projector.
I choose to buy these no-name mp3 players because they are quite inexpensive, and readily available on Ebay and many other places.
Unlike an Ipod, though, these generic knockoffs were able to play Video before the original Ipod ever had that ability.
Some can even play TV and many others already had an FM tuner built in before Apple ever decided to step up and do the same.
Best of all though, if you break it, you wont go bankrupt replacing it!
Have you ever tried shopping for an MP3 player and found yourself wanting the one with a bigger memory chip installed, just to discover that having that extra 4 gigs was a major price increase?
Most generic players simply dont have that limitation because they have an SD slot included, and some others use a T-Flash slot just like the one on your cell phone.
What THIS does is give you absolute control over how much YOU can do with your Mp3 player. Now instead of stressing over which song you want to keep and which song you don't because you only have a few gigs of memory left, you can simply go buy a cheap SD or T-Flash memory card and add to your collection!
Imagine the possibilities!
Now that huge unmanageable list of songs or movies suddenly becomes much more manageable because you can easily remove the SD card you were using, and pop in another card with a whole different list.
But the real beauty of all this is that the tiny size of these memory cards allow you to have as many songs as you want in a completely portable format.
The second and I consider it the most important benefit is that you no longer have to worry about losing your music if your MP3 player gets dumped in the mud, run over by a car, or borrowed by a friend and lost because that memory card isn't locked up in the player any more!
The third benefit is that adding songs, text or video is so very much easier when you can simply pop that memory card in your PC without having to use ANY software at all.
Nowadays, just about every PC and Laptop has an SD card slot, and most T-Flash memory cards are sold with an SD adapter as well.
So, now that youre liberated from the cumbersome weight of inflated pricing and pay per song usage you may ask. Ok what next?
Now we learn how to record just about anything we want that can play through our PC speakers with a program called, Audacity.
Best of all, It's digital quality!
The only trick to this is that you need to change your recording channel to Stereo Mix, instead of Mic, and start the Audacity recording whatever happens to be playing through your speakers. You will need to make some gain adjustments on your Stereo Mix to get the sound levels where you want them, but other than that there is virtually no effort or learning curve involved.
To change your recording preferences navigate to the sound icon on the taskbar near the clock, Right click it and choose Volume Control.
Now click, options then properties.
On the mixer device bar scroll to your input device and click that, then check mark the box next to stereo mix and hit ok.
Now you will see the recording control window, here you will need to select Stereo Mix and close.
You have just set your PC up to record anything that comes out of your speakers, and this includes the song you may be playing in your browser right now including internet radio.
After Audacity has finished recording the audio, just click the red stop button and save as whatever audio format you desire. If you choose MP3, it will ask you where llame.dll is, so make sure it is where you can find it.
You can also edit this music, sing along with it and save it as a duet, morph the song or even add more bass if you wish.
Hopefully, you can see all the possibilities this represents, and benefit from it. Basically what it breaks down to is, whatever you can play through your PC speakers at whatever quality it plays at, you can capture the audio and play it back with the exact same quality that you heard when you first played it.
Audacity for PC
Audacity for Mac
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