One new thing I’ve been using my Zodiac for is listening to music. Sure, I have an iPod, and I have taken it with me in the past, but I prefer to go gadget commando. Or at least as close as I can get to that. I like just having a phone and the Zod in my pockets. Putting music on my 1GB SD card is a compromise.
Now, there is some baggage I need to tell you about. In the past, I’ve tried turning my laptop into my home and work-station. I do have a desktop, but I rarely used it for anything but as a print server. When I get home, I set about plugging everything into my laptop: external DVD writer, speakers, video output, memory card readers, the works. It was a revelation to me then, when I started using my desktop as a desktop. I can’t get enough of having all my electronics in one place. I even supplanted my TV with my LCD monitor, by buying an ATI TV-Wonder card. Now I really enjoy having my iPod sitting on my desk at all times.
The best use for my iPod is as an external hard drive. It is an expensive one, of course. But I do take it places — occasionally. The point is, what do I do if I don’t bring it with me? Using WinLame, Anapod Explorer, and Windows Media Player 10, I’ve solved this problem. I now have a way of populating the SD card in my Zodiac with the music in my iPod.
Anapod Explorer from Red Chair Software is a replacement for iTunes. You can use it to transfer music bought at iTunes Music Store, as well as MP3s. WinLame is a windows frontend for LAME MP3-encoder; therefore, you can encode (or convert music) into MP3 or OggVorbis format at a user-specified bitrate. WMP10 has a device sync function, and you can treat an external memory card as a device.
You can build playlists in Anapod Explorer. It’s fast. The program uses Windows File Explorer as its interface; the categories and playlists are displayed as “folders”. Making a playlist is as simple as right-clicking. Smartlists on the iPod are called Morphlists in Anapod. Using Morphlists, you can build a randomized song library. I specify a library size of about 250 songs, and then copy these songs to a music directory. (This ability to copy music from the iPod to the desktop is probably the main reason the average user would buy it. Anapod also supports music streaming from the iPod, letting users play their music through media players other than iTunes.)
Once the music is in some temp directory, I use Winlame to convert to 96 kbps MP3s. WMP10 has a really cool function: it can automatically sync it’s playlist to music available in folders. You set WMP10 to monitor certain folders, and voila(!), you’ll never have to worry about music management here. The final step is to set up a sync with some external device. You can specify a memory card, for example. Every time you insert this card into a memory card reader, WMP10 will refresh the music stored in it.
WMP10 can alter the encoding bitrate of music files, as it is syncing. But then it lengthens the time of the sync; that’s why I use Winlame to downsample. I’m sure there are other cheaper software that works to pull music from the iPod as easily as Anapod, but it really is hassle free for me. It’s fast, and I get seamless integration in managing my iPod music as if they were another other data files. If anyone has any other suggestions, tell me, and I’ll try to write that up.
Post a Comment