Tunes & Cycling

[zap]

Since I usually get bored when riding alone for extended periods, I'm considering getting an iPod or such device to liven things up on weekday rides.

It appears that some of you in this forum play tunes while riding. My questions are..

1. Do you recommend an iPod or some generic mp3 player. I don't know anything about these little devices, but would compile songs from my CD/DVD collection.
2. For legal and safety reasons, I would use one ear piece (right for tunes, keep the left free for traffic). Does it get annoying to have tunes in one ear?
3. Or don't bother and try to get Sandy to join me on long rides.

One more thing, I don't want the new Oakley's.

PS I'm not going to lug a boom box around either :D

[Dekonick]

Keep your left ear music free.

[Smiley]

My vote is for lugging Sandy along and having him tell you your stem is too long .

[sfscott]

Skip-free, good battery life, great user interface/software. The standard one fits right inside a jersey pocket.

The iTunes music store rocks. I may never buy another CD again. No one can compete with Apple on this one.

[zap]

:), last year you said my position looked great. What gives :confused:

[va rider]

Though I don't ride and listen to tunes, I have an 15gb iPod. I agree, it rocks, especially combined with the iTunes store. 99 cents a song is awesome.

I do run with the iPod, it works great for most sports because it has a much bigger cache (32m) than the competition. So, it can load more songs without going to the hard drive.

otoh, I would recommend getting an iPod mini for riding. 4 gb, almost 1,000 songs and is completely solid state. No skipping, period.

[gt6267a]

one concern about the ipod -- it uses a hard drive for storage. what happens when you shake a hard drive? will the reading device not skip or potentially hit the disk and therefore damaging the drive?

anyone out there using an ipod in bouncing or high vibration situations?

[dgauthier]

If you also bring a cell phone along for the ride, please note some of the Nokia's include an FM radio, and play monaurally through the cell phone's wired earpiece. You can turn the radio on and off with voice commands, too.

This is not too helpful if you hate all the FM stations in your area. But if you actually like some of them, this can cut down on the number of little boxes you have to lug around.

[Kevan]

that some muzak would be nice while riding, but I compare riding with sailing, oh...the days when I could afford sailing...., and the last thing I wanted then was music. So too with camping.

There's just something about being one with the water and earth that serves me best, but it's hard to press the arguement when an eighteen wheeler is blowing past your shoulder, I will agree. Just be careful dong it is all.

[dgauthier]

otoh, I would recommend getting an iPod mini for riding. 4 gb, almost 1,000 songs and is completely solid state. No skipping, period.

While I would agree either Ipod is immune from skipping in a road bike riding environment, the Ipod Mini is in fact a hard disk player.

Check Techical Specification/Capacity, just below the pictures of the remote ports and headphone jacks here: http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html.

[grinder]

Memorex makes an ultra small mp3 player. It's about the size of a Bic lighter. It holds about 4 hours of music and costs about 130 bucks. Sure beats a skipping cd player smashed in the back of your jersey. The Ipod is definitley more functional but if your strictly looking for one for cycling the memorex might fit the bill.

[BikerGrl]

Can use your (if u have one) palmtop that way you also have all your #s to call when you get in trouble on the way home(ha). Also, I believe Wal-Mart is now offering tunes for 88 cents (as u probably know), but like to give apple the biz though.

[Dekonick]

yeah - the ipod's are hard drive based storage. Pretty tough from what I read. - the mini would be the ticket.

I still have a hard time paying .99 a song. Do you get anything for the download? you can buy a CD and have a (fairly) permenant archive of the tune, and with the whole range of sound and some cool art to boot. MP3's clip alot out of the music (and you can tell at the lower sample rates)

If you lose a download because of a virus - lets say you lose your entire 1000 song library for example, are you out 1000 bucks or can you re-download the tunes?

.99 seems cheap - but its making the recording industry alot of $ with little overhead.

[va rider]

okay, I sit corrected. iPod mini is hard drive based, like the other iPods. However, the iPods have the largest amount of ram of mp3 players. I believe it is 32 mb, which gives you about 25min. of skip protection. Basically, the iPod loads 25min. of mp3s into solid state memory. This keeps the iPod from skipping. You would only run into a problem, if somehow you jolt it when the hard drive powers up to load the next 25min. of mp3s into memory.

The mini would be good for both biking and running, giving it's small size.

As far as the quality of the mp3s, Apple uses AAC encoding. It simply sounds excellent. If you are a real audiophile, maybe you could notice that the music does not sound as good as CDs when played over a very good set of speakers. But, over the iPod earbuds, most car and home stereos, they souind great.

And, you can load all of your existing CDs at whatever quality (bitrate) that you like. And, you worry about a hard drive failure, you can always burn downloaded songs from iTunes to CDs or DVDs. Either as mp3s or as full wave files.

I love my iPod, I use it for teaching spinning, connected to my car stereo, connected to my home stereo, at work through my computer speakers and when I run. It works great with my Powermac.

[Andreu]

to listen to music while I ride....but...
a big warning... in my opinion it is not worth it (unless you are in the house on rollers)....the chance of switching off for a second or not hearing the idiots who come from behind (i.e. those in noisy cars etc) is just not worth it.
Be careful.
A

[Too Tall]

I will throw in with a vote for MiniDisk. 4 yrs. ago I got a high end grey market unit from Japan. This is a recorder/player and has an optical interface for recording. I simply use a fiber patch cable direct to my CD player. Using a set of uber earbuds sound quality is breathtaking. On the bike, I put it into a sandwhich bag with a rubber................band around it. The NMHi battery lasts some ridiculous amt. of time like 17 hrs. Playback over my home audio system is equally awesome.

MiniDisks are re-recordable and quite durable.

The left ear free, right ear music gig works Zap. I turn it off altogether in traffic and back on when I'm crusin'.