Harman/Kardon IPOD Drive + Play

[deanos]

Seems a nifty gadget for £30

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/product....duct=GRADEA096

More details

http://www.harmankardon.com/drive-1/default_dp1.aspx

[Marky]

I got mine from here:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HARMAN-KARDON-...sid=p1638.m124

Arrived next day.

Though now I have installed it some tracks that play perfectly over headphones have distortion on the high and the low notes. Don't know if mine is faulty or not.

[Marky]

Just a quick update about my Drive & Play.

When I first fitted the device I was disappointed with the quality of the sound. I had a lot of distortion on both the high and low notes.

I have now sorted out this problem and for 98% of the music on my iPod its really good sound quality. Not far off CD, seems to loose some dynamic range over the CD. But its good enough for me now.

Some of the really bad tracks that I have were originally in WMP format and Windows Media Player had converted them, badly, into MP3. I re-encoded these tracks with my favourite encoder and they are much better.

The thing that made the biggest difference to the iPod sound was to normalise the volume on all my MP3's. I used a util called MP3Gain which set all the tracks to the same volume 89.0db. This has cured nearly all the distortion problems as many of the tracks were too loud and were clipping.

Finally I set the ipod to no equalization and I just use the HU for bass/treble modfications. The only downside to all of this is that there is a difference in volume between normal radio and the iPod. But I can live with that as I hardly ever use normal radio now, just the iPod.

[SignumPhil]

[QUOTE=Marky;642299]Just a quick update about my Drive & Play.



The thing that made the biggest difference to the iPod sound was to normalise the volume on all my MP3's. I used a util called MP3Gain which set all the tracks to the same volume 89.0db. This has cured nearly all the distortion problems as many of the tracks were too loud and were clipping.

QUOTE]

That's really interesting, as some tracks are really ropey on my Drive and play.

..........Goes off to find mp3gain............

Cheers, Phil

[Marky]

Try here:

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/download.php

The top link v1.2.5 should do the job.

[SignumPhil]

Try here:

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/download.php

The top link v1.2.5 should do the job.

Ta! Currently analyzing the contents of my 60Gb Ipod. This could be a long job, but there are a lot of tracks already showing that they'll clip.

Phil

[Marky]

To use it:

1) Set the Target Volume. I always leave at 89.0dB
2) Drag your MP3 files or folders into MP3Gain
3) Perform Track Analysis on them all (this is the slow bit as it works out the volume of each track and what to adjust it by)
The tracks that are clipping are probably the worst offenders
4) Select Track Gain to fix the MP3 files, this is quick.

Note: Its only the MP3 tags that are modified. It doesn't rewrite/reencode the actual music data. So it doesn't damage any of your MP3 files.

[Marky]

Ta! Currently analyzing the contents of my 60Gb Ipod. This could be a long job, but there are a lot of tracks already showing that they'll clip.

Phil

Ahh I see youve already started :-)

[vxvirgin]

Hasn't itunes/ipod got a volume equalizer built-in? Don't think you can set a specific level however.

[Marky]

Possibly. Track Gain is a genuine MP3 tag.

It may only be used when playing back through iTunes software on your PC/Mac.



I am not sure as I don't use iTunes.
Just Windows Media Player.