Questions from a neophyte

As a new iPOD user who has just discovered the EphPOD site I have a
number
of questions. Perhaps some kind person can help...

Configuration: MusicMatch Plus      (Purchased end July 2003)
               iPOD Mark II - 15 GB (Purchased end July 2003)
               HP-6000 portable with Windows-XP Professional and USB-1
  =20

1. The EphPOD introductory material suggests that the MusicMatch CD to
MP3
   translator is (very) inferior to LAME. Does anyone have any details
of
   the difference? Are there significant audible effects? I have
converted
   about 250 CDs (so I don't want to do this all again!), but I have not
   noticed any significant drop in quality at the "CD equivalent"
setting
   which uses ~900 KB per minute.

2. I have found two bugs in MusicMatch, though. In some cases it clips a
few
   seconds off the end of a track and glues it onto the next track (as
if
   it doesn't flush a buffer under some circumstances). I also have
managed
   to delete an album (~16 tracks) from the iPOD but not from the iPOD
   database. This is clearly not a serious problem, but I did want to
   clean it up. Has anyone else seen this? I don't know what sequence of
   actions I took with MusicMatch to do it. It has been suggested to me
   that I could fix it the problem with EphPOD, which leads to the next
   question.

3. The EphPOD documentation seems to refer to the Mark I iPOD version
   which only ran with Macintosh, or required something called MacOpener
   to convert the file system formats. However, if I make hidden files
   visible on my W-XP machine then I can see all the iPOD files without
   using any such conversion. Also, in the iPOD settings, it states that
   the iPOD is using the "Format: Windows". Thus, my conclusion is that
   the EphPOD program is designed for the Mark I iPOD only. The question
   is will it work with a Mark II (firmware 2.01) set up with a Windows
   file system? If it will, does it really require a Firewire card, as
   my iPOD connects quite happily to my PC via the USB cable I purchased
   from Apple.

Thanks for any replies...

     David Myers

     Geneva, Switzerland.

------------------------------------------------------
ephPod Mailing List 
FAQ and HomePage http://www.ephpod.com 
mailto:[email protected] to susbcribe 
mailto:[email protected] to unsusbcribe 
mailto:[email protected] the mailing-list itself