http://www.spartantech.com/Items/NotebookDrives.asp?

Best,

_owen

Any word on 60GB drives?

-HeavyHit

Yes, "nice..."

Seriously, I have not heard of these coming down in price significantly yet. Last I saw, the lowest I am aware of is around $419. Pricewatch still has the kits at $455.

Ouch!

Over here (Oz) they want A$849 for these 48G drives. Converting from our play money to hard currency means about $US440. At that's from a generally reasonable computer firm that usually has reasonable prices.

Anyone know of a good value drive seller that ships internationally?

http://www.edgemicro.com/item.asp?CartId=555ZMJUA26&ic=IBMIC25T048&tpc=

80 cents cheaper!

Looks like the 60's are going to be hitting the open market (instead of just OEM's) soon.

I just bought one... the price came down to $199 + shipping. My empeg will be a 78GB now!

I had bought mine from Spartan Tech yesterday and thought all was well... now it's on back order...

48gig is a pretty good size drive, but as for the best value of gig per dollar, i think the 40s are a better deal.
current prices:
40 gig = $140
48 gig = $200
If you don't already have the music to fill 48s, I would recommend getting 40s and then upgrade in a few months or so when the price has come down.

Darwin, I agree with you on only buying the capacity you need. By the time you use it, the next larger size will have dropped. But I already have more than 10GB to add, so a 40 to replace my 30 wont cut it.

I ordered my 48GB drive for $199.. from Spartan Tech. A day later, the price went up - then again. It ended up topping at $230 and I was just told that it is on back order for another 2 weeks! Is there something going on is Asia right now? Where are all the big drives? The 60GB drives have been the biggest out for quite some time and only IBM makes them...

Darwin, I agree with you on only buying the capacity you need. By the time you use it, the next larger size will have dropped

If you've got two 30's and you buy a 40gig for $150 to replace one now, then a 48 later for $150, now you've got 88gig. It cost you about $300 and you're left with two 30's sitting around doing nothing, which by then will be worth about $50 a piece.
So for a net of about $200 you could add 28 Gig.

On the other hand, you could get 2 48's now for $400 or so, and sell your two 30's now for about $200.
Now you're talking 36 Gig addition for the same $200.

I'm actually going to wait quite a while to upgrade the disks in my 60gig RioCar. When I can buy two 100gig disks for $500, that's when I'll do the upgrade. And I'll sell my two 30's for whatever I can get. Obviously, that won't be for a while, but I bet that happens within the next 18 months.

The issue for me is Encoding Size.
I feel like I should just encode everything at 320 Fixed. I figure, so what, that's still 5:1 compression and it's only about double the 160-192 vbr's I've been doing. What's double really?

But then again my player is half full now and if it were all 320, it'd be full right now.

Big picture, I figure there'll come a time when my empeg has Half a TeraByte or maybe a whole TeraByte and then I'll be saying, geez, I wish I had encoded everything at 320.

I think maybe I'm gonna re encode everything at 320.
Does anyone have a good argument against this?

I'm looking for something like

"320 can produce an audio image superior to
that which the empeg hardware can deliver,
thus encoding at 320 is superflous."

Not like

"I'm wicked good at mp3's and
I use vbr because someone told me it's better."

I think maybe I'm gonna re encode everything at 320.
Does anyone have a good argument against this?

If you've got the disk space for it (in other words, you've put everything on your player at 320 that you'll ever want to put on it, and you've still got room left over), then there is nothing wrong with encoding everything at 320.

Just remember that the bit rate is not the only thing that determines quality. There is also the lowpass filtering. If you're doing 320 for everything, you should probably shut off the lowpass filter.

And 320kps will allow for less music (as messured in seconds) to be stored in RAM.... which would result in more drive spin up.

I like filling up my drives because that means that no drive in my player is older than a year!

I already found a buyer for my 30GB drive.

> I think maybe I'm gonna re encode everything at 320.
Does anyone have a good argument against this?

I assume you mean re-rip too, correct? Re-encoding without re-ripping would be a waste of time.

Oh, right, thanks Ninti. Yeah, I assumed he meant re-rip.

If he's planning on just taking his existing MP3s and transcoding them to 320, he should read our FAQ entry on this topic.

And 320kps will allow for less music
(as messured in seconds) to be stored in RAM....
which would result in more drive spin up.

WOULD result in more drive spin up? OR
MIGHT result in more drive spin up?

good point, either way.
does anyone else have input on this ?
I think it might not be an issue, real world.

There is also the lowpass filtering.
If you're doing 320 for everything,
you should probably shut off the lowpass filter.

Well, I've been playing with 320 encoding and I use :
lame -k -q0 -ms
I think the -k takes care of the filtering ?
Any further (argument) suggestions ?


With that I get about 2.275 MB per minute of music.
wav : mp3 is about 4.5 : 1

2.275 MB per Minute
OR 136.5 MB per Hour
OR 7.5 Hours per GB

And since a 60 GB unit really only holds about 57 GB
That's 422 Hours of music...
Which is something like 500 Full Length Albums.
Not Bad.

Further thoughts or suggestions?
Anyone?

yeah, nono, I plan to re rip, I think....
I really dread that.
I might just stick with the 192's I have though...

WOULD result in more drive spin up? OR
MIGHT result in more drive spin up?

Definitely WOULD.

i think 320 is overkill.. I cant tell the different after 192 which is my perferred rate. 128 is actually fine for a lot of tunes, but at 192, even the most complex melodies and bass patterns retain their characteristics to the trained ear.

i think 320 is overkill.. I cant tell the different after 192 which is my perferred rate. 128 is actually fine for a lot of tunes, but at 192, even the most complex melodies and bass patterns retain their characteristics to the trained ear.

Yeah that's what I think, too...
Although I use :
lame -k -q0 -v --vbr-new -V0 -b192 -B320 -F -ms

This allows lame to
keep all frequencies,
using highest quality,
using new vbr routine,
with (highest) vbr quality "0",
with a minimum bitrate of 192,
with a max bitrate of 320,
forced 192 bitrate on silent blocks
and true 2 channel stereo mode.

These arguments give me mp3's that are *slightly* larger than fixed rate 192's + 15-20% max.
But I think these are definately worth it.
Especially since mp3's encoded at fixed bitrate of 224 with none of the above mentioned arguments are just about *exactly* the same size.

I especially like the VBR bit (no pun intended) because while most of the song is encoded at 192, it uses 224,256 and 320 for when it comes accross the more complex parts of the song that need a little extra love.

Also bear in mind the listening enviroment you'll be hearing these mp3's in. Unless you do a serious dyna-mat job on your car there is still going to be plenty of background noise degrading what you hear.

If you really want to get into the ins & outs of LAME settings head over to here

Oh, and to get back on topic....ahem.....nope the wallet is empty so I won't be buying either drive!

Right. i agree with that, I do my MP3's in VBR with those settings as well. My 3rd Party mp3's however I try to recieve at 192 if possible.

What about the alt preset standard....?