iPod Nano - how many CDs?

Looking at the iPod Nano, I see that it comes in two different sizes: 8 Gb and 16Gb.

I’m thinking of getting one just for all of our Christmas CDs. Is there any way to estimate how many CDs the 8Gb holds, compared to the 16Gb?

Assuming 4 minutes songs, the 8 will hold about 2,000 songs. The 16 will hold about 4,000 songs. (assuming they were ripped at 128). If your CDs have an average of 12 four-minute songs, you should get about 165 albums on the 8 and 330 on the 16.

If each song is 4MB and each cd has 12 songs then roughly each cd takes 50 MB of space.

16GB = 16000MB / 50MB = 320 CDs for the 16GB model and 160 CDs for the 8GB model

Sounds about right; my rough estimate (like yours) is 1 Mb/minute. So to put it another way: about 133 hours / 5.5 days of audio for the 8 Gb version, and twice that for the 16 Gb.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty calculation based on my own collection of music that I have on my hard drive (not all Christmas music, but that’s irrelevant).

I have 6041 files on 32.5GB. Each file represents a music track.

This suggests that an 8GB device will be able to fit about 1,500 Christmas songs. The 16GB Nano should be able to manage 3,000.

How many Christmas CD’s do you have? Do you think you have enough to have 1,500 tracks?

It depends on the quality settings with which you rip your CDs. If you use Apple Lossless, you’re looking at about 300-350MB per CD, so an 8GB device could hold around 20 CDs, and a 16GB device twice that.

If you use a lossy codec like MP3 at 256kbps, you’re looking at around 80-100MB per CD, so an 8GB device could hold around 80 CDs. If you encode at a lower quality like 192kbps, then you could hold more.

thanks for the replies, everyone.

We don’t have anything close to 160 CDs, so the 8 gig should work for this project. once it’s done, we don’t have to cart the two boxes of CDs up from the basement each December.

There are far cheaper mp3 players than the iPod for that kind of job

If it’s just to store the songs, wouldn’t a 8 or 16 gig flash drive work just the same?

Hell of a lot cheaper, too.

Why go flash when you can buy a terrabyte HD for $70, and play ALL your music from there? That way ALL your CD’s can find a permanent home in the basement, or a temporary one on the Skeet range.

Don’t forget about the technical stuff on the mp3 player taking up room, too - 8 gigs is not 8 available gigs to fill up with music. I’d go with the 16. (I just bought a 16 gig Sony MP3Man, and was once again disappointed at the drive being filled up when I had nowhere near 16 gigs worth of music on it.) By the way, recordable dvds hold, I believe the technical term is, a shit-load of music. You can still play them back on a lot of the electronics around your house (and possibly your car). I am also very happy with my Sony MP3Man, and it was nowhere near the price of the Nano (and loading songs from iTunes on my Mac was no big deal).

I take the point about other options, but I may want to use this thing for non-Christmas stuff too - it’s just that’s the starting point.

Cat Whisperer, good point that the system will use up some of the space. However, provided I get my CD of Christmas carols on the bagpipes loaded, the rest is gravy!

Bagpipes! You didn’t tell us you had bagpipe music, so all bets are off. Better double your space allocations – those files take up a LOT of room! :slight_smile:

But they seem to get deleted mysteriously.

Another reason to have a dedicated iPod under my own exclusive control. :stuck_out_tongue: