Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[benn600]

How long does it take everyone to sync from nothing to full or nearly full on their player?  Now I should pose the big and fun question.  I have a 6GB Sansa and am currently running a "from scratch" sync of close to 1000 songs which I have rated 3,4,5 stars.  It is re-encoding with LAME to MP3 Normal quality without the Fast Mode box checked.  It will take about 5 hours to sync.  Unfortunately, in MTP mode, the actual copy progress is much slower and it can't even keep up with the encoding.  What if I had a 80GB iPod and wanted to sync my entire 11,000 song library?  11 times as long?  More than 2 solid days to sync?  I don't think I'd want to start from scratch!

I am not a big portable music fan but it just seems like I always run into times where I want to change my sync quality and I gain this newfound appreciation for music so I suddenly want to jump back into portable music...and I always seem to resync...just as a way to restart everything and try to have the best experience possible (lol).

[BartMan01]

Prior to the 'cache' changes, it took me two nights to sync a 60GB iPod from scratch.
After the 'cache' changes, MC is a little more efficient (even with an empty cache) - and it now only takes one full night to do.

I would still like to see 'versioning' implemented so I could keep a permanent MP3 version of each file on hand.  That way a full sync would only take a couple of hours.

How long it takes (starting from scratch) under the current system really depends on your computer - re-encoding files is very CPU intensive.

[benn600]

I have a Core2 1.86 GHz processor.  Could I fit 11K songs on a 60GB iPod?  What quality do you use?  I found out that that middle quality setting in LAME is too much because I can't fit everything I have in the sync playlist.  It ran short about a hundred songs.

[BartMan01]

Hard to say, I have a lot of 'non-music' audio files (like podcasts) on my device.  I use normal-fast for my CD's that are in APE format. 

As to 'how big'.  Just doing some rough calcs on my data you will need an 80GB iPod.  I am coming to 75GB needed to hold 11k songs at my average file size.

[benn600]

That brings up an interesting issue, though.  Generally speaking, I think users are much better off using a solid state device because it demands that you do the work ahead of time on your computer to select your favorite tunes.  I'm going to start a thread to get some conversation on the issue going.

[Alex B]

I have a Core2 1.86 GHz processor.  Could I fit 11K songs on a 60GB iPod?  What quality do you use?  I found out that that middle quality setting in LAME is too much because I can't fit everything I have in the sync playlist.  It ran short about a hundred songs.

-V 5 --vbr-new (a custom command line) is a good LAME VBR setting for portables. It produces an about 130 kbps average bitrate. (This depends on the source material. The actual bitrate can vary a lot).

I hope JRiver will implement the new LAME options I requested (and explained) in this thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=36445.0

[benn600]

That's why I always unchecked the checkbox.  I didn't want slightly lower quality--lol.  Generally speaking, I let my Sansa sync over night (I typed sink, lol) and 3 (or whatever) hours vs. 6 doesn't really matter...it has all night.  If it is better quality, heck ya!  I want it!

How about J River rewords the checkbox and then add more in the drop down box with a parenthesis and average bitrate--that would be very helpful to me.  Personally, I like to go a bit above 128 if I can fit it on my device.  Now, it's a challenge to look up what the bit rates for those 3 built in settings are.

[BartMan01]

That's why I always unchecked the checkbox.

Contrary to the on screen 'help' - the faster mode can actually produce BETTER files thanks to the later changes in the encoding.

[Magic_Randy]

For me it takes 5 to 5.5 hours to do a full sync.  This is for ~15,000 tracks which translates to ~65gb of data.  The files are MP3 with no conversions occurring.

The target device is an 80gb iPod. 

I think this is acceptable. 

[benn600]

LOL!  Yea, if you don't have to convert!  Wow.  I prefer the time, though, because I know on my desktop, I get it as good as it can be.

That is impressive, though!  So, generally speaking, converting takes about 10-15 times as long.

[Magic_Randy]

What CPU utilization do you have when you sync?  The reason I ask is I've found my syncs go much slower if I'm doing things that consume most of the CPU.  When I do a normal sync, my CPU utilization is ~10-20%.  If my CPU utilization gets high, ~80-95%, my syncs slow way down.

[BartMan01]

Well, for those of us that store our stuff losless on the PC, but want MP3 for the portable - CPU sits at 50-100% as it converts all of the files

[benn600]

Well, having a dual core machine seems to limit the encoders a bit.  I find that if I'm not running two simultaneous conversions, it never peaks at 100%.  I will try it and report back.