Sound Quality of the Fifth Generation iPods? 196
ntropi asks: "As the drive on my old MP3 player (an iRiver H320) grinds toward its last days, I've found myself in search of a new one. Given the options the new iPod seems the best choice, but I'm hesitating somewhat over the murmurings as to the iPod's supposedly poor sound quality. However, while Marc Heijligers has provided a comprehensive breakdown of iPod performance for up to the fourth generation, I have been hard-pressed to find any information on the 5G's performance. With the exception of this CNET review, which reports that 'Audio quality is quite good and probably better than the previous iPod's, with reasonable bass, distinguishable mids, and shiny highs, plus the audio-output power is quite good.', there seems not to have been any detailed analysis of the iPod's output quality. Thus, it seemed a good idea to appeal to the Slashdot hive-mind for its personal experiences with the 5G's playback, or even analyses that people might have done which were simply never put online."
Sounds Better Than My Old 3G (Score:5, Informative)
The issue with the bass rolloff with low impedence phones [IE in ear monitor style] is still there, but not as severe. all that requires is the use of the EQ + mp3/aac gain anyway.
overall i like the way it sounds. i know that probably doesn't help much.
Re:Sounds Better Than My Old 3G (Score:2)
Good enough for the majority of people? (Score:2, Informative)
Okay, I know that's a bit much, but it's probably good enough for most people who have a portable player. I expect it beats out anything that you could buy in the 90s. Maybe with high-end headphones there'd be a quality difference, and even then it could be subjective.
Suggestion: Take your headphones down to the electronics store and ask to listen to a comparison. If it is an option, it'd beat out any amount of third party reviews, and co
Re:Good enough for the majority of people? (Score:2)
For those of us who haven't got AirTunes set up over a wireless network to stream from their Airport Express using an optical digital cable to their $10,000 hifi system - yes.
The convenience of having all your music easily selectable and ready to play at the press of a button covers over a lot of sins. (But running it from your computer is better, because PearLyrics and Spotlight give you full searchability of song lyrics and that is insa
Re:Good enough for the majority of people? (Score:3, Informative)
Other factors (Score:5, Insightful)
I like good speakers for my home theater. But a friend of mine likes his $250 all-in-one setup. It's not that either one of us is wrong, but he gets the quality he wants, and doesn't spend nearly as much as I do.
-dave
Re:Other factors (Score:2)
Re:Other factors (Score:2)
My first gen iPod (not very helpful to the original poster, I know) actively distorts sound! No environment, headphones, or ears are going to help that. It's like they have a hardcoded digitial amplification going on which just kills any music that recorded at at full volume. Which is to say, any rock album that came out in the last 5 or 10 years. Music older than that wasn't so heavily compressed (and I'm not talking about the mp3 sense), and so it doesn't distort.
Re:Other factors (Score:2)
I know in iTunes you can apply EQ settings to the individual track, but it occurs to me that I've never actually check to see if the iPod honors those...
Re:Other factors (Score:2)
With the EQ on it's so much distortion I can't even believe it.
-David
Re:Other factors (Score:2)
Are you sure? (Score:2)
If they're low impedance (16 ohms, sometimes even 32 ohms), try switching to headphones with a higher impedance, or use an external headphone amp.
There's a good chance the clipping will disappear even if you listen at higher volume levels - from what I've heard the biggest problem with iPod sound quality is that the amp has insufficient current handling capability.
It sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It sucks (Score:2)
I'm now in the process of ripping all of my vinyl (as much of it isn't available on CD or on-line). It's a great way to listen to all of my old music. I wrote about it here. [blogspot.com]
sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:3, Interesting)
Anecdotal, yes, but it seems to be pretty universal among the people I know with ipods. *shrug*
Quailty if fine -Ancedotally (Score:2)
Ancedotal and useless comment as you yourself pointed out. Why post.
Re:Quailty if fine -Ancedotally (Score:2)
Oh man, I dropped my iRiver H340 from one metre onto hard lino floor. The pain. Luckily that was months ago and it has not shown any signs of damage.
I love my H340. I can also listen to the radio and record it to MP3. But apparently nobody wants to do that. I must be strange or something. Steve? Are you listening?
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
1st Gen iPod still going strong (Score:3, Informative)
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
On the plus side when they die, usually it dies quick and is warrantied. What happens if it dies again...
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
Re:sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:2)
iPod batteries are lithium-ion. They don't have a memory effect like nickel-cadium and some other kinds of rechargable batteries, so intentional maintenance is unnecessary - a full discharge just shortens the battery's life by one charge cycle. The only time you would want to do a full discharge and recharge is if the iPod won't be used for a month or so. See here [apple.com] and here [apple.com] for Apple's advice on th
Truthfully (Score:5, Informative)
When you hook the iPod to any good receiver or external speakers, the audio quailty is about as good as any digital media player. A system with good bass and good processing handles the relatively weak output of the iPod well for good overall sound.
The end result is, NO digital media player is for audiophiles, but the iPod is about as good as any. You will get lots of bias feedback saying Apple is the best, or the worst, but its about middle of the road, the digital chatter I hear is annoying only if you like your treble levels high, which most people don't.
In the end, compared to Creative or another comparible price/featured product, I doubt your going to find any of them setting themselves appart greatly in terms of audio quality. Only that the Creative actually uses a real equalizer feature to help fine tune things unlike the cheesy presets Apple uses. In my experience, using ANY iPod preset results in lousy audio quality as their digital audio processing isn't that great and make the music sound overly processed.
Would I not recommend the iPod based on audio quality alone, no. There are a lot more features and benefits using an iPod then a few audio quirks which are mostly overcome using better speakers/headphones. Just that I get sick and tired when people seem to feel that one digital audio player is better sounding the the next, except for really cheap ones, most in the $300 range are comparable, just depends how much bias is behind the person recommending them.
Re:Truthfully (Score:5, Insightful)
If there really were some "digital chatter" in the line out signal then you'd probably hear it more clearly with good headphones. More likely it's a problem specifically with the earphones (and hence an analogue problem) or something in your imagination.
And using my 64 ohm Sennheiser HD580 headphones my iPod nano isn't quiet at all. I have to admit I was surprised by this.
Re:Truthfully (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason is that "lossy" perceptual coding algorithms (MP3, AAC, etc) work by applying what is known as a masking threshold. A tone of sufficient amplitude masks our ability to hear other tones below this threshold. When compressing the audio the stuff under the m
Re:Truthfully (Score:2)
But I'd hardly describe as "chatter" any sound that can be masked by the low frequency sounds lost by poor earphones.
Re:Truthfully (Score:2)
I will certainly agree that as far as sound quality goes, the Shuffle is definitely an inferior product.
However, I am not an audiophile (you people scare me
Re:Truthfully (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting. I personally don't have the ears to tell the difference, but I this PC Magazine article [pcmag.com] by Bill Machrone disagrees with your assertion:
"Apple's new iPod shuffle has stellar audio performance. In the bass registers, it blows away the competition, including its bigger siblings.... The iPod shuffle's near-perfect rendering of the [40-Hz] square wave means that it uses push-pull output instea
Re:Truthfully (Score:2)
chatter? (Score:2)
Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portable! (Score:3, Interesting)
If your an "audiofile" then listen to lossless or a cd or even better "VYNL RECORDS".
The whole point of portable MP3 is to carry as many songs in as small a space. If people wanted perfect CD quality in a portable package they'd buy mini-disc. But they didn't. However people want good->excellent quality and small files.
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2)
Nope! Minidisc also uses lossless compression, namely ATRAC. IIRC, an MD holds about 140 MB, so the compression ratio is about 20%.
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2)
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2)
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2)
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2)
AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV (Score:2)
Re:AIFF, Apple Lossless, WAV (Score:2)
Hey, guess what? That's what this article is about, genius. Read the article. Hell, even read the freaking thread.
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2, Flamebait)
Vinyl exhibits some really difficult to remedy problems. First of all, TWO channels are encoded into ONE analog track. This causes terrible channel seperation (you can hear the left channel in the right and vice versa) and also kills to some degree the stereo effect. That analog encoding and then decoding of two channels into one also has the undesired effect of adding more distortion and noise, typically done in the analog
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:2)
To be completely fair, CD-ROM and CD-AUDIO are very different formats. The CD-AUDIO format has a very basic error recovery layer in the protocol. The CD-ROM format has another layer of much more extensive error correction on top of that. CD-AUDIO, although digital, is not close to being "bit-perfect", because its generally assumed that you'd rather hear an interpolated sample instead of h
Re:Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portab (Score:3, Informative)
Well, that's an oversimplification. Two separate audio tracks are recorded, with their waveforms impressed into the walls of a two-sided groove - like a valley. If the walls of this groove are at 45 degrees from the vertical, then they are at 90 degrees from each other and thus are orthogonal. If the stylus which tracks in the groove has two axes of sensitivity, also at 90 degrees from each other, then in theory any variation normal to one wall of the gr
Head-fi (Score:2, Informative)
If you're happy with it, why not upgrade the HD? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If you're happy with it, why not upgrade the HD (Score:2)
If you're using an ipod with the supplied phones (Score:3, Insightful)
iPods are mainly for portable music, most of the time music on the move doesn't need audiophile reproduction, and even the cheapest MP3 players offer very decent music quality.
If you are mulling over splashing out so you can get GREAT sound quality from an iPod, just concentrate on the parts that count, the headphones. A pair of sennheiser or etymotics will set you back just half the price of an iPod and will make a stunning difference to sound quality.
http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/all-
http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/all-
http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/in-e
http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/in-e
Re:If you're using an ipod with the supplied phone (Score:2)
Re:If you're using an ipod with the supplied phone (Score:3, Informative)
That said, an amp is a very good idea on 580s. They're wonderful headphones, but they're high-impedance... 300 ohms. The iPod, like most devices, is designed to drive about 30. You can still get pretty good volume out of it, and it still sounds pretty good, but the clarity and bass will perk
Re:If you're using an ipod with the supplied phone (Score:2)
We'd know if it sounded bad (Score:3, Informative)
Oh okay, here is an expert opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof? Hook up your iPod to a real sound system and blast it through a concert hall. YIKES!
You will truly not believe it. I cannot hear the difference between normal audio equipment but when it is amplified by the kind of equipment that can blow fuses you really do hear that is not a complete sound.
So what does it sound like really? Well it sounds exactly like those really really cheap radios you used to get free with things amplified in a drum.
So asking wether an iPod sounds good is a stupid question. All DAP players suck because the content they reproduce sucks. The hardware itself also doesn't have the quality needed either.
BUT DOES THIS MATTER. No.
It is not meant to be played to a thousand people, it is meant to power a couple of small earbud speakers and considering all the limitations involved both in the hardware and in you it is okay. Yeah sure some people will swear that they can hear the difference between Player X and Player Y well good luck to them. For the majority of people there is no difference and if you need to ask you are one of those people. Do not try to claim you are audiofreak by asking other people. Audiofreaks never listen to other people.
Note that the above is a bit extreme, you can do a successfull presentation from a laptop with powerpoint and mp3 audio but you are pushing it. Do not play music this way to an audio fanatics audience. Please note that their is also a hell of difference between the sound needed for a presentation and that for the party afterwards. If you think of holding one afterwards check with the sound engineer before and ask if the setup is small enough to be played from your sound source. They don't mind if you ask not simply tell them to do it and then complain it sounds bad. They are used to people thinking consumer hardware is good enough. Personally I had to explain more then once that a companies own top of the line projector was just not going to cut it for a conference hall. Their can be carried in a suitcase. Ours sits in a large trunk and can only be lifted with hydraulics.
MP3 = FM radio (Score:2)
Re:Oh okay, here is an expert opinion (Score:2)
You are correct... however...
It is worth pointing out that you could have played uncompressed WAV, AIFF or ALE. If one was so inclined.
(I wonder what an AAC would have sounded like over that big system.)
Re:Oh okay, here is an expert opinion (Score:2, Insightful)
Hang on a second. Does the iPod have line-out? I know my iRiver does, but it may just be the case that the iPod was over driving the line-in input and causing distortion.
I strongly rejected MP3 for many years. However listening to LAME 256k CBR encodings of my favourite music, against the very same CD in a Yamaha CDX-1060 using Beyerdynamic DT-911 headphones for each in an A/B test... I could not hear the difference.
F
Re:Oh okay, here is an expert opinion (Score:2)
I've also played sound effects for various shows b
The ipod sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
Despite to the raves I read here on slashdot, the ipod was a HUGE disappointment for me - I guess I'm not the target audience. I'm more concerned about sound quality and features than the fancy click-wheel. Give me something that I can figure out easily (the W800 works while the phone is switched off, providing 30h long playback. The ipod mini's battery life sucked big time as well), is small, has at least 2Gb space, and doesn't need a separate program just to copy files to it. W800 provides me with that - and much much more (actually, the camera is pretty good as well). Yeah, I'm absolutely anti-ipod. So my advice is: don't buy an ipod. Buy something much much better for the same money. If you don't need a new phone, buy a player that supports ogg and flac (not just crappy mp3s - without gapless playback support! and AACs). The ipod is overrated.
Re:The ipod sucks. (Score:2)
the ipod was a HUGE disappointment for me - I guess I'm not the target audience.
If you were the intended audience, they'd ship it to you in pieces and have you assemble it yourself. Then you could go and find a stylish wooden box to put it in. It might cost, oh, $666 and be shipped from a
Re:The ipod sucks. (Score:2)
Between my iPod mini and my 60GB video (Score:2)
this is bound for redundancy, but... (Score:2, Informative)
What I worry about... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, you're an "audiophile". For the best sound-quality, I recommend that you get the new deoxidized monster ultraTHX speakerphone cable. It will really increase the "warmth" of the music. We also have in stock a specially shielded cable you can run between the battery and the unit, to remove interference from the battery. And we also have these practical spikes to mount your ipod on, that will reduce vibration from the ground... Moreover, if you open your ipod, and use a green felt pen around the case of the harddisk, it will improve the sound-quality a lot!
Personally, I think the sound quality of most portable audio players are more than adequate for a portable audio player. What I really want is a portable disk-based audio-player that has a completely normal USB harddisk interface to the computer, and that supports ogg vorbis, musepack, flac, and other common formats. But I guess there's no market for that, people really want to limit their choices to the iTunes I guess, and never have a need for portable harddisks in the same unit...
Re:What I worry about... (Score:2)
Howdy joto,
I have an iRiver H340 [iriver.com] and love it.
It is a completely normal USB harddisk (40GB).
Supports ogg vorbis, MP3, WMA, ASF and WAV.
Can record
Re:What I worry about... (Score:2)
However, I don't think much of the H340's user interface. It involves a lot of things that you wouldn't guess until you read the manual.
Re:your requested music player (Score:2)
I had BBE on an old AIWA cassette walkman type portable.
For those that don't know, BBE undoes the waveform inversion which occurs multiple times throughout the audible range when playing through typical transducers (speakers and headphones cause this problem). BBE performs the same inversion at the appropriate frequencies, so when the speakers/headphones do it, they are actually undoing that unwanted effect.
The sound difference between switching BBE on and off
Stereophile loved the audio quality of the 3G iPod (Score:4, Informative)
"The iPod's measured behavior is better than many CD players--ironic, considering that most of the time it will be used to play MP3 and AAC files, which will not immediately benefit from such good performance. But if you're willing to trade off maximum playing time against the ability to play uncompressed AIFF or WAV files, the iPod will do an excellent job of decoding them. Excellent, cost-effective audio engineering from an unexpected source.--John Atkinson"
Re:Stereophile loved the audio quality of the 3G i (Score:2)
> of the time it will be used to play MP3 and AAC files
I might be wrong, but I'd consider the measured behavior of an MP3-Player is more important than the one of a plain CD-Player.
The psychoaccoustical model that is used to compress the audio makes some guesses about what an average person is able to hear/recognize.
At playback time additional distortion does spoil this efforts and might make the lossy compression way mor
"Shiny"? (Score:2)
What they should be doing is a proper analysis of the iPod's output. In other words, take a sample track; encode it; decode it again, to provide your baseline data; play it through the iPod, capturing the result with a high-quality, known-good A/D converter; and then comparing the result the the baseline data. This will give you an actual response curve that lets you talk about the audio quality in genuine, objective, num
Re:"Shiny"? (Score:2)
You can compare spectrograms (or whatever) all you like, but they won't tell you much about how a listener will percieve the sound. In some cases, very small differences (e.g. phase differences between left and right ear) can be very noticeable. In other cases, two very different-looking spectrograms might be indistinguishable, due to e.g. masking effects.
This is something that lossy compression metho
Re:"Shiny"? (Score:2)
You can compare spectrograms (or whatever) all you like, but they won't tell you much about how a listener will percieve the sound.
I'm sorry, but this is bullshit.
If you can show that a particular bit of hardware is producing the same audio signals as another bit of hardware, then you know that they will sound the same. By definition. By comparing the signal emitted by the iPod to the signal that you know the iPod ought to be producing, you can measure the errors in an objective fashion.
The subjectiv
Re:"Shiny"? (Score:2)
Re:"Shiny"? (Score:2)
People don't actually like "accurate" or "flat" reproduction. Some engineers have spent years developing accurate reproduction, only to have music listeners prefer some cheaper and less accurate system because it sounds better to them. Almost everybody prefers certain parts of the spectrum emphasized, and others de-emphasized.
Re:"Shiny"? (Score:2)
Quality of the player not so important (Score:2)
The player itself is not so important.
What Snobs We Have Become (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I am a graybeard now, I remember recording an FM signal off the radio, onto a casette tape (magnetized particles, young'ins! and we liked it!)... trying to get a clean 'rip' without the DJ trampling the beginning or end (impossible)... futzing with levels to hit that magical peak 0dB (but not too much over!)... applying Dolby B 'noise reduction'.... all of this took, usually, an entire afternoon to assemble one good tape. Which your buddy's car deck would then eat the next day.
Not that I miss any of that really, but now its 'Transcode the file from AAC to MP3?!? My ears would BLEED, such a thing is beyond the pale! Were you raised in a cave?'
Of course, a lot of it is bullshit. There are true audiophiles and then there are those who just want to know that they have The Best. These are the people who have $10k stereos that don't notice when the entire left channel disappears at a club. I find its usually me and maybe one or two other people in the vicinity who looked shocked when that happens... the rest have no idea....
Get a new drive instead (Score:2)
This Misticriver thread mentions replacing the 20GB harddisk with a 30GB Toshiba disk for $125:
http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=34516& highlight=toshiba [misticriver.net]
X.
Tudes (Score:2, Insightful)
Sound quality (Score:2)
Next step after that is to get a headphone amp; it's not really worth spending more than $30 on headphones otherwise. You can get an Xin mini, which is smaller than the iPod and will happily drive full-size Sennheisers using 3xAAA cells. You'll be amazed at the difference it makes. Do spring for the crossover circuit to convert s
May be irrelevant if Steve announces new iPods... (Score:2)
Re:Your decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
In Europe, at least, iPods are pretty hard to buy retail. You are lucky if you can find a store that stocks a shuffle. I know in Brussels the high tech mega mart ("Media Markt", comparable to Best Buy) still only sells iPod Minis - no Nanos or 5G iPods. And there are only Apple Stores in US, UK and Japan.
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
There are Apple stores also in Australia.
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
I've only seen Applecentres in Australia (which are just redistributors), not Apple Stores.
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
Sorry, you are quite right.
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
Re:Your decision (Score:2)
"6th Avenue Electronics, Boscovs, Bose, Brandsmart,Circuit City, Crutchfield, Electronic Express, Fred Meyer, HH Greggs, J&R, Longs, Meijer, Mobile Planet, Musicland, PC Richards, Radio Shack, RCS EXPERIENCE, Rite Aid, Sam's, Shopko, Sharper Image, Target, Tweeter or Wal-Mart?"
Yeah, I don't live near any of those, actually, parent poster is quite lucky only to need to "drive several hundred miles", I would probable have to fly several hundreds or even thousands of miles to get to
Do you realize how retarded you sound? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Hint: Think about the kind of listening environment that a busy Apple store presents. Especially since Apple stores are usually located in shopping malls.
Same goes for many other brick and mortar stores such as Best Buy. Circuit City is an exception, as most CC stores I've seen do actually have sound-isolated listening booths for demonstrating some of what they sell. That said
Re:Do you realize how retarded you sound? (Score:3, Insightful)
A)a sound-isolated listening booth
or
B)a busy Apple store
How it sounds and how it sounds when I'm using it can be two different things, and personally I'd be more interested in the latter. Going and listening to it is better advice then taking some random slashdotters word for it.
Re:Do you realize how retarded you sound? (Score:2)
Re:IPod features (Score:2)
I am pretty sure the answer is no for gapless playback. From what I understand, the standard mp3 codec doesn't support it, but AAC can. Apple doesn't support it, the iRiver does, IIRC, and some guys have a hacked [rockbox.org] up mp3 codec/firmware that supports it. Also, Sony players will do it if you use ATRAC...So as you see this gapless playback seems to have been not a big priority for many companies, and I personally haven't heard many people complaining [petitiononline.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:IPod features (Score:2)
My guess is that they use an "updated" mp3 decoder...this has been going on forever, at least 5 or 6 years. Check out this from the wayback machine. [sourceforge.net]
Re:IPod features (Score:2)
By reading the necessary encoder delay info from the LAME tag, which isn't in the de jure MP3 standard and therefore isn't supported by the overwhelming majority of players.
Re:IPod features (Score:2)
Sure, if you use a Apple lossless or WAV/AIFF.
Re:1G vs 5G (Score:4, Informative)
I don't expect a $1000 Bose system, because I expect some semblance of quality. [intellexual.net]
Re:creative for sound quality (Score:2)
Mine (3rd Gen) now supports a Save Playlist, if you do that you can then start building a new playlist.
Computer Shopper UK is bombed (Score:2, Insightful)
I haven't compared the 5g ipod to any other portable devices except $70 a cd/mp3 player from Sony, and I'd say the audio quality is much greater than that device. The ipod sounds better than a lot of entry l