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Inside the iPod, Past and Present
We mentioned the iPod Shuffle dissection a couple of days ago. Reader UtahSaint writes "Electronic Design have got a neat little article giving non-Apple employees
an insight into the makings of the original iPod and the revisions made (on a technical level) with the 2nd and 3rd generation iPods. The third-generation iPod contains two power-management chips from Royal Philips Electronics, a TEA1211 and a PCF50605. The TEA1211 is a dc-dc converter that can switch automatically between step-down and step-up operation in response to changing input voltage. The PCF50605, a single-chip power-management unit (PMU), can adjust power-supply voltages to the lowest thresholds needed for functions in a particular power domain." And finally, sammykrupa writes "PC Mag has a great review of Apple's iPod Shuffle. It covers the quality of the audio output saying that it is has dead-flat frequency response, less harmonic distortion, and most notably, better bass response than its bigger siblings. The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes."
iPod Shuffe, no wireless. Less space than a regular iPod. Lame.
The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes.
The iPod is designed to take with you and hear music on the bus, or while jogging - with headphones. Does it really matter how good the bass is if you listen to it with headphones anyway? I think not.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
"Eek! How gross! I'm not disecting that iPod!"
Use a different pair of headphones, asshat.
See also: iPod Shuffle Deconstructed.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The linked article is interesting from a technical standpoint, but it's also pretty dry--after the lead paragraph, the author doesn't really talk about the sweat and tears behind the scenes. Fortunately, the Times Magazine ran a story (reg-free link) a couple years ago about the human side of iPod, from conception to birth. Turns out the iPod didn't spring whole from the tip of Steve Jobs' magical wang. The article's worth a read if you're into this kind of thing.
You fail it. You are the suck.
I'm glad they improved the audio quality - the iPod doesn't really fare very well compared to the so-called iPod killers (and that's something you can measure objectively, before you get too defensive of that expensive white box you so treasure).
The point is that the old Ipod headphone preamps didnt't have enough juice to power most headphones properly. What is the hardest frequency to reproduce? The bass. So, even with headphones and the eq turned up, the bass didn't sound as full and punchy as it should have. This was probably the worst flaw sound quality wise. The AAC or MP3 encoding at 128K are virtually indistinguishable from CDs for most listeners, but most listeners can hear the lack of bass. Its like something is missing.
The whole point of a fashion victim is that they will endure the horrible sound for appearence's sake... If you had bothered to use all two of your brain cells while reading my comment, that would have been obvious.
is a dc-dc converter that can switch automatically between step-down and step-up operation in response to changing input voltage.
Without examining the circuit myself, I could imagine that when the batteries fall below Vcc that the converter switches from step down to step-up to provide additional play time, until the batteries are completely drained.
Maybe someone can confirm/deny this.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The article says the first iPod had buttons directly below the screen. Apparently, they've never seen the original iPod, a picture of it, or the "Media (Apple)" logo on Slashdot. The buttons were around the wheel.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I had a 3rd gen, now I have a 4th gen. Both drove my Grado SR-60 headphones (think Radar from Mash) just fine. In fact- they do a noticeably better job driving them at low frequency than my Powerbook.
Any problems with low frequency response probably have something to do with the fact that, despite the Steve Reality Distortion Field, you cannot get good low-frequency response in a tiny little earplug. You can put marketspeak on your website till the cows come home about Neodymium magnets make 'em better- they're still just tiny earplug speakers.
Please help metamoderate.
I don't need a massive capacity player, I just want to get my top 100/200 songs ever and carry them with me for those times I'm out.
Not only is it diminuitive, great value (probably because of the lack of screen, but the 1GB Shuffle is £10 cheaper than a 512MB Sony, and £30 cheaper than a 1GB Creative in the UK). but it is actually pretty damn good.
Will this be the first Apple hardware I ever buy? Where will it end?!
Not directly involving the iPod, but this week's I Cringely has a discussion of how the new Mac Mini may be a move by Apple to get into the movie distribution business, trying to repeat with video the success they've had with the iPod for audio. He has some interesting speculation on synergy from Pixar (which Jobs also controls) and Sony ("...you don't get the head of Sony at your event just to sell camcorders"). Well worth a read.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
With all of the iPod Shuffle discussion and disections, I am surprised to see that no one has commented on the extra lines in the USB connector.
If you look in the connector, there are five small lines between the main USB lines. (BTW, these are not included in the Shuffle's dock.) There is also NO USB logo's in any of the packaging or documentation.
It looks like Apple may have some secret features up their sleeves.
are there any alternatives which hold a couple gigabytes+ for under $100usd/50gbp roughly?
No.
"Loud enough to cause hearing damange" is a *feature*.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
"La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien à ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien à enlever." (Perfection is achieved, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away).
-- Antoine St. Exupery (1900-1994)
Perhaps because the iPod has all the features I want... If I have a choice between two equally priced players, both of which have all the features I want, and one of which is cluttered with features I have no use for, then aesthetics is what it's going to come down to... I'm gonna buy the iPod.
people will pay for good design. The shuffle is aesthetically pleasing, and the branding has made it hip to own one. The perception is where the added value factor comes in. Just because you hold function over form doesn't negate those who enjoy the opposite...
You know, you think it'd be pretty easy to put good Bass electronics in the larger iPods... can any electrical engineer provide a rationalization for it being able to be included in the shuffle but not the mainstream ones ?
Personally, i've had no problems w/ bass on my iPod (4G white), but i've heard people bitching about it.
does anyone know of a tool that will allow someone to mount an ipod as a usb device in windows? is it possible?
--ac
No, form factor is incredibly important. Or do you lug around a PC with Augidy 2 audio inside, and a large UPS, just to get more functionality?
Oddly enough, the iPod Shuffle is cheaper by a mile in the UK. The competitors have done simple $=£ translations, and Apple haven't. Unless you want to listen to idiotic radio shows on radio on your MP3 Player, or record yourself having a fap, the iPod Shuffle is the best value on the market. In the UK at least.
Try this.
Slightly wider, a bit taller, significantly cheaper at $180.
I've compared an .aiff file played back through my computer's rackmounted audio interface (made by MOTU, for those who care, and also connected to the Soundcraft desk) and the same track played back from the iPod. I don't hear a significant difference in bass response. The people who complain about bass must be using 'phones with impedance that doesn't agree with the iPod's headphone jack.
"Clean up the air and treat the animals fair" - Captain Beefheart
Fucking return it with a description of the problem then. Sheesh. Are people this moronic these days? Fuckwits.
Have we no knowledge of the history of Slashdot?
you should return the fucking thing
Dead flat!? I dont believe it, the Telefunken at SNB (a mastering studio in montreal) is the flatest piece of equipment you might come accross and this baby isn't perfect flat, it cost 85000$ originally and required over 50000$ modification to achieve such audio performance.
Dead-flat? I really doubt it, then again PC mag made the call, not Audio-Media, Post or Mix...
Computer mags and websites should sincerly refrain from judging audio... because when they do, a million techno morons go down the street speading bullshit like they know what they talk about, they just repeat lies and since no one even them knows what they are talking about and those geeks have techno credits in other peoples mind, other people start spreading the same bullshit but with the telephone game kicking in (story gets modified each time it is told...), sentences changed to "my friend who studied programming told me that the audio performance of...".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
No processor, no RAM, no Hard Drive ... come on, stop with the trolling.
Quote:
;)
"Supported File Types: Audible, MP3, WAV, WMA"
Hehe.
OK, I stop this lame joke.
Seriously: What is "Audible"? Never heard of that file format.
Just because there are more features, doesn't mean they're well implemented.
It's not hard to imagine operating the shuffle while it's in my pocket. (huh huh) I do that now with my clickwheel iPod.
I'll leave the masturbation jokes as an exercise for the class.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Correction: You are teh suck.
get software here http://www.will-burn.net/
Bringing your mosaic ideas to life. Mosaiclegs
the low frequencies in high quality headphones are much better defined than the same low frequencies in high quality speakers.
Of course, when you on the bus or jog, you wear less than high quality headphones, but even then, those cans often have fairly decent bass.
From my experience: my speakers are KEF 104.2, good cans I use for listening at home are AKG 240DF, their lower frequencies are much better than KEF. But even my portable cans, Koss Porta Pro (and Sporta Pro), provides some really decent low frequencies.
So the bottom line: it matters.
Perhaps occasional issues similar to this is why electronics (ipods included) come with limited warranties. Just maybe.
The terminology surrounding the sound quality is quite confusing. Namely, suggesting that it is flat but has better bass response or that it is flat but has trouble "sustaining" big bass notes hardly makes sense.
Flat is flat. Either the old players are not flat and deficient in the low frequency spectrum, or the new player is not flat and has some kind of boost. The fact is that when most people hear flat they think, "Where's the bass?"
The article says nothing of the test data, equipment or methodology used to determine just how flat the frequency response is and "critical listening" on some mystery monitors hardly counts as valid.
I suspect that your headphone assertion is correct.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
You mean the printed circuit boards? Good point.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
From the review of the shuffle:
Are we supposed to CARE how you use random play? How you use random play is a personal decision, and should NOT factor into the review or the score you give the product. You might play it that way - others might not.The review should have been, not on the way they would prefer to use the device, but how well the device works within the parameters it was designed for. That is, it was designed as a small-form random-play digital music player, and it does very well within those parameters.
This would be like reviewing a Kia and mentioning "We tend to drive luxury vehicles like a BMW, and wished that this car was a luxury car instead of an econobox," and scoring it down simply because it wasn't a BMW.
I agree that a lot of computer magazines don't know audio, but getting ruler-flat frequency response (when driving low-voltage loads) has been pretty easy for a long time - this isn't 1975.
Of course flat response isn't the whole story - linearity, distortion, jitter (or WOW/Flutter for analog people), cause lots of problems, and this is where some of the sonic differences arise. There may also be problems in driving low-impedance loads.
As an example, the on-board audio for my 5-year old Powerbook G3/Pismo is ruler flat down to 10 Hz or so, as measured by professional sound measurement equipment (which in turn has been calibrated by a NIST-traceable cal lab). This ain't rocket science
have you done a restore of the iPod using the iPod updater? if not I suggest you try that as it has been known to fix issues with battery life.
Try doing a factory reset on it
http://www.werty.net/2004/06/reset-ipod.html
You can probably come close, but beating it is going to be pretty hard. To match the size is going to take a mini-itx motherboard ($175 or so for an M10000), a 2.5" harddrive ($75 or so for 40G), optical drive ($100 or so for a dvd/cdrw), ram ($40 for 256M). I've now spent $390, still needing a case/PSU (and still larger, albiet only slightly). This is going to be *well* short of the Mac mini in performance, (especially at graphics - unichrome is nowhere near a radeon 9200 mobility), and you still don't get OSX.
:-)
If your wife wants a cute little Mac, let her have it
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Possible secret features:
..now thats insanely great!
solder resistor between lines 2 & 3 - Shuffle grows full color OLED touch-screen!
open Shuffle and cover circuit board with cream cheese, insert in USB slot - $500 USD springs from CD drive!
stick bent paperclip in headphone jack - Steve Jobs comes to your home and cleans your car!
air and light and time and space
Then why did you mention your MD player? If it's all about the earphones, the source is irrelevant, asshat.
Which is why I don't like the fancy players that tell me when they don't have enough power. I like my Sony MD for this reason, it turns off when the battery is actually dead (52 hrs on a single AA) Like the old cassette players that used to play forever, and go in slow motion when the battery got low enough. I'll decide when the battery is too low. It's like those printers that refuse to print when they think the ink is low. I'll decide that thank you very much.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There really is no PC equivalent. I even had to compare the Mini to a Mac laptop to get a similar feel for the specs. If you could buy a PC laptop with no screen or keyboard you'd get an idea of a Mini equivalent.
Also, MAC is an acronym. Mac is a computer made by Apple.
cheap as free
http://free.GearLive.com/index.php?referral=146
There was an entire story on this the other day. Basically if your wife really likes "cute and little" (and she obviously must), you're only option is a Mini. Or you could just buy a big ugly PC that's a better all around machines.
Nah, don't return it. Instead, bitch about it on slashdot. I'm sure that will fix the problem.
You're telling me it takes you a $300 set of headphones to hear artifacts in a CBR 128kbps MP3?
Most people can hear them with a $3 set of headphones from Wal Mart. If your hearing is that bad you wasted $297.
It just shows you what a good deal Apple products are. The iPod shuffle is an example of being able to buy $85,000 worth of audio equipment for $100. Make that $135,000 when you include the mods! Now, who says macs are more expensive?
Quite clearly the wife married him because of his "cute and little" manly assets.
And is a PC an all round better machine? I don't think so, unless you are a gamer.
IHBT. IHL.
I really have got to say, I love my iPod Shuffle. Although I played with the idea of selling it on eBay for a quick buck, the $10 was worth it to me to have something this chic. I never expected it that small or light, and it's so simple. I never looked at the screen of my iTunes, and in my car I put it on shuffle and never manually change the song. It works well for me but what's amazing is how popular the thing has been. Just like their big brothers they are getting scooped up left and right. You have to admire a company that can take a 4 year old player, put it in a nice case and have it back ordered for 4 weeks. Now if they would just release a product to compete with Microsoft's Media Center.
Grease & Counterbalance
Bzzzt: You have not use one of the cannonical forms for correcting someone on slashdot. Either of the following would have been acceptable:
1) You mispelled "teh".
2) Correction: You are teh suck, asshat.
Apparently the Shuffle may not be immediately compatible with linux tools already available. Gnupod apparently has trouble copying music to the shuffle.
According to the author of foo_pod for FooBar2000, there's the usual iTunesDB database, but also a new one, called iTunesSD. They haven't been able to completely reverse-engineer this one yet. It turns out it isn't sufficient to simply write to the iTunesDB database -- songs won't play.
Searches on Google show nothing about the iTunesSD database.
The Sandisk has problems like a nasty clicking noise with every cycle of the song title across the display. It's not really a bargain despite the price. It's also oddly shaped, with the battery bulging out one side of the back (you don't see that in any publicity photos plastered around the 'net).
Functionality matters more than aesthetics, but each has a weighted value to a purchaser; to most people, AAC support/tiny size/lithium battery/USB2/simplicity outweigh the screen/crappy radio/voice recorder/large size of other comparable devices.
So you prefer having to fire up the ol' workstation to recharge your mp3 player rather than just plugging it into the wall?
Seems to me Apple left out several basic features in order to hit that $99 price point...
I think the form factor is the best feature in the shuffle, and also having a built in battery and not wasting space with an extra battery compartment. I declined a different flash player given as a gift because the form factor was crap and there was no internal battery (and the information displayed on the screen was so useless I'd rather have skipped the screen).
Should I?
Hmmm??? Mmmm... noooo.... Maybe??? Mmmm..... Yes!
I HAVE A BIG NUSPE!!
That is what warranty is for.
hey!
Two things: First - show me your car and then try to hold up your functionaliy arguement :-)
Second - if we all wanted the same thing we would have married your grandma.
I'm a mastering engineer and hang out on mastering web boards, and the iPod came up in conversation.
FWIW, a tech heavyweight (trying to remember if it was Bruno Putzeys?) said they'd measured the iPod and got a perfect 10K tone out of the bugger with virtually unmeasurable sidebands.
NOT easy. That outperforms a heck of a lot of high-quality CD players, never mind mp3 portables. iPods apparently have very good tech if you know how to measure them. Jitter is what that 10K tone test measures, and it performed very, very well, I'm told.
the Telefunken at SNB (a mastering studio in montreal) is the flatest piece of equipment you might come accross and this baby isn't perfect flat
Fuck, what squashed it? A meteorite?
It boosts the voltage when the battery gets low. In reality, it still doesn't get to the end of the battery capacity, but it does quite well.
Why it doesn't get to the end, and quite why the boost is so critical is entirely non-obvious. Perhaps this is why the 1G and 2G iPods didn't have boost capability.
Maybe you need to recalibrate the battery? Sounds like that might be a fix to your problem.
don't do it, it's like a drug addiction...you start with the ipod, and it's great...you get a great buzz, and dont feel any harm...next you decide to see what the OSX experience is all about, so you grab a Mac Mini (with additional RAM, of course)... next thing you know, you're living in a shabby flat in the cheapest part of town with no utilities (save electricity and internet) to help pay for your dual g5 tower of doom. it's a slippery slope.
"Good night, good work, sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning." - Dread Pirate Roberts
So if Windows was designed to crash all the time, it would be a 5-Star operating system.
Why am I not rapping? I am rapping with you in a way.
...and the buttons encircle the scroll-wheel. The 1st. & 2nd. generation iPods look the same from the front. The only difference is wheel or touchpad. From the back, 1st. gen. units have "iPod" written in the old Apple Garamond serif font. They switched to the sans-serif Myriad font with the 2nd. gen.
At least, I think those were the font names. Dammit Jim, I'm a geek, not a typographer!
A flat response curve is highly desirable for a production or recording studio, because it lets you hear all the problems in the levels of various frequency ranges of the program material, and being in the studio, it's your job to fix those.
In a consumer portable MP3 player, and for most consumer grade audio playback, a flat frequency response is not such a good thing. Music will sound "flat" and dull, which is why pretty much all hi-fi systems have a built in EQ curve to add some depth to the mix, in addition to whatever other EQ options are provided.
Furthermore, the human ear doesn't perceive all frequencies equally loudly, as illustrated by the lines on an Equal Loudness Contour chart. If that ipod really does produce a near-flat response, users will be missing out on lo and hi frequency ranges, as we are much better at hearing frequencies in the 1kHz-4kHz range.
I know we're referring to the shuttle here, which is a budget player, but most current gen mp3 players provide user adjustable graphic EQ (not sure if big ipods do or not), enabling you to get around this whole issue in the first place.
Because a good design is about quality and general usability, not about the number of features. Leaving out features that are unnecessary to most people is good design when those features compromise the ease of the use of the product, or compromise the quality of its primary function. I remember trying to change channels on car stereo once that had features out the wazoo. If I had been the one driving the car it would have been impossible.
I mean, we can go on and on with this point. Often high end hi-fis have fewer features than cheap stereos, high performance sports cars have fewer features than the average sports car, blah, blah, blah... If you see simplicity only as a matter of aesthetics rather than of functionality, you're never going to understand what I'm trying to get at here.
Go to this link and read the stuff about the golden ratio. Hilarious!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
No, just plug it into a powered USB hub, or get Apple's dock.
As someone who has measured the quality of the iPod and iPod attempted murderers on an Audio Precision, I can say I have no idea what you are talking about. Why don't you look at the original Stereophile reviews. S/N is fantastic. Jitter is virtually non-existent. It's better than almost any other reasonably-priced piece of equipment you could get at the time.
Objectively, the iPod's audio quality is great. And it's competitors are great too. In most ways, it's difficult to tell them apart. And that's from day one. No, it's not perfect in some measures (stereo separation), but it's right in line with what else is out there now.
As to power output, the iPod had the loudest output available of any regular portable player when it came out. Compare it to what Intel was offering at the time.
I'm not sure where all the hating comes from here.
Had a similar problem with my 4g. It would die about halfway into the first song played after a full charge. It happened twice right after I got it, but hasn't happened since. Could it be a problem that was fixed in the last software update?
Sounds like it.
It's not the software, everyone else has the same software on theirs as you do on yours and theirs works. It's your hardware.
Why not take advantage of the warranty?
That's the definition that pretty much everyone uses. Within iPod generations, there have been multiple models and versions, but the case/control design has been the way the generations have been explained throughout.
The only things that don't fit neatly into those groupings are the Mini and (arguably) the iPod Photo - but the Photo is really just a 4G iPod beefed up for a color screen, and the Mini is kind of a "3.5G" iPod - it has the click wheel that wound up in the 4G.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
iPod Shuffle uses direct-drive amps. Other iPods use DC blocking caps in the output. DC blocking caps aren't really DC blocking caps, they are high-pass filters. So the low rolls off. Want to fix it? Use higher impedance headphones (raises the roll off freq) or go into a line-in (very high impedance). Note that you cannot just remove the DC blocking caps. It'll blow up.
I believe the iPod comes with high impedance (32 Ohm) headphones, instead of 16 Ohm ones like many aftermarket headphones are. Make sure yours are 32 Ohm in order to keep as much bass as possible.
QED.
Why the other iPods don't use direct-drive amps is not a question easily answered. There is a good reason for it, probably because iPod uses Wolfson codec/amps and Wolfson doesn't offer a direct-drive amp.
Not to fed the troll, but you could also get a cheap laptop.
Grado Labs SR60 and SR80. Both modles can be foundd sub 100 dollars and are some of the finest listening on the planet IMHO.
Wow, that's so much simpler than just including an ordinary wall plug like every other rechargable device in the world does.
You don't even want to see what song is playing? That seems like a pretty basic feature to me. I suspect you lower your demands to whatever Apple puts out.
Being synchronous, the LTC3441 is inefficient at low output currents. Often horribly so (20%).
The TEA1211 not only goes from buck to boost and back but from PWM to PFM and back.
Efficiency at a wide range of currents is critical for a device that both has a hard drive and a suspend (ready to wake) mode. The range of currents can be almost 1000:1. At 200:1 (5mA) the LTC3441 is already down to 40% efficiency.
The Sandisk is more expensive than the iPod.
From the Sandisk website -- 512MB: $149 1GB: $199.
More important for me, though, is the fact that with the iPod Shuffle I don't have to carry around yet another cable to sync the songs. I can plug the Shuffle directly into a USB port.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
Could it be it was done because Apple engineers are sick of hearing someone with rediculus bass driving down the road when they are trying to sleep?
Maybe they did it so they don't have to hear:
thud, thud thud..
every time someone with an iPod comes walking.
If I were a car manufacturer... that would be my motivation for better soundproofing. To stop people from being so annoying.
(it's always sounds like the same damn song too doesn't it?)
whats an ass hat?
Higher impedance lowers the rolloff frequency.
Sorry about that.
Note that a line-in (like the person speaking about their mixing board) is very high impedance and so will make the bass come through to a far lower frequency than with headphones.
Has it occurred to anyone that the iPod is the player with FLAT bass response, and the other players are musically equalized to provide louder, artificial bass?
My iPod, with good headphones, has response levels similar to those of my studio monitor speakers, which were designed to deliver flat, high fidelity audio reproduction.
Is the cheapest part of town near a red light district? That could swing the decision...!
The "other" players are probably using artificial bass enhancement through EQ just so they perform better on listening tests.
People don't know what flat is. They don't know what high-fidelity means. They just know that when the bass is thumping in their face, they enjoy it more.
My nearfield monitors also deliver very very similar frequency response as my ipod.
The article mentions a company called Portal Player. This is 'headquartered' in the USA, but it is in effect run from India. They run out of a couple of bunglows down my road and employ a few hundred people. It is now called PINEXE.
They supply design and supply chips for MP3 players. It is as silly to give entire credit to Apple for iPoD design, if the reproduction is good, it is not due to any new compression algorithm invented by Steve Jobs. Slashdotters know better.
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
Personally I stick to buying dvds and DivXing them but it's not the first choice for most people.
FYI, the trademark serial number is 78314810.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
- Syncs with iTunes
- Cost
- Battery life
- Ogg (Vorbis and FLAC) support)
- Usability (easy access to "shuffle play" function)
- Expandable storage (SD or CF)
- Does NOT support Windows Media
- Extra features like voice recording, radio, etc.
- Low size/weight
As you can see, only iPods satisfy priority 1, and the Shuffle satisfies priorities 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 better than just about anything else as well. The only other player that comes close to competing, for me, is the Frontier Labs NexIA -- it uses CF cards and has zero internal storage, so it satisfies priorities ~2, 3, ~5, 6, 7(?), 8, and ~9 (the ~ means that it's okay, but not as good as the Shuffle). It's not quite good enough, though, since it doesn't sync with iTunes.Now, if the NexIA supported Ogg that would be enough to beat the Shuffle, but I've emailed the company about it and the strongest answer I've managed to get is "maybe eventually." Contrast this with the strong possibility that Tiger's iTunes will support it (which means the iPod should as well), and there's no longer any doubt -- the Shuffle is the clear winner.
It's kind of sad, really, because I'd like to have removable storage, but being able to use the thing is more important.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's "Apple announced", not "MAC announced". And it's Mac, not MAC when referring to the computer. Typical clueless PC user.
The review should have been, not on the way they would prefer to use the device, but how well the device works within the parameters it was designed for.
Then assume the criticism is that of the marketability of said feature or lack of feature. If a consumer finds they really want a feature that isn't there, it doesn't matter how well a device does everything else -- the consumer is going to go to another product.
I took one look at the iPod Shuffle and decided it was not for me based on this criteria alone. But it doesn't mean that I wouldn't like a low-end, affordable iPod that has more features than the Shuffle at a better price point.
Because a device is marketed a particular way doesn't suddenly render it devoid of shortcomings.
Since when is PCMag an audiophile magazine? I'm no audiophile either, but the last thing I would have thought about my mini is that it had poor bass response. If anything, when listening with my headphones (admittedly inexpensive, but well rated Koss phones) there might be a bit too much bass, but I blame that on the headphones, not the mini.
In any case, mostly I listen, not via headphones, but via line-out hooked up to the car stereo. My car stereo isn't great and the car listening environment is inherently sucky, but it doesn't suck with the iPod any more than with CD. And that's my glowing review of the iPod mini.
--- What?
Try turning up the volume on the iPod and adjust your amp accordingly. Now you should be getting "base fade". It sounds like the iPod just doesn't have enough capacitor to sustain continous base. But, if the volume on the ipod is set to it's minimum (low enough not to drop out of it's rated SNR) then "base fade" should not be an issue.
Life is not for the lazy.
Gee, I wonder why. Probably because there's not enough juice to drive electrostactic drivers which is all I listen to. Anything less just doesn't cut it.
How about just a USB or FireWire DAC that I can hook up from my Linux box to my stereo pre/amp? I don't want the AC/power noise from a PCI card, and I don't want recording. I just want to play my tunes to my stereo, with the best HiFi sound. For under $200. Well?
--
make install -not war
TSIA
You can save some bucks and get the same sort of thing for cheaper elsewhere. I've had one of these for over a year and it works well. It doesn't play the AAC files though.
Lasers Controlled Games!
"What is the hardest frequency to reproduce? The bass"
Incorrect. High frequecy is a lot harder to reproduce.
Bass is easy. Ask any audio engineer.
Yep. Problem is, that's where you now work...
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
"Not only is it diminuitive, great value"
Dude. Take your hands, reach across your body with each, grab your own shoulders.
Shake. Shake hard.
Now take one hand, slap yourself in the face.
Run down the hall, and stick your head in a cold shower.
All woken up? Phew! That was close. You were stuck in the Apple Reality Distortion Field.
Lets look at facts:
1) The new Ipod's aren't all the tiny. A lot of USB players are a lot smaller
2) They're also cheaper.
3) They also feature screens.
Many people don't want to be teathered to a computer for music, but I'll grant you, that's not something we can measure.
The iPod will intially sell well to people who think the iPod invented the MP3 player. But as people realize that having no screen == complete lack of usability, they'll either buy an ipod mini or pick something non-apple.
But to claim the new iPod is small and is a good value is just....stupid. Sorry. No other way to put it.
I'm not sure what you think, but having an iPod that holds 10,000 songs to get you from Tokyo to San Francisco 6 times without repeating (or something like that) is way too many. Either you own 666 CDs (at 15 songs/CD) or you paid $10,000 at iTunes. Seriously, if you have that much music, paying $1000 for something more hi-quality than the 40 GB iPod would be totally appropriate I would think.
The only iPod that has really caught my interest has been the cheapest iShuffle, because I often end up simply using the shuffle feature of my MP3 player, and I don't often have over 20 songs necessary in the queue at a time.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
You Can Have One, Too!
> To me, the highest the iPod Shuffle can go is 3 stars (a C) due to the sheer lack of value. Looks like Apple's Reality Disortion Field is at work...
To a lot of people something that can't sync with iTunes (nor use iTMS-purchased songs) is zero stars, due to the sheer value of non-usefulness.
Looks like the "let's put more features into our product even though they might not be useful for 99% of our customers" reality distortion field at work...
One thing Cringely forgot is that people love to download past episodes of TV shows and watch them again. I do that all the time with BitTorrent.
I'm sure there'd be a subset of people willing to buy the current season of 24, Lost, Housewives, or American Idol and play it on their TV anytime - and burn it to disc.
HD Movies? Who cares. Today's TV shows? Sure! At a dollar an episode, why the heck not? It comes out to be cheaper than the DVD. Fans'll buy the DVD anyway, because of the extras.
Who knows whether this'll happen or not. But the box is just sitting there, waiting to be plugged into your TV.
- Lithium batteries aren't the only way to go. They have better capacity per mass, but NiMH batteries have better capacity per volume (also better than alkaline per mass and volume, also have lower internal resistance which is good for high drain devices). IMO, anyone who uses disposables in music players is insane. NiMH batteries in my MP3 CD player get about 150 hours (I listen to it a lot, so self-discharge isn't that big of a problem). Lithium batteries don't exclusively own the high-capacity space.
- AAC is almost completely irrelevant except in relation to the iTMS and Apple users. Thus, someone who uses Windows and does not use iTMS does not care about AAC.
Agreement:Note that I did order a mini because my MP3 CD player is dying, and it has the addon for AAA batteries. They say 20 hours with that thing, but with NiMH batteries it'll probably be closer to 40-50. That'll be particularly good when the internal battery starts to go.
I also like the simplicity. I don't care about AAC support and won't until iTMS Canada gets things like multiple-platinum albums from 2004, but the MP3 support is just fine so it doesn't matter.
Do it. I got my 512 meg iPod Shuffle in the mail last tuesday...I don't know how I lived without one before hand. It is just so small and so light..they rule..and for the "where will it end?"..it won't. Once you have a taste of good hardware/software intigration..you can't go back.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
besides, for removable storage you can just have a usb key and not worry about having too many songs on your shuffle before you transfer data. I like having separate keys for separate jobs (my 256 mb for data, the 1gig shuffle for music).
It was the first that I bought since my TERRIBLE experience with a Powerbook 5300 back in college. I vowed I'd never buy another piece of Apple hardware, but I couldn't resist. It's fantastic.
Amazing magic tricks
and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes.
How can you have flat frequency response and also have bass roll-off? That would be non-flat response in the lower frequencies. What am I missing?
ShoutingMan.com
Both over headphones and on my home system. If you are wondering about bass, I have Mirage M-790's driven by a Sony ES amp and an M&K V-90 subwoofer in my living room. Maybe not quite high-end but definitely able to rattle the entire building, and better than what 99% of Slashdot readers listen to ;). I've compared material (both test CD's and a wide variety of music) and the iPod is pretty much transparent once I get over about 192k AAC. AIFF (haven't tested Apple Lossless) is indistinguishable from source CDs on a Denon player.
When he's sitting at the computer, I imagine the USB port is easier to reach than the wall plug is.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
5th gen: No screen, no buttons, no USB. Just one pre-loaded song, that same Black Eyed Peas shit from the commercials, playing over and over again. $19.95
I shall dub it the "peaPod".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Alas, I'd rather have one reader and CF cards, but apparently I'm weird...
Actually, I think I'd put everything on the Shuffle -- 1gig should be plenty for my music and what little data I might want to carry.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I just have an old 5GB iPod at the moment (1st gen).
But if it ever broke, I would get a 60-80GB unit and re-code all my CD's as AAC lossless. So, there could be a good reason to have all that space, so you can have better quality audio...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One thing I liked about the iPod mini over my Rio Volt MP3 CD player is - besides the fact that it fits in a pocket - power management. Amazingly, the Volt would crash if you plugged in the DC power cord, so you'd have to restart the player. When I plug in the DC power cord into my iPod, on the other hand, the power indicator icon changes, and that's all -- the audio still plays smoothly, no crashing involved. The iPod just works.
Try rebooting your iPod. It's in the instructions that came with your iPod.
? artnum=609 83
If that doesn't work, try restoring your iPod firmware
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html
Lastly, you can check if your warranty expired.
A friend of mine had a pair of these and I tried them out... They're a little awkward at first cuz they go pretty deep in your ear, however its like having a "line-in" jack on the back of your head. The frequency response is amazing and they block out most of the sound around you (anything that you can't hear with your ears plugged).
Do you have a URL or some other proof of this? Jitter is important, but it doesn't speak to overall frequency response.
it DOES have a wall plug. A small (by my estimate: 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch) square that plugs into the wall (and resembles their laptop power bricks, even has the removable wall plug for extension/international plugs) and has a USB port on the other side (just like the one I got with my 15GB iPod, just that one has a firewire port.).
It's there, open a box and look at it before you bitch.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
What I want to know is if the iPod shuffle works as a USB mass storage device *without installing drivers*. It kind of annoys me that I can't use my iPod as a portable USB HD unless I also carry around a driver CD...
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
Nice try apple fanboy, but using MAC instead of Mac isn't going to help your astroturfing and your "switch success" story.
Now, where have I heard this before......
A footnote from the Apple shuffle page:
:-)
2. Do not chew iPod shuffle.
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
1) Most people don't really watch movies over and over. They like the idea they can, and they like the idea that they can watch whenever they want, but as a man who has bought 300 movies, trust me when I say you usually watch once.
2) Hi-Def will take less space than you think, (I suspect it will be closer 8G).
3) Its entirely possible that Mac-Mini-HDTV version will be released in 6 months with a lot more disk space
4) "One of the big advantages of the iPod was that it entered the market when the major players didn't even know there was one and all competing products were by nobodies or lackluster"
-- No offense, but this is rewriting history. A lot of major player had MP3 players before Apple....Creative, Phillips, RCA (Thompson), I mean a lot did. In fact, I had a hard drive MP3 player 3 years before the iPod came out. What was novel was the distribution channel Apple set up for MP3's. It wasn't the first, but it was the first that was professionally done.
You don't test frequency response by simply generating a 10K tone, you need a full spectrum analisys, stop posting as something you arent to give you credit.
In what world would a single frequency judge the entire frequency range response! Common, at least try to steal decent info from google before comming to say crap.
Huh? He said: "Jitter is what that 10K tone test measures." Seems pretty clear he wasn't referring to the frequency response.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I was talking about frequency response not jitter, hence I havent noticed the reference, whats the point in bringing jitter in a conversation about frequency response? Anyways, my bad...
Didn't you read Apple's site on the iPod? It said specifically, "Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
It's OK! I'm a limo driver!
Er, every reasonable motherboard and sound card sold in the last three years has 'digital' and/or 'optical' output ports, these ports spit binary to amps or speakers with corresponding inputs. There's no interference.
I've got an old Soundblaster Live 5.1 card (about $10 on eBay) and a Cambridge Soundworks sub and speakers ($80) and I get ZERO interference.
Your wish was granted a long time ago.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I mostly use my 4G iPod connected to a Soundcraft mixing desk
And what's your connector between the iPod and the deck?
Da Blog
I think the point is that frequency response is not the only metric for audio fidelity. Someone mentioned linearity, distortion, and jitter as being other important metrics, which then makes jitter measurements relevant.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Burst mode is very efficient. It is an even better case than regular PFM in very low currents.
But the LFC3441 doesn't automatically switch into PFM mode, let alone burst mode. And you can't run in PFM (burst) mode full time and still hit 1A.
As I said before, the TEA1211 not only switches buck/boost automatically, it also switches between PWM and PFM automatically. The LTC3441 doesn't. But if you don't need that, then it's not a big deal. iPod needs it.
Note the TEA1211 has a pin to force modes, but it doesn't work. It also has an I2C interface (it IS from Philips) where you can set the output voltage on the fly. But that doesn't work either.
iPod 3G has a 220uF capacitor at the headphone output stage
The later Wolfson WM8750 (PortalPlayer iPods use WM8731 and WM8721) offers "No DC blocking capacitors required (capless mode)"
SigmaTel's D-Majors have a <0.05% THD headphone driver, including anti-pop and short-circuit protection
Why would it need short-circuit protection? Hmmm....
Nice disection; I just wanted to point out that the Mac mini has a full Radeon 9200, not a mobility. And I agree, UniChrome is horrifyingly bad for anything except a very basic 2D display.
If by "does have" you mean, "is availabale as an accessory for an additional charge", you are correct. But that's not what most people mean by "does have".
You don't test frequency response by simply generating a 10K tone, you need a full spectrum analisys, stop posting as something you arent to give you credit. In what world would a single frequency judge the entire frequency range response! Common, at least try to steal decent info from google before comming to say crap.
He didn't say that it was frequency response. There is more to audio quality than frequency response. The test he described is measure of distortion, which is arguably more important than flat frequency response. Uneven frequency response can be corrected (within limits) by equalization, but that doesn't help distortion.
Horrifyingly bad is a bit of an overstatement. I built more or less the machine I described (in a scythe e-Otonashi case) for my mother. I left the case off the breakdown, since the case I used for hers wouldn't qualify for the mac mini's size - it's 280x190x90mm.
It can run neverball fine, and even quake3 if I want to really badly (in linux even). But it's not up to radeon 9200 specs by any stretch of the imagination.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
It can run neverball fine, and even quake3
:)
When you are evaluating PC gaming performance, it's not customary to gauge new chipsets (within last 18 months) by games that are 6 years old (Quake 3). That is why I said horrifyingly bad.
I spend 90% of my gaming time playing Quake 3 (3wave Capturestrike), but I also like to pop in some Doom 3 and UT2004. Unichrome ain't going there!
it is sort of like an anal bum cover, only more obscene.
Windows has detected a program running perfectly: (C)rash program (B)SOD (P)ower off unexpectedly