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."

Comments

Does it really matter?

[Simon (S2)]

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.

Re:Does it really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get very good bass reproduction in high-end headphones for MUCH cheaper than you can in high-end stereos. Unless you're a rap fan, where it seems the point of bass is to vibrate your rib-cage, high-end headphones can reproduce a wide spectrum of frequencies very well.

Re:Does it really matter?

[radish]

Good head/ear phones can do bass very well. SO if the player can't, then yes, it's a problem.

huh?

[SuperBanana]

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."

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.

on simplicity

[weiyuent]

"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)

You hear what you want to hear

[youbiquitous]

I mostly use my 4G iPod connected to a Soundcraft mixing desk, which is connected to a set of Tannoy midfield studio monitors, each of which is powered by a separate beefy power amplifier running in bridged mono mode.

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.

Re:Makings of the original iPod?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Apple apparently cornered the market for the Toshiba disks for a while. But now there is, inevitably, an alternative. Hitachi now makes a disk that size

Buried in the article, there was this key fact. Owning all the tiny hard drives on the market for more than a year translated into a long-term perception advantage for Apple -- that iPod == Smallest == Sexiest now and forever.

Had they not had the foresight to monopolize the formfactor, the iPod would have been one of a half-dozen similar models on the market just as it was picking up and it might have been lost in the pack (especially because the early models were firewire only).