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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."
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.
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.
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?!
It is 200 dollars cheaper. Probably the cheapest, yet useful apple product.
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.
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.
Well, that's you. 99% of the i don't want EQ on my music, of any kind, not even a bass cut from a poor output DAC. Classical, metal, rock, and electronic music are all heavy on bass, and it's stuff i listen to most of the time. I don't want poor bass reproduction just like i don't want poor highs or mids.
By the way, if proper bass reproduction (not boombox-thumping bass like) makes you difficult to listen to the rest, your audio gear is poor. And not in the "it's not audiophile! get $1000 wires!" sense of poor.
I've been listening to iPod fanboys rant about their players' 'superior sound quality' for years. I always replied that the player doesn't really affect the quality of the sound, it's all about the headphones/speakers and recording/compression. Was I wrong? If it's just playing a digital file (which will never wear like a record, and will always be read identically), could one player actually output noticeably different sound than another?
My guess is that even if it could, it wouldn't be by very much. Certainly not enough to influence your purchasing decision, eh?
Dead flat!? I dont believe it, the Telefunken at SNB (a mastering studio in montreal) is the flatest piece of equipment you might come accross and this baby isn't perfect flat, it cost 85000$ 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...".
In the small print at the bottom of Apple's iPod shuffle page:
#2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
It's now off the site, but still exists in Google cache: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:z3uW4DuVNvoJ: www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/+ipod+shuffle&hl=en
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
- 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
You are correct, the origional iPod was flat or neutral in its frequency response. In fact it got rave reviews from audiophiles for exactly this feature. Unfortunatly most people are used to compressed, bass pumped, overproduced pop and new rock which is made to sound "good" on car stereo's and other cheap systems. If you have good cans and appreciate good music you should love the origional iPod. Of course if you have high resistence headphones the iPod might not be the best pick since it's not terribly high powered.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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?
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.
I'm not saying classical music doesn't have bass, I'm saying that a high-end sound system will not have a subwoofer. Subwoofers are a low-cost compromise between having large speakers with good bass and having small speakers with no bass. The bass a subwoofer produces is almost always muddy, boomy, and mismatched. It's OK if you are listening to hip-hop or movie explosions, it's not OK if you are listening to anything else.
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.
See that biggest speaker at the base of your huge speaker tower? That's pretty much doing the job of a subwoofer.
Wrong. The subwoofer is doing the job of those two speakers. Which means that instead of stereo sound, you get mono sound, for one. I've yet to see a subwoofer system that has good bass imaging. It's got bass, but you can almost always tell that it's coming from the subwoofer and not the speakers. In my experience, the assumption that bass is non-directional does not hold at all for frequencies above about 50Hz. Basically, a subwoofer will ruin any stereo imaging your system had.
Audio design is more of an art-form than an engineering craft.
It's a combination of both. If you don't follow engineering practices, you will never end up with a good speaker. Of course, a properly engineered speaker is not guaranteed to sound good.
I've also heard multi-thousand-dollar towers which sound like shit
Price does not equal quality. In general, any speakers you can buy at Circuit City are not going to sound that great.
I've heard "bookshelf + subwoofer" systems that sound absolutely fantastic when reproducing classical music.
That would be because most classical music does not have a lot of bass. If you listen to music that does, you will probably find it rather muddy.