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A Review of the iPod nano
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg has been testing the iPod nano for a few days, and he says he is 'smitten.' Mossberg writes in the Wall Street Journal, 'The nano has the best combination of beauty and functionality of any music player I've tested -- including the iconic original white iPod. And it sounds great. I plan to buy one for myself this weekend, when it is due to reach stores in the U.S., Europe and Asia.' Among other things, it has surprisingly good sound: 'Despite its small size, the nano sounded as good as any other iPod, and is packed with plenty of audio power. Plugged into my car speakers, it was able to belt out the new Fountains of Wayne rocker, "Maureen," loudly enough to be heard perfectly, even though I was going 70 mph in a convertible with the top down.'"
I believe the reviewers point was that the iPod put out enough power for the car stereo to do its job. I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of previous generation equipment (from tape players, to CD->Tape conversions, to early MP3 players) often were unable to produce much volume, period. Many suffered from loud hissing that further degraded the quality of the sound.
In short, the reviewer's point was that the iPod puts out a crystal clear audio signal that sounds good and can be easily amplified with no apparent loss in quality. Make sense?
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Seriously, has anyone ever read anything by Mossberg about Apple products that wasn't either glowing, stellar, or outright raving?
Sure. He finds the "Mighty Mouse" inferior to the Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 5000. Check out this article.
If I turn up the bass booster in the equalizer, I get overdriven bass which seems to become even worse with music encoded at a lower bit rate (most of my music is encoded with Apple's lossless encoder). The sound check (which is supposed to equalize the volume of all the songs) really seems to flatten the dynamic response of the music. I use it in the car since I'm just hooking the iPod to my stereo with a cassette adapter anyway, but I can tell if it's on when I'm using my headpones.
Another semi-unrelated problem with the iPod is that it seems to not quite have enough processing power to play some of the lossless-encoded music. These songs can clock in at over 1000kbps which can result in the iPod halting play for a few ms while it rebuffers. This is while it's sitting on the desk, too, not while I'm jogging or something.
All in all I LOVE my iPod and am very happy with it. I just wish it maybe had a little more processing power so it could do a better job maintaining its audio quality while playing high bitrate music and/or running it through its post-processor.
www.clarke.ca