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Sound Quality of the Fifth Generation iPods?
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."
My new one sounds a teeny bit cleaner than my old 3G 40GB.
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.
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
Seriously, are you going to be attaching one to a $10,000 hifi system?
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 comments here intended to misguide you deliberately!
Disclaimer: I own a nano, it's scratched a lot, but I think the sound quality is pretty decent, even when played through my (admittedly not $10,000) hifi separates system. I can't vouch for it comparitively though.
iPod's audio quality isn't the best. Its not overly powerful, its quiet on most good quality headphones. I here some faint digital "chatter" in the background, such as noise caused by the hard drive (or so I thought). I still hear this chatter on my Shuffle without any moving parts, so this leads me to believe that its a hardware issue. However, I don't here this chatter on a good quality pair of headphones like Sony DJ's or Sennheiser's, only on the really crappy Apple headphones which are way too tinny for my tastes. Not enough bass comes out of Apple's headphones. I generally have not heard any static or background noise as I have heard from cheaper digital music players.
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.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I just replaced the battery in my 1st generation iPod and it works better than ever (longer battery life than original). How hard was it to do? I bought a replacement battery for $20, which came with the necessary plastic tool to open the iPod. 10 minutes is all it took to replace the battery without marring the case in any way. It was about as hard as putting a SIM card into a cellphone. If I had to replace the $20 battery every three years I don't see a reason to complain. The battery in my cordless phone costs just as much and has to be replaced more often. iPods are very durable portable devices.
The people here will be able to help, its a great place to find out about portable audio/headphones: http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/
I was under the impression the H320 used a standard laptop HD. The latest models even sport 7200rpm and 16mb buffers that might breath some new life into it... unless you're looking for an excuse to get something different. I'm not judging, but I just dropped a Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm w/8mb into my old Archos JBR, and haven't looked back. Not as sleek or shiny as a new Ipod, but with the Rockbox firmware does everything I need.
Being that it's all mp3 technology, the difference should be negligible. And trust me...if the sound was THAT much different from one generation to another, we'd definitely hear about it. Apple can't even fart now without it being all over the Internet. A screen on the iPod scratches easily? Class action suits abound! If the sound had deteriorated, there would be hell to pay. Thus...go buy it and enjoy your new iPod.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
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.
I've found the fifth generation iPod to be a very solid product. Needing to use iTunes to add music is a weakness, but even on Windows it's a good program, so it's not a big weakness. Battery life could be better but I've never had it run out on me on the road; just be close to a charger if you're planning on watching more than a few hours of video. I used to take it to school and watch Doctor Who between classes, then charge it over USB during classes with computers handy. I could get through several episodes before it died. The meter runs down faster than the battery, but resets itself to accuracy when I power cycle or change through the menus.
As far as sound quality goes, I've got no complaints. It sounds great with my headphones (I like the Rio Carbon's, and TDK makes a great set with an in-line volume controller), great over an FM transmitter or through the tape adapter in my car, and great on my home system, even pumped up. I wouldn't DJ at a big club with it, but mostly because you can't scratch. If they let you scratch the audio with that nice wheel, I'd be in heaven.
The review is at http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/93 4/index.html.
"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"
Dont expect some $1000 Bose system in your ear and youll be just fine
I don't expect a $1000 Bose system, because I expect some semblance of quality.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
I found that my iPod would drive the 580s to reasonable listening levels without any real problem. If you NEEDED an amp, it's virtually certain that you're listening to the music too loud, and damaging your hearing.
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 right up when you add an amp to that combo. (at least if you have good quality sources... 128k mp3 won't improve much.)
You'll get better sound, by the way, if you use the line out on the dock to drive your amp, rather than the headphone jack.
The newer generation iPods (the "2nd generation" iPod mini, the iPod nano, and the color iPods) DO have a significant flaw in MP3 playback that the Slashdot crowd is likely to be concerned with. You will not find this info in the iPod specs nor will you discover it by trying out an iPod at your local store. You will quite possibly find out when you start playing your own MP3 library on the device.
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If you use LAME "alt preset standard" to encode your MP3 library (this configuration is widely believed optimal in that it produces very good sound quality at a reasonable bitrate) the newer generation iPods often have difficulty playing these VBR MP3 files when running from battery power. The flaw is essentially a type of "stuttering" or dropout that occurs during playback. The newer iPods apparently throttle the CPU clock to conserve battery power and if the MP3 bitrate ramps up too quickly this stuttering results. There is a thread about this on the Hydrogen Audio forms. It seems this has been known for quite some time but Apple has yet to release firmware updates that resolve this issue.
I started out using the 192k VBR MP3 encoder built into iTunes but noticed coding artifacts on some material. As an experiment, I thought I would try the LAME encoder to see if I could achieve better sound quality using preset standard. I think there is an improvement using LAME (no coding artifacts that I could hear so far) however the stuttering that results on some material is really pretty nasty.
I have both a 2nd gen iPod mini and an iPod nano so I can confirm that this is real and does happen on these units. The thread on the Hydrogen Audio forms seems to indicate that other current generation iPods have this problem also. I can live with the "scratching" issue on the nano (trust me, it is real.) However, the fact that the iPod doesn't work fully as an *MP3 player* kind of bothers me. The Hydrogen Audio thread is here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?sho
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/i
"...TWO channels are encoded into ONE analog track."
... or you could just encode everything digitally at 24/96, and exceed both the resolution of the source material and of the human hearing system by so much that anyone who was still unsatisfied could be quite definitively considered to be a lunatic.
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 groove will result in no perturbation of the sensor for the other wall. The reality is much more complicated, of course. Any error in orthogonality at any point will result in crosstalk, effectively a reduction of stereo separation. Crosstalk in the magnetics of the cartridge, resonances or unsufficient rigidity in the stylus, etc., etc. - you could think up error sources for days, and still not get all of them that vinyl engineers worry about. Here is a fairly informative link, for those interested.
Possibly interesting aside: the entire point of the RIAA filter (well, half of the point) was to reduce the possibility that heavy bass encoded (monaurally) into both walls would cause the needle to literally pop out of the groove, and so the signal going down to vinyl has reduced bass content which is then corrected post-cartridge. High frequencies are boosted on the vinyl in an effort to improve S/N, lifting the smaller variations up above the noise floor caused by dust, scratches, and the granularity of the vinyl itself.
However, there is no analog encoding of two signals into one, at least not electrically. Two physical channels are maintained throughout, albeit poorly separated. There's simply no effective way to maintain proper separation for physical reasons.
The net effect is that stereo separation and frequency response linearity of vinyl are known weaknesses in the medium. One possible improvement for the separation issue might be to use a square channel like 78's used. You'd recode the L, R signals into L+R and L-R just like FM radio, and then record the L+R (mono) part as lateral displacement of the groove. You'd then embed the L-R (stereo separation) part of the signal as the vertical displacement of the bottom of the groove. This has the advantage of putting the part of the signal with the least bass (bass is typically more monaural, especially in vinyl, and the L-R signal will cancel a great deal of that) in the part of the physical medium where it's less likely to result in mistracking, and leave the mono part (which typically has much more bass) in the part of the medium where it can't cause mistracking. You'd probably lose some track time, though, as you'd have to space the tracks further apart for bass-heavy material. When recovering, you then recombine the L+R and L-R signals to get L and R, with the bonus of dramatically improved stereo separation and possibly the elimination of the RIAA filter altogether...
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!