3 High-End iPod Speaker Systems Reviewed

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has put together a round up of three high-end iPod speaker systems, including the new Apple iPod Hi-Fi. From the article: 'With the seemingly unending success of the iPod, accessories for the popular digital music player have become a more and more popular option for companies looking to hop on the bandwagon and make a quick buck. Companies that once had no business selling product accessories for consumer electronics are now jumping into the game because of the success of the iPod. With the growing number of stores carrying the personal audio device and a growing crop of users desiring to hear their music in more places, speaker systems have become an increasingly popular accessory.'"

Comments

Headphone Jack to Composite Audio

[SlashdotOgre]

Personally I'm happy using a $4 mini jack to composite audio adapter to connect my iPod to my stereo. Sure I might not be able to control the iPod via a stereo remote, but it sure beats dropping $250 (the speaker system in the article).

Saw this earlier today...

[Malor]

When I read this earlier, as soon as I saw that he strongly preferred the look of one of the speakers, I immediately predicted that he would like its sound the best. And, of course, he did.

It's important to do blind testing in audio. People just don't hear as well as they think they do.

Also note that everyone appears to hear differently. Vision is highly specialized, and differentiation between people is fairly low. That's why it's easy to pick out 'best' monitors, for instance. But audio isn't like that; each brain appears to figure out hearing a little differently. The brain uses, relatively speaking, very few neurons on auditory signals, which leads to (relatively) wide variations.

All sound reproduction is an illusion, and all speakers make tradeoffs, especially in the low end. It's important to listen to speakers for yourself, in blind testing, to find a set that fits your particular hearing strategy well.

Because of this, speaker reviews are much less useful than other kinds. Being geeks, we're used to being able to categorize and rank things by technical merit. Speakers just don't work like that.

Unfortunately, there's also a vast number of people in the audio business selling snake oil to take advantage of the poor hearing of most humans. So you DO have to listen for yourself.... but with BLIND testing. That's the only way to find out if a given effect is real, or just psychological.

Re:Saw this earlier today...

[planetmn]

[quote]Because of this, speaker reviews are much less useful than other kinds. Being geeks, we're used to being able to categorize and rank things by technical merit. Speakers just don't work like that.

Unfortunately, there's also a vast number of people in the audio business selling snake oil to take advantage of the poor hearing of most humans.[/quote]

Unfortunately, it's too easy to find reviews of non-quantifiable items (such as speakers) but it's near impossible (I've been unable to find) reviews of quantifiable components such as interconnection cables. Cables have power loss, impedence, bandwidths, etc. which would make it easy to determine if the $50 cable is any better than the $10 one. But I digress. Just a pet peeve of mine.

Oh yeah, and being somebody who does spend modest amounts of money on components and speakers, everybody's hearing is subjective, and to all my friends who can't tell the difference between a pair of B&Ws and a sony all-in-one from circuit city, well, they get through life spending less money than I do.

-dave

Re:Saw this earlier today...

[rubinson]

and to all my friends who can't tell the difference between a pair of B&Ws and a sony all-in-one from circuit city, well, they get through life spending less money than I do.

Ahh, finally a justification for the hearing damage I suffered from standing too close to the speakers at concerts when I was young: in fact, I was actually looking ahead to my middle age. Now I'm saving money!

It would have been helpful...

[mkiwi]

It would have been helpful if the ars reviewer had included a number of known speakers as a base-line for their testing. Few people have these speaker systems yet, and providing a high-end and a low-end comparison to actual speakers that people own would be more useful.

I'm partial to logitech models, especially the Z-680, but I'm sure ars could have found something to give us a better indicator of sound quality. Having no baseline to compare your systems to is not a very good benchmarking schema.

Re:It would have been helpful...

[Golias]

It also would have been helpful if the Slashdot summary (instead of simply copy/pasting the first paragraph of TFA) had listed which speaker systems were being reviewed. Then it would have saved me the trouble on clicking the link to see that, in fact, the headline should have read "Zero High-End iPod Speaker Systems Reviewed."

To save the rest of you said hassle:

There's the Apple "Lo-Fi" (as I like to call it), a boom box from Altec Lansing, and Yet Another Puny Satelite System With A Subwoofer made by Klipsh. All junk. All overpriced.

What would be nice is if somebody made a rugged $50 lo-fi plastic boom box with an iPod dock. Something you could carelessly throw into an open pick-up truck bed and head to the beach with. What's the point of building a small, portable, speaker system if it's as delicate as gossimer wings, more expensive than a monthly car payment, and still sounds like ass anyway?

Bose

[rhesuspieces00]

It would have been nice if they had included the Bose Soundock in the lineup, and possibly other iPod speaker systems, like the Klipsch iGroove. Its much more interesting to see side-by-side comparisons than read seperate reviews performed by different people.

Re:Dear Apple

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance."

Don't have the balls to log in, eh? I guess it was likely that you'd use an OS supported by Eunuchs.

Re:Bose SoundDock?

[LearnToSpell]

Try this one.

"expensive" != "high end"

[batkiwi]

None of those speakers look high end to me. The apple one is CLOSE, but having all 3 speakers in the same enclosure will have some issues with stereo seperation. And don't get me going on the klipsh POS... while two tiny satellites and a sub you can hide away is nicer LOOKING (and is exactly what I have in my family room), never kid yourself that they sound anything but tinny and boomy.

Where's the comparison to a $150 stereo amplifier and a $250 pair of bookshelf speakers to see how much you lose by going "IPod enabled" ?

Re:"expensive" != "high end"

[Golias]

s. The horribly sad part is that it's fairly difficult to find a decent set of speakers these day, between overpriced boutique crap (designed to look stylish), and tinny satellite systems (designed to be hidden), both with horrid frequency response curves just distributed differently. Far too much focus on Wife Acceptance factor, in my not so humble opinion. There aren't any companies that even make anything vaguely similar to a Klipsch Cornwall, or comparable JBL's these days.

Two outstanding "bookshelf" speaker makers are Bowers & Wilkins (which I proudly own myself), and PMC (which cost a couple bucks more, IIRC, but sound very nice.)

Neither company makes 'em tiny & "wife friendly"... both look exactly like the 1-foot tall speakers your dad had in the garage back in the 70s, but they do sound very nice, especially when coupled with a high-quality active subwoofer.

If your wife will put up with big floor monoliths, you're talking Vandersteen, Carver, or any of a hundred other high-end makers.

Don't let the sudden surge in popularity of Bose crap fool you, there's good audio gear out there to be found, and it's actually cheaper (in adjusted dollars) than it ever was back in the day.

Re:Fundamental flaw in all of this

[dr.badass]

The iPod has a small power amplifier at its output, which is how it drives the headphones.

None of the speaker systems reviewed here connect through the headphone jack. They all use the dock connector.

Re:Fundamental flaw in all of this

[gEvil (beta)]

The dock port on the ipod has a set of pins that act as a line-level output. This is how these speakers are connecting. Not to mention, there are numerous other adapters that you can buy that give you stereo RCA line-level outs from the dock connector.

A440 is the A ABOVE middle C.

[dgatwood]

Note to the reviewers....

Re:Fundamental flaw in all of this

[timster]

Or you can keep the sensible interface and just use Apple Lossless.

Re:Dock connector, eh?

[The Clockwork Troll]

No need to make up reasons. The audio pins on the docking port are as analog as the headphone jack. The only thing digital transmitted over the port is artist/album/song information.