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Homemade iPod Hi-Fi mini
Simon Clement writes "Decided to add to the Apple product line with the iPod Hi-Fi mini. Here's the web page detailing its features, and there's also a link to a Flickr set showing how to build your own."
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...or was the article lacking any significant text? It gave me no clue of what he have done, expcet for hollowing out a old MAC, adding an amplifier and such. What amplifier? How did he interface to the iPod? Does the thing control the iPod, or just output the sound?
I guess the latter, that it is just a fancy set of speakers with a 3.5mm jack to connect it to any portable equipment with a headset output. It's not really innovative even. What would have been innovative was if he'd made a interface to control the iPod. As far as I know, that is not so straight forward, and you'll need a bit of electronics skills, and you'll probably have to write a program for a microcontroller to do the communication...
But as he have done it? Worthless. And TFA gives little or no information on it.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
I disagree. The article summary made absolutely no sense, so the GP was correct to complain as the error went beyond minor quibbles over abstruse grammatical niceties.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
A novel idea, but probably not the best-sounding things in the world. You will notice the tweeter is behind solid plastic of the faceplate. If I recall there are ventilation slots under the rim on the front, but not significant in an audio application. You could improve it by incorporating a fixed equalizer circuit to compensate for the loss of high frequency blocked by the case.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Speakers tend to sound better the more emotional attachment we have to them. The more reviews read finding out from somebody else how we shoudl think, our brain tells us that these speakers sound great. Well, that and pumped up bass. One of the many aspects of the psychoacoustic effect. And stereo equipment reviews know it. /offtopic
:)
These homemade jobbies look cool as heck. More than functional for background music. Which is all the iPod is for anyway. Def: background music. Music that is listened to while paying attention to another task, eg exercising, talking, or cleaning the house. These are obviously not suitable for critical listening, but then nearly all stereo equipement made these days are not suitable for this task. Although my brain tends to enjoy Martin Logans.
-FlynnMP3
Um, since the setup in question is a speaker, I'd say anyone who builds it will probably listen to it.
I'm not 'in the know' on the quality of his speakers, but the Sonic Impact amp alone makes this a hi-fi rig. If you haven't tried one yet, you're really missing out. I have one attached to a pair of Ascend Acoustics HTM 200s. Others in the audio world have used that $20 amp to drive speakers in the $10,000 range with surperior results.
TPJ - Founder, The Amazon Basin
This is a damn neat hack. Yes, it's probably not as high-quality audio as a set of pro-grade speakers costing hundreds of dollars, but you're listening to an iPod full of compressed, lossy songs, so stop whining. This is a fun way to recycle old hardware cases (unless you have some other pressing need for a Macplus case, perhaps?) into a piece of high geek-factor functional art. It's right up there with the people fitting miniITX boxes into old NES cases and so on.
In other words, quit hating. This took imagination and engineering, and that deserves a bit of respect in my book.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Sigh... Frankly, I couldn't care fewer.
I have been setting up a new site reviewing all of the different iPod Speaker Systems. We have been looking at iPod Alarm clocks, iPod Boom boxes, and portable iPod Speaker systems. All reviews and input are welcome!
It is possible that this comment will get moded down but I am only letting people know about the site so that we can increase awareness and reach that critical mass so that the site becomes a useful resource for people. All useful and big sites started out as small sites. All comments are welcome and if you have used any of the speaker system please post your experiences and thoughts.
http://ipodspeakerreviews.com/
Dr. Retarded Check out what they have done now.
You want a real speaker system for your iPod?
Build this portable ipod speaker
Not including MDF for the enclosure and some of the misc electronics(who doesn't have a pile of spare LEDs), it cost about $200 to build.
It's only a bit heavier than a boombox, lasts ~4 hours on full volume(deafening) with the specced battery, over 8 hours at a normal volume, and can charge your ipod(or anything else with a cigarette lighter charger). Unsuprisingly, it also uses a Sonic Impact t-amp, they kick ass for their size/cost.
...in understanding how to turn a NES controller into an mp3 player like some guy did earlier this year. While it was cool, it too was lacking a serious walkthough in how he did it. I only mention it because here I sit with a NES controller and a screen less iPod nano.
Jonathanjk.com
What a great use for old Macs!
Very creative.
I would love to do this but can't bring myself to destroy my Mac Color Classics.
I would also have put an ipod dock on top of the unit.
Why would apple pull that page? It's not defacing Apple in any way shape or form, in fact, it's promoting two of their products. One of which is discontinued and no longer offered any support for, and that is the one being "modified" The new one, ipod, isn't modified at all. So why again would Apple pull that page down? this question brings a phrase to mind; "Any publicity is good publicity." And this isn't even persay bad publicity. I don't see any reason for Apple to not want this website up, let alone all the other flickr websites of people showing off their own versions.
I Bleed Scarlet
All of you whiners tell me if you went to your friends place and he had one of these you wouldn't drool over it, even if it didn't sound like a Bose.
I'm not sure about the dimensions, or if it would fit, but if the speaker jack was set up such that you put your iPod in the disk slot it hooked it up... man, thats like pr0n.
It's a better iPod boom-box. I built mine in an old guitar amp cabinet. podzuma plans
'Nature's got a way, brothers, of scraping the bowl'
The page doesn't appear to have been "pulled." It appears that the .mac user's bandwidth allotment has been exceeded - too bad, really... I wanted to see it...
A Passionate Independent Musician
On The Register's hardware page there is a review of a valve amplifier for the iPod. I checked out the valve number and apparently, to those of us who grew up with Mullard (later Philips) numbers, it's an ECC88. That makes it a double triode.
..... I suppose they could be inverting the phase to one channel using a transformer, re-inverting it at the speaker by reversing the connections and bridging the subwoofer between the two channels to give a "sum" signal. AMI stereo juke boxes used that sort of wiring scheme {except they didn't need a transformer at the input, since the left and right coils of the pickup are electrically separate: four wires, not three}. AMI and Rockola were using valves long after Wurlitzer and Seeburg had switched to transistors.
So how are they running three speakers from it? Assuming the valve is not just for show
I personally think digital sources and valves don't play well together anyway: they make the digital artefacts sound worse. Tried it, didn't like it, back to trannies -- at least they disguise the "digitalness".
And the ready-made amplifier module this guy used is just completely cheating! At least he could have done something like bridge together a pair of TDA2030s for each channel {they're just op-amps, except these ones will source or sink an ampere or so without batting an eyelid} and used yet another 2030 to make a self-resonant switch-mode supply for the iPod.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I just checked....it seems to be working for me..You sure it's not a user-side thing?
I Bleed Scarlet
Something tells me he'd be more confused by computer sitting in front of him then the text on it's screen.
Collector's Edition
A link to a rather small scale hardware hack... When did digg start looking like slashdot?
Same here. The error message is "We're Sorry: You have requested a page that is not currently available due to data transfer restrictions. If the page you requested is yours, click here for more information." .Mac pages are limited to a terabyte of transfer per month, IIRC. There was discussion of bumping that to 10TB, but I'm not sure it ever happened. It's too bad in this case that Apple doesn't just let it slide, because he's basically advertising one of their products for free (and I'm sure .Mac has the B/W to burn).
The Flickr page is still up and running, though.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I can't not tell from the images what drivers are used, but I wonder what quality they are. I've seen very few neo tweeters that test well, and this does not appear to be one of them, however, I could be in error in terms of the driver quality.
What is most suspect is that this tweeter probably crosses over at 3khz or so, and there is a good deal of space between the woofer and tweeter which introduces comb filtering at these frequencies.
I also wonder what kind of crossover is used. I think special care would need to be taken to keep the woofer out of breakup nodes and the tweeter away from low end distortion with the drivers used.
or it gets SlashDotted to death!!!
"We're Sorry You have requested a page that is not currently available due to data transfer restrictions. If the page you requested is yours, click here for more information."
ohwell...
Next time remember to make it funny and I'll detect it just fine.
Shoudl be labelled, "Homade speaker enclosure made from ancient Mac..." From the picture I don't see that he made any mods to the ipod, so, literally, this has nuthing to do with "Homemade iPod Hi-Fi mini"
GET A CLUE!!!
I am assuming by this precedent I can attach an ipod to a pair of wall speakers via an amp i bought and call it the same thing...
Get me some real news!!!
You don't think CDs are either then, I presume?
The finest audio quality I've ever heard came from a (very high dollar) modern turntable. The matching CD most definitely sounded tinny in comparison, even with a number of different CD components (one with a Sony chip, one with a Phillips chip, etc.). With the turntable, I thought I was listening to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Before this, I thought turntables were for older people who were desperately attached to the equipment they grew up with and that CDs could match any reproducable sound.
Incidentally, MP3s recorded @ 320Kbps are indistinguishable from CDs to my ear, even on audiophile equipment. Again, I used to think otherwise, but a friend of mine actually tricked me into thinking I was listening to a Pink Floyd CD when in reality it was a high quality (320Kbps) MP3.
The trick is that not all MP3 encoders are alike, and a 320Kbps MP3 can take on many different levels of quality and accuracy; it will always supply the same amount of information, but if you take extra time while you're encoding it (setting the quality factor all the way up, depending on your encoder) the information can be much more accurate. Even 128Kbps MP3s lose their "watery" effect and sound okay when encoded with a high quality factor (although nobody ever does this, in my experience).
But the most pleasing sounds I've ever heard were actually in movies; I didn't know my basement could sound like a movie theater until I watched the Matrix one day when nobody was home at a rather high volume. And I don't by any means have audiophile equipment; I have a Carver M400 cube amp on my front channels on my PC with Advent B2R towers (I have been very pleased with that amp and those speakers); then I have a Sony stereo receiver with cheap Aiwa bookshelf speakers on the rear channels. Good old 4.0 surround.
Really, the only thing "tech" about this project is that the enclosures are recycled macs. DIY projects for self-powered speakers that can be plugged into an MP3 player, Diskman, Gameboy, ect, are a dime a dozen. I did enjoy looking at the pictures.
How long until my speakers make it onto the front page? Perhaps I should do a write-up on my pair of subwoofers that are as a large as washing machines?
No, I will not work for your startup
I'm selling this DIY kit for $99; my version has all white cables though. Contact me if interested.
You sure you didn't fail to put the irony in there in the first place?
Now mirrored at http://www.arawak.com.au/hifiplus/index.html
Absolutely no sense? you looked at it and saw only letters? Are you sure?
Both I an another poster spotted this wry humor in TFA at the same time and posted it... I wouldn't have posted this as a dupe if it had been present on the page I was reading. Since I am a slow reader (and poster), my post came in a full 5 minutes after the "original".
And now I am paying the price for my lighthearted attempt at humor. I got modded down TWICE as redundant while the guy who beat me to the post gets modded up +4 Funny!
There is no justice and my karma will suffer irreparable harm.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
iTunes uses MPEG 4 Audio http://www.m4a.com/ for its encoding. There seems to be a lot of varying and conflicting opinions on the differences in audio quality (ie. here: http://forums.macnn.com/archive/index.php/t-158250 .html , here: http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/ ) but my university lecturer, who has been a professional sound engineer for a long time, has told me in the past that M4A is much better at preserving the original sound than MP3, with a 96kbs M4A file being equivalent to something like a 260kbs MP3. I'm not sure if he's right as I can't seem to find any supporting evidence but the general consensus from my googling, other than the last link I posted, seems to be that M4A offers a higher quality output than MP3.
0 36128,40062302-2,00.htm
Note that most people can't tell the difference between a couple of dB, so most of the higher rated ones are fairly evenly matched, and I wouldn't be suprised if the results for those would change if the test was carried out again by somebody else. The lower ones are particularly bad, though; you would probably hear the white noise during the quiet parts of your music :)
If by "weighted rateing" you mean the iPod's signal to noise ratio (SNR), Apple doesn't post it on their website, but I did find this: http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/mp3players/0,39
Have you heard one of these?
The sound is beautiful.
Jag pratar lite svenska.