Is the sound quality from all iPod models the same?

[Loge]

As far as iPods go, the first generation shuffle is king, followed by the 3rd generation iPod, followed by the first generation Mini, followed by the 5th generation iPod. And it's not because of the audio DAC, it's because of the headphone amplifier itself which Apple has *always* cheaped out on, hence the popularity of line out cords.

The first generation mini had terrible sound quality; compromises were made for its (at the time) small size, the 3G iPod was also mediocre. Sound quality improved significantly with the first gen shuffle. The worst of all though was the first iPod Photo, which could not play back solo piano without significant distortion.

 

[ChrisA]

I have 2 first gen shuffle's - neither of them "force" the 128 conversion, this is an option only...

Try to copy an Apple lossless track onto your Shuffle. It will not let you.

So I say again, if the Shuffle can't even play a lossless track how can it have good audio? Or more accurately how would you know if it had good audio if if can't play lossless source material

 

[fernande-mac]

wpc33 - you said 240gb ipod?? Can you clarify?

I assume it was a refurbished model with a newer/bigger hard drive.

fernande-mac, no. 3gS is much better quality. It's quite well read on the net that this is the general consensus

This contradicts what alphaod said:

"5.5th Gen. classic, 2nd Gen. touch, 3G (not GS) iPhone and all their previous models had the Wolfson chipset which is better.

In other words, the latest models are all the same with the Cirrus Logic audio chipset which isn't as good."

So, technically, the iPhone 3G should have better sound than the iPhone 3Gs because it has the Wolfson chipset instead of the Cirrus Logic.

That's why I was confused that you said the iPhone 3Gs had better sound than the iPhone 3G.

 

[fernande-mac]

Now, just to be clear, when people talk about iPod's "sound quality", are they referring to the amplified signal from the headphone jack?

The line out sound should be equivalent in all models, right?

 

[CubeHacker]

Try to copy an Apple lossless track onto your Shuffle. It will not let you.

So I say again, if the Shuffle can't even play a lossless track how can it have good audio? Or more accurately how would you know if it had good audio if if can't play lossless source material

We are talking about the ability of the hardware in the ipod itself to output quality sound, not the ability to play different codec's. I'm pretty sure the first gen COULD playback apple lossless, if Apple were to go and update the firmware to give it that ability. However, Apple usually doesn't go and give old outdated models new abilities, so its left without lossless playback. You could always just copy a straight WAV file which is 100% lossless and i'm sure that would play back just fine. However, no one is forcing you to convert to 128kbps AAC files. Its just an option to squeeze as much music onto the devices limited 1gb storage space. You can easily stick 320kbps files onto the 1st gen shuffle and it'll play back and sound great.

 

[CubeHacker]

Well after a bit of searching, I finally found that article written about the iPod shuffle (1st gen).

Here is a quick expert from the article:

The iPod shuffle's near-perfect rendering of the square wave means that it uses push-pull output instead of the single-ended, capacitor-coupled output found in just about every other player. You just can't get this kind of audio performance from a single-ended circuit. I find Apple's audiophile approach exciting on several different levels. You can hear the improvement; will Apple incorporate the same technology in future hard drive players? And technologically, it's fascinating. My inner geek wants answers to half a dozen questions, including how they're generating the negative power supply voltage and whether they've gone with a capacitorless design. I've asked Apple, but so far the company is mum.

And here is a link to the review, along with the page that has the test and resulting data

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1777890,00.asp
http://home.comcast.net./~machrone/playertest/playertest.htm

Would be cool to see how the current generation of audio players, such as the iphone, ipod touch, ipod nano, zune, etc, perform compared to the nearly 5 year old shuffle.

 

[iPhone 62S]

This contradicts what alphaod said:

"5.5th Gen. classic, 2nd Gen. touch, 3G (not GS) iPhone and all their previous models had the Wolfson chipset which is better.

In other words, the latest models are all the same with the Cirrus Logic audio chipset which isn't as good."

So, technically, the iPhone 3G should have better sound than the iPhone 3Gs because it has the Wolfson chipset instead of the Cirrus Logic.

That's why I was confused that you said the iPhone 3Gs had better sound than the iPhone 3G.

It's unoticable though IMO (I've had the 3G and now have a 3GS).

At this moment, though, my sound quality is terrible because my half of my headphones decided to die yesterday.

 

[Erlend31]

Cowon O2 has alac support (and a whole bunch of other formats). I use this model myself, got fed up with crappy apple SQ.
I can easily recommend the O2.

 

[ChrisA]

We are talking about the ability of the hardware in the ipod itself to output quality sound, not the ability to play different codec's.

The quality of the sound is limited by the quality of the source material. If the iPod can only play compressed format the sound just can't be any good.

How could you know it the sound quality is good if you've never heard it play good sound.

IIn almost all cases with ipods the limitation is the quality of the source material and the quality of the headphones or stereo system the iPod is driving

 

[CubeHacker]

The quality of the sound is limited by the quality of the source material. If the iPod can only play compressed format the sound just can't be any good.

How could you know it the sound quality is good if you've never heard it play good sound.

IIn almost all cases with ipods the limitation is the quality of the source material and the quality of the headphones or stereo system the iPod is driving

I understand where you are coming from, and yes its true that the source material is important to the overall sound quality. However when talking the actual hardware's design and playback ability, you need to leave the source material out of the discussion. And the bottom line is that the original Shuffle had outstanding audio hardware and sound quality. Whether the current generation of music players from Apple is similar in quality or not is whats up for discussion, not their ability to play back different audio formats.

And although I haven't tried it myself, i'm pretty sure the shuffle can play back uncompressed lossless files such as WAV or AIFF, although not too many songs would fit at those huge sizes.