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iPod touch New Features for the NEW iPod Touch

4DThinker said:
Somewhere you kids have gotten it in your heads that anything over bluetooth, thanks to it's compression technology, is absolutely awful. That's why I'm sure you've never listened to it. As such, your theories about the horrible quality loss are irrelivant.
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I tried bluetooth headsets and I was disappointed. I am not a kid. Please get off your horse.
I hear perfectly well according to my audiologist. I can switch my home theater amp between a bluetooth adapter input and a RCA stereo cable input, with both sources being the same device at the same time. In essence, I can compare the audio pathways side-by-side. I hear a slight difference, but it is by no stretch of the word "awful".
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Hearing perfectly well and having a trained ear for music and sound are two different things. It is a matter of up-bringing and/ or training. Professional musicians, sound techs, submarine echo sounders, etc will adhere. Nevertheless, I grant you and everyone in this world that if something works for you, I don't mind. It doesn't change the technological fact however. So current bluetooth audio implementation, or for that matter any low/ flaky bit rate compression, is just not acceptable for me and my affinity to music. This is no judgement of you. I am just trying to express that everyone has different sensibilities and how underlying technology effects them.
My subwoofer will still pulse out the bass line. The tweeters still sing. If I had to name the difference, I'd say the bluetooth audio is a little "crisper", with a tiny bit less sustain on each note.
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Exactly my point above.
The last thing to consider is that bluetooth doesn't become the ONLY way to get sound out of your device. You'll always have that earphone jack, and can ignore that irritating bluetooth feature all day long. ;) You can even disable the bluetooth radio if you want to save a little battery life.
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Now we are actually back on topic ;). Bluetooth would be a nice feature for people who don't mind the quality loss and if Apple wouldn't cripple it could also be useful for many other applications.
 
mmulin said:
Now we are actually back on topic ;). Bluetooth would be a nice feature for people who don't mind the quality loss and if Apple wouldn't cripple it could also be useful for many other applications.
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Yes, back on topic: bluetooth would be a very nice feature, PARTICULARLY for the Touch (bluetooth headsets, anyone? Skype, here we come!) But that's the exact reason why Apple won't put it on there: it would enable SO MUCH that it would compete with the iPhone.

I do agree with another poster somewhere on here, it would be nice if the Touch was treated like a premium iPod, not a cheap iPhone. Apple doesn't seem to agree, though :(
 
Oh, one thing that would make the next iPhone/iPod Touch a fantastic product would be something like Growl. Maybe it could be done with a firmware update, but I would pay for a new one if it meant Growl. Can you imagine, getting a little buzz every time you got a Tweet or an IM?
 
thebeesknees said:
Oh, one thing that would make the next iPhone/iPod Touch a fantastic product would be something like Growl. Maybe it could be done with a firmware update, but I would pay for a new one if it meant Growl. Can you imagine, getting a little buzz every time you got a Tweet or an IM?
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What is growl? It would be nice to get a sound similar to the Mail sound when you get an IM, Facebook message, Tweet, whatever...
 
mmulin said:
I tried bluetooth headsets and I was disappointed. I am not a kid. Please get off your horse.
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Ah, headsets. When you've tried a bluetooth adapter for your stereo with full range speakers I'll pay more attention. As with wired headsets you get what you pay for. $49 bluetooth headsets won't compete with $200 or higher headsets, and none will compete with a good full range stereo system. As for being a kid, I apologize. You just come across as young and inexperienced. My mistake. To be fair, I'm 51. Half of the world comes across that way to me.
Hearing perfectly well and having a trained ear for music and sound are two different things. It is a matter of up-bringing and/ or training.
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You're right. I'll guess that having two music educators for parents, playing trumpet and piano, and having perfect pitch disqualifies me for having a trained ear. :eek: <redfaced
Bluetooth would be a nice feature for people who don't mind the (minimal) quality loss and if Apple wouldn't cripple it could also be useful for many other applications.
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True.

By the way, the only "official" ipod dock I could find was this one and it's been discontinued. Have you listened to it? Everything else Apple sells through their store is another brand, and I've listened to most of them. They all suffer from a weak or missing low range.
 
4DThinker said:
By the way, the only "official" ipod dock I could find was this one and it's been discontinued. Have you listened to it? Everything else Apple sells through their store is another brand, and I've listened to most of them. They all suffer from a weak or missing low range.
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No, I have a Yamaha HiFi system which they provided a proprietary iPod dock with.
 
dasikes said:
What is growl? It would be nice to get a sound similar to the Mail sound when you get an IM, Facebook message, Tweet, whatever...
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It's a pretty sweet application for mac that gives you notifications. It sounds boring, but it's actually awesome. It gives me notifications when I mount/unmount a volume, get a new IM, tells me what song is playing in iTunes... I think it also gives Tweet notifications.
 
Somewhere you kids have gotten it in your heads that anything over bluetooth, thanks to it's compression technology, is absolutely awful. That's why I'm sure you've never listened to it. As such, your theories about the horrible quality loss are irrelivant. I hear perfectly well according to my audiologist. I can switch my home theater amp between a bluetooth adapter input and a RCA stereo cable input, with both sources being the same device at the same time. In essence, I can compare the audio pathways side-by-side. I hear a slight difference, but it is by no stretch of the word "awful". My subwoofer will still pulse out the bass line. The tweeters still sing. If I had to name the difference, I'd say the bluetooth audio is a little "crisper", with a tiny bit less sustain on each note.
Click to expand...

As mmulin said, get off your horse. I'm no kid either.

However, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" as they say. This can apply to audio technology. You may think bluetooth sounds good the same way that some people find Paris Hilton attractive.

So my "theories" as to the quality loss are "irrelevant" despite it being a universally accepted fact that bluetooth audio is bad?

You've also mentioned your use of the "earphone jack". If you're using that to compare to bluetooth rather than a proper line-out, then your testing methods are themselves "irrelevant".

Didn't you admit to using low quality Samsung hardware? Yeah, your Samsung P2. The people over at head-fi and HA, two very respected audiophile sites, won't even touch the P2. Let along those junk Sony headphones you mentioned in your blogspam in your earlier post.

Come back to us when you've compared a proper line-out from an iPod to your audio system (which you have yet to give any details of). Keeping in mind that an iPod, especially a 5.5G, will have a higher quality DAC than your Samsung and any DAC in any bluetooth unit.

You're right. I'll guess that having two music educators for parents, playing trumpet and piano, and having perfect pitch disqualifies me for having a trained ear.
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When you're trying to pass off Bluetooth as higher quality than the Wolfson DAC in previous generation iPods, nobody will believe you have a "trained ear".

By the way, the only "official" ipod dock I could find was this one and it's been discontinued. Have you listened to it? Everything else Apple sells through their store is another brand, and I've listened to most of them. They all suffer from a weak or missing low range.
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The iPod hifi? Thats a dock with speaker system. http://store.apple.com/us/product/M...pod/ipod_accessories/cables_docks&mco=MTM1MTY Get an audio cable and connect it to the line-out then run it into a proper audio system.

Theres also this http://www.sendstation.com/us/products/pocketdock/lineout-usb.html

And http://www.sik.com/din.php

Those 3 will give you true line-outs and you'll get better access to the much higher quality DAC thats in the iPod. Much higher quality than any bluetooth setup. If you have a relatively recent Mac (say any Intel Mac), then you have optical output on the headphone jack. Get an optical cable with a mini-TOSLink adapter and plug it into the digital input on your receiver and fire up iTunes. Turn off "Sound Enhancer". Theres absolutely no way you'll still find Bluetooth adequate after that.
 
4DThinker said:
They could have left "iPod" off the name as the Touch is more about connecting than about music.
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You have made a profound statement about the perfect name for the in-between product half iPod / half tablet:

APPLE TOUCH

I can see it now.
Fanboy #1: "Is that the Touch?"
Fanboy #2: "No, it's just the iPod Touch, but I can't wait to buy the next iPhone."
 
I really want bluetooth. Not just for convenient audio, but also for file transfer, potential keyboard connection, potential cell phone pairing, potential VOIP headset, and local area gameplay between devices.

Realizing the potential for wireless music, THIS company has had CD quality over bluetooth on a chip since 2004. The major contributor to sound quality over bluetooth is the transmitter, so it is critical that any implementation in a media player be done with a high quality chip.

LINK
LINK
LINK
LINK

Yes, I know "everyone agrees bluetooth audio is awful". Everyone but Apple, Samsung, Sony, Philips, STMicroelectroncs and Qualcomm

If you haven't listened to it lately, on recent hardware, you owe it to yourself to give bluetooth another try. Your cell phone monophonic earpiece doesn't count.

4D
 
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If Apple can allow incremental updates, that is the ones after the initial sync to be wirelessly synced, that would be awesome.
 
4DThinker said:
I really want bluetooth. Not just for convenient audio, but also for file transfer, potential keyboard connection, potential cell phone pairing, potential VOIP headset, and local area gameplay between devices.

Realizing the potential for wireless music, THIS company has had CD quality over bluetooth on a chip since 2004. The major contributor to sound quality over bluetooth is the transmitter, so it is critical that any implementation in a media player be done with a high quality chip.

LINK
LINK
LINK
LINK

Yes, I know "everyone agrees bluetooth audio is awful". Everyone but Apple, Samsung, Sony, Philips, STMicroelectroncs and Qualcomm

If you haven't listened to it lately, on recent hardware, you owe it to yourself to give bluetooth another try. Your cell phone monophonic earpiece doesn't count.

4D
Click to expand...

Yeah, stereo bluetooth aside, bluetooth does WAY more than just audio. Enabling keyboards and headsets for services such as Skype would be amazing.
 
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mosx said:
Didn't you admit to using low quality Samsung hardware? Yeah, your Samsung P2. The people over at head-fi and HA, two very respected audiophile sites, won't even touch the P2. Let along those junk Sony headphones you mentioned in your blogspam in your earlier post.
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You fail to mention that the people at those two site that have an ipod are using a LOD, and/or a portable amp.
 
4DThinker said:
I really want bluetooth. Not just for convenient audio, but also for file transfer, potential keyboard connection, potential cell phone pairing, potential VOIP headset, and local area gameplay between devices.

Realizing the potential for wireless music, THIS company has had CD quality over bluetooth on a chip since 2004. The major contributor to sound quality over bluetooth is the transmitter, so it is critical that any implementation in a media player be done with a high quality chip.

LINK
LINK
LINK
LINK

Yes, I know "everyone agrees bluetooth audio is awful". Everyone but Apple, Samsung, Sony, Philips, STMicroelectroncs and Qualcomm

If you haven't listened to it lately, on recent hardware, you owe it to yourself to give bluetooth another try. Your cell phone monophonic earpiece doesn't count.

4D
Click to expand...

I wasn't around for a few days so I didn't get to reply.

Nothing you say will change the fact that Bluetooth is still nowhere near as good as a wired connection. There are too many factors involved (proprietary DRM'ed codec, signal quality, DAC, etc.). I would bet every dollar I ever have that my 5.5G iPod with my A500s sounds better than any past, current, and future Bluetooth audio technology for the next several years. By the time Bluetooth is where current wired technology is, wired technology will (again) be leaps and bounds above and beyond the quality Bluetooth can provide.

As for the other things, Bluetooth is still useless. VoIP headsets could connect to the dock connector and provide better quality. Keyboard? What for?

Multi-player games would be better over 802.11g. Why go from 54Mbps down to 3Mbps and a MUCH more limited range?

Cellphone pairing? You really think Apple would allow the iPod touch to use a competing cellphones internet connection when you could just buy an iPhone?

File transfer? Why file transfer? Bluetooth 2.0 EDR is 3Mbps. USB 2.0 is faster than the on-board memory chips can handle, and WiFi file transfer is also almost 20x faster than Bluetooth with a larger range. But one problem with this whole argument is that Apple doesn't give us access to the iPhone/iPod touch file system. So unless Apple changes the current iTunes syncing/email way of getting files on and off the device...................
 
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mosx said:
As mmulin said, get off your horse. I'm no kid either...You may think bluetooth sounds good the same way that some people find Paris Hilton attractive.
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Well, you, my friend, are not a man either if you don't think Paris Hilton is hot - all her personality issues aside of course. But I mean, whatever floats your boat :)

But yes, bluetooth would be great - GPS is all I want.
 
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