iPod What is the ipod first & formost...?

[mikebatho]

I've just read a handful of reviews of the nano, and it it wasn't until I was at around review three or four when anybody finally mentioned sound quality.

Don't get me wrong, I love all the dinky little gimmicks these gizmos have built in, but for me it will always be a personal audio player above all. One review found time to waste an entire third on the screenlock, and didn't mention the sound at all....

Discuss.

 

[mrgreen4242]

I've just read a handful of reviews of the nano, and it it wasn't until I was at around review three or four when anybody finally mentioned sound quality.

Don't get me wrong, I love all the dinky little gimmicks these gizmos have built in, but for me it will always be a personal audio player above all. One review found time to waste an entire third on the screenlock, and didn't mention the sound at all....

Discuss.

At this point almost everyone has used, or at least seen, an iPod. The nano is pretty much just a really small iPod... the important bit of a review for a product like this is just going to be covering the new features and the new size. Other than that, well, it has the same DSP and CPU so I'm expecting the same sound quality, and the interface is exactly the same, so no real need to do more than just gloss over it...

 

[mikebatho]

Hmmm. I'm not convinced.

I don't think you can ever guarantee predictable sound quality.

I've found differences in original & mini ipods.

Of course, if ther really is nothing different about the sound, that would explain scant mentions.....

 

[jsw]

To me, it sounds more like my Shuffle than my 4G iPod, which is a good thing. Not that the 4G sounds bad, esp. given the conditions in which I typically listen to it. However, to my ears, the nano sounds like the Shuffle, and the Shuffle quality is surprisingly good.

 

[mrgreen4242]

Hmmm. I'm not convinced.

I don't think you can ever guarantee predictable sound quality.

I've found differences in original & mini ipods.

Of course, if ther really is nothing different about the sound, that would explain scant mentions.....

A lot of people have difficulty hearing small differences in sound quality. Like myself for example. I have poor hearing due to significant damage from time spent in the military (guns and grenades are loud ). I probably couldn't tell the difference between a 4g iPod and a mini for example. I could hear jsut a slight difference in the shuffle vs the mini, but not enough that I would be confident in picking it out blind... It may have just been that I was expecting the shuffle to sound better that made me think that.

Anyways, the reviewer may not have been able to hear any difference at all and so decided that words would be better spent on talking about what is different. I think it is safe to say that a very small percentage of iPod users are overly concerned about minute sound quality issues; they all sound 'good enough' to make no end to the vast majority of people.

 

[dops7107]

At this point almost everyone has used, or at least seen, an iPod. The nano is pretty much just a really small iPod...

Um, I've never used one with headphones - so I don't know how they sound, really. Can't imagine it will be much different than my Minidisc player ( that's like, SO Betamax )

I've been waiting for the Mini to get cheaper, or until I go to the States, and then Apple go and ruin it all by doing something stupid like replacing it with something that costs more and has a smaller capacity! Looks like I'll be waiting for even longer

EDIT: apologies for the smiley overkill. I don't think I've used so much emotion in one post, it's just not British.

 

[Jay42]

I agree and disagree

Yes, I agree that the iPod is definitely a music player first, however most people don't do serious listening with their ipods; its more just casual everyday type stuff. Therefore, I think that navigating my music library is just as important than super high quality components, etc (especially since most people compress their music). Really the only time I would care about sound quality of my iPod would be if it were below average. If its other than that, it doesn't have to be mentioned.

EDIT: Frankly, the biggest thing in terms of sound quality is gonna be not hearing that HD spinning up.

I've been waiting for the Mini to get cheaper, or until I go to the States, and then Apple go and ruin it all by doing something stupid like replacing it with something that costs more and has a smaller capacity! Looks like I'll be waiting for even longer

I bet you could get a mini cheaper than ever now. Its your choice if you want the latest, most expensive player.

 

[dops7107]

I bet you could get a mini cheaper than ever now. Its your choice if you want the latest, most expensive player.

True. But what i really want is a flash-based iPod with long battery time and HD-like capacity - 10 GB or so. It doesn't have to be super small. When Apple makes one of those, they will fly off the shelves. But clearly flash memory has a long way to go before it can rival HD in capacity per buck.

 

[mikebatho]

Yeah, that's a good point.

I just checked a few of our major outlets in the uk, and the ipod mini proce hasn't dropped at all.

I think it's maybe because Apple have stopped the mini.

If they just added another player to the range, maybe the mini's price would tail off while the rush of people flock to the new product, but I'm guessing that the fact that there are now only so many minis left, combined with many people's likelyhood to wait for a second gen nano, the stores are keeping the mini at full price for a while....

That's my two penneth, anyway....

 

[GilGrissom]

A lot of people have difficulty hearing small differences in sound quality. Like myself for example. I have poor hearing due to significant damage from time spent in the military (guns and grenades are loud ). I probably couldn't tell the difference between a 4g iPod and a mini for example. I could hear jsut a slight difference in the shuffle vs the mini, but not enough that I would be confident in picking it out blind... It may have just been that I was expecting the shuffle to sound better that made me think that.

Anyways, the reviewer may not have been able to hear any difference at all and so decided that words would be better spent on talking about what is different. I think it is safe to say that a very small percentage of iPod users are overly concerned about minute sound quality issues; they all sound 'good enough' to make no end to the vast majority of people.

I agree. I have no complaints with the sound quality, its much better than any older music players from past generations, so no complaints!! To me my iPod photo has very good sound quality. True I'm no dog in my hearing, but I still recon its very good. My girlfriend has the shuffle and that quality seems superb, dare I say it, better than my photo, like what has been reported by various people already. I have no complaints over the sound even from the normal earbuds. Some of my friends are under the impression that the earbuds are utter rubbish and are no good for anything. This may be true but I still have no complaints!! My sound always sounds crisp, clear and deep, at whatever volume! Plug it into different speakers? Same superb quality!

 

[Jay42]

I just checked a few of our major outlets in the uk, and the ipod mini proce hasn't dropped at all.

I think it's maybe because Apple have stopped the mini.

If they just added another player to the range, maybe the mini's price would tail off while the rush of people flock to the new product, but I'm guessing that the fact that there are now only so many minis left, combined with many people's likelyhood to wait for a second gen nano, the stores are keeping the mini at full price for a while....

I would try something like Ebay, as I imagine lots of people looking to offload minis. If you dont like the nano's price/capacity, then I would look for a mini. You could probably get one pretty cheap and then try to sell it for whatever you could get or give it to a friend, etc. when the 2nd gen nanos roll out. The minis are probably cheap enough to pick up for "temporary use" if you want one, but that'd be tough with those nanos sitting in the apple store.

 

[dan-o-mac]

I've just read a handful of reviews of the nano, and it it wasn't until I was at around review three or four when anybody finally mentioned sound quality.

Don't get me wrong, I love all the dinky little gimmicks these gizmos have built in, but for me it will always be a personal audio player above all. One review found time to waste an entire third on the screenlock, and didn't mention the sound at all....

Discuss.

This should answer your question.

Most of the other components are run of the mill as far as iPods go. The heart of the iPod, the PortalPlayer chip, was upgraded to a slightly newer model (the PP5021C-TDF), the audio codec is the same Wolfson Microprocessor (WM8975G) found in the current generation iPods, a new power management unit by Phillips (CF50607), a batch of 32MB of Samsung SDRAM (534-K9WAG08U1M) replaces the old Hynix chips, and the LCD is of unknown manufacturer but it's a 16-bit color, 176x132 1.5" model.

 

[mkrishnan]

Most of the other components are run of the mill as far as iPods go. The heart of the iPod, the PortalPlayer chip, was upgraded to a slightly newer model (the PP5021C-TDF), the audio codec is the same Wolfson Microprocessor (WM8975G) found in the current generation iPods, a new power management unit by Phillips (CF50607), a batch of 32MB of Samsung SDRAM (534-K9WAG08U1M) replaces the old Hynix chips, and the LCD is of unknown manufacturer but it's a 16-bit color, 176x132 1.5" model.

Hmmm...there does seem to be variability though... I can fish the link for you, but quite some time ago, when the Mini 2nd generation came out, I think? There was a site that did extensive audio testing on it and several other iPods, and in looking at the ability to recover from a sustained burst of noise, found that the recovery rates differed substantially between models. But they only tested a couple of copies of each model, so it wasn't entirely clear that it was a model-to-model and not unit-to-unit difference. But there was clearly a qualitative difference between them (them being, IIRC, the first and second generation Minis, or possibly the 3rd gen iPod and the Mini...my memory on the details is fuzzy but I remember the graphs quite clearly ).

EDIT: Sorry -- it is the Shuffle vs. the other iPods, the source was a PCMag writer, and the link is here. (This is the PCMag article he wrote, but the good stuff is in the other link).

 

[mikebatho]

Hmmm.

It's fine throwing technical specifications at me, but it doesn't really address the original issue at all.

Plus, all of your comments about spec and sound, weren't found in the reviews I originally looked at, which was the whole point.

My point was, as a consumer, the first few reviews didn't touch on the nano's sound quality. Fine if you have owned an ipod or mini before and know what to expect, but as a first time buyer, the reviews weren't answering questions on sound that I personally would want to know.

Which posed the question, is the ipod a music player above all, or a status symbol/fashion accessory/tech-head must-have.....

The bottom line in my opinion: an mps player review should have content about sound quality fairly high in it's priorities. Those who know the score can simply skip through to the info about the other features....

 

[mkrishnan]

Hmmm...if you don't want people to reply to your post, perhaps you should point that out in the original post.