iPod Which mp3 player is an audiophile's dream?

[svalbard]

Kenwood's HDD players probably have the best sound quality out of all the MP3 players with a hard disk. http://www.kenwood.co.jp/j/products/home_audio/personal/hd30ga9/index.html . It beats all my other players including Sony and Toshiba. Too bad it is not compatible with Macs though.

It's SAID to beat all other players. What's said on various forums then eventually becomes the 'truth' regardless of whether it's accurate or not. All too frequently a digital amp is touted as superior sound quality because it's different, but to fail in actual listening tests. It is more realistically installed to save power, especially the way current BTL ASICs do things. More marketing BS like Monolith's claims of '24-bit delta sigma DAC' for example when they use a very similar (in fact, a lower model) codec to the iPod with the same DAC/decoding engine.

 

[svalbard]

Interesting thread -- one point of note that I found very interesting and I have no explanation for as of yet. I build custom car audio sound systems and currently run a alpine 9835 head unit with the KCA-420i digital integration kit. Keep in mind this is digital all the way to the head unit of the car. All my music is in apple lossless as you can REALLY notice the difference between this and 192 mp3's or even 320 mp3's in bass heavy or cymbol intesive songs where accuracy is a must. Anyway, my 4g 40 gig ipod just died and I got a 60 gig video. Same exact music and songs that I normally listen to are for some reason not getting the same source output signal from the new ipod as before. Case in point. Been listening to '30 Seconds from Mars' album for the past month. Same album on my new video ipod I used to listen to at a volume level of 26 (determined maximum distortion threshold by measuring amp output maximums with volt/ohm meter). With the new video ipod I can only go up to 22 volume - past that there is noticeable distortion in the music output. Given the fact that the amps are configured to their 'distortion free' threshold as specified by the manufactuer -- the only reasonable conclusion i can reach is that the new ipod has a somewhat weaker output digitally to the head unit. This kinda doesn't make sense as it is digital still. So I am a little puzzled. However, I burned the song to a CD with Itunes and tried that and it plays at 26 just like before with my 4g ipod. In addition, I borrowed my roommate's 4g 40 gig ipod and synced my library and tried it and once again 26 without an issue. Anyone have any theories on this phenomenon?

The KCA-420i takes an ANALOG signal from the iPod. The 5G iPod has the capability to output digital data now, but there are no head units yet to take advantage of it. The analog line out feed of the 5G is I do believe slightly weaker than the 4G.