New iPod universal dock line-out

I just picked up the new universal dock for iPods and the remote for it.

I may do some audio tests later, but now just want to explain how it works. For the iPod nano and 5G iPod, when you adjust the volume with either the remote or on the iPod itself, the volume of the line-out changes and on the screen you can see the volume level change (as though you were adjusting the headphone volume).

For other iPods with the dock connector, the volume of the line-out changes only when you use the remote, and there is no volume change displayed on the screen.

Sometimes the dock "remembers" what the line-out volume is. So it remains set to what it was the next time you put the iPod in the dock. Sometimes, when you put in the iPod, it go to max volume despite whatever it was set to before. I haven't figured out a pattern or what makes it reset.

In terms of the IR, it's pretty good actually. I'm in a small 16'x15' and the dock is on in the middle of one of the walls next to the. The remote works no matter where I point it as long as I point it to something not too dark. In other words, I can point the remote at the ceiling or the beige carpet or the wall 90 or 180 degrees from the dock and it still picks up the signal just fine.

The dock and remote are pricey ($61 for me, though I needed a dock that fit the 5G iPod anyway, my other docks don't fit it well), but stupid Apple made me buy it. And I mean that literally. I've been wanting a remote for a while, but with the new 5G iPod and dropping of the remote port, I needed a dock that works with all my iPods - nano, 5G, 4G color, 3G - and the only one was Apple's. I wouldn't have minded using a remote receiver that sits on top of the iPod and uses the remote port, although it's not as useful. The only other dock/remote I could think of was the DLO HomeDock which is more expensive.

The stupid thing is that I thought the Menu button on the remote did something! I thought I could press Menu, and then use the + and - buttons to scroll up and down. But I was wrong. The Menu buttond doesn't do a thing.

Obligatory picture:

The volume adjustment of the line-out is logarithmic or exponential rather than linear. So at 50%, I can barely hear anything. It's not too useful that way.

It's a music video playing, one I bought from iTunes. The on-screen volume and scrubbing appear for a few seconds and then disappear when you adjust either. Video quality is absolute sh*t. A movie I encoded myself gives the same result. Not watchable at all on a 24" widescreen LCD (which has some caveats, but still). Can't imagine it would look any better on a real TV/HDTV plasma, LCD, projection, etc. They look great on the iPod itself though.

I'm pretty sure the adjustable line-out will theoretically degrade sound quality. But I use the line-out to go to my Klipsch computer speakers so I doubt it'll matter. I'll do tests later with my amp and headphones after the ball game.

So I did some quick sound quality tests. My setup is iPod -> Dock -> custom-made silver wire interconnect -> META42 -> HD600. All songs encoded as Nero AAC VBR ~256kbps.

First test is to compare the 4G color and 5G iPod usng the universal dock set to full volume (which is supposedly unadulterated line-out). It was easy to notice that the 5G sounds warmer. Bass is better. With the 4G, bass wasn't as warm. However, its highs sound crisper, but this can sometimes be shrill. I think it's a slight trade-off. For most songs, the extra bass of the 5G sounded better compared to the 4G, but the brighter highs of the 4G sometimes sounded better, especially on songs where bass isn't an important element. Overall, I think the improved bass outweighs the occasional loss of highs or detail of the 4G, which sometimes more than not makes it shrill or tiring on the ears.

Next test is to compare the 5G on an old dock versus the new universal dock. I couldn't really do this test well because my 5G doesn't fit into my 3G dock very well. But they sound similar to me.

So instead, since I have two nanos, I tested one nano in the old dock versus the other nano in the new dock. They do sound the same.

Next up is more talk about videos...

So here's another ordeal with getting video onto the iPod.

Tonight I recorded Desperate Housewives (since it was on) with my ATI HDTV tuner card. The video was recorded at the native resolution of 1280x720 (aka HD 720p) and after losslessly cutting out commercials it was 42 mins long and 5.4GB in size.

Using Nero Recode 2 (part of Nero 6 Ultra, incredibly versatle software, worth every penny), I encoded the file to mpeg4, 480x272 (preserving the aspect ratio), 1-pass, 160kbps AAC 48kHz audio, 1.95Mbps video. The iPod supports mpeg4 up to 480x480 and 2.1Mbps. The file ended up to be 640MB. It plays without a hitch in QT, iTunes, and the iPod.

The quality on the iPod is abosultely stunning. Everything is sharp. Almost no pixelation or artifacts. Connected to my LCD, it doesn't look as bad as H.264; rather, it now looks like a VCR recording. I don't know if the video output is actually improved with the higher mpeg4 resolution that the iPod supports, but I think it is. The 320x240 mpeg4 video I made from a 480p HD source doesn't look as good as the 480x272, though it was made as less than half the bitrate.

For the moment, I see no reason to use H.264. It takes longer to encode and isn't supported well by iTunes or the iPod using Videora. It's probably more intensive to decode on the iPod, and so lower bitrate with H.264 might also coincide with higher CPU usage and thus battery life balances out. Plus, it seems that the higher supported resolution and bitrate of mpeg4 may result in noticable improvement in video quality on both the iPod and video out.

Videora itself isn't too flexible with its set presets, but with Nero Recode you can resize, crop, select the audio and video bitrate.

One last note: I think I will put up two sample videos for people to test on their iPod if they want.

Haha, your username is also the same as Apple's first two-button (well, multi-button) mouse after decades of thinking one button is better