[estreeter]

Finally caved in and bought one, all the while cursing various Apple fanbois here and elsewhere. Overpriced, ridiculous touchscreen, awkward navigation and I loathe iTunes with a passion. And I bought it for the worst of reasons - I wanted an iPod worthy of a LOD cable for use with my amp.
 
Transferred my ALAC files onto it, plugged in my PL50s and thought 'OK, bass is punchier and its better than the 2010 Shuffle, but it would want to be for more than twice the price'. Brief listen to the Shuffle with the same song, a bit of back and forth and its 'Ok, but where's the SHAZAM moment, friends ?'.
 
Thats when I plugged in my AD900s, initially from the headphone out then from my D4. Shazam. Right there - colour me a lollygagger and tell me to head back to the space academy, but this is what I have been looking for since the day my X Series Sony was stolen from a hotel room.
 
Lets leave the detailed impressions for a while to try and get past the new toy joy. The only thing I will say is that this might not be the DAP for you if you don't like warmth of the Sony players - I really have to wonder if some of the Apple engineers were closet X owners. I am listening with my KSC-75s as I type this, and its a very warm combination indeed.
 
If this is the ($5 ?) chip that Apple have in the current iPhone/Touch lineup and it has, IMO, completely transformed the iPod (my 8GB Touch is abysmal, as was the 2009 Nano I returned inside 24 hours), why have Apple taken so long to make sound a priority. It was a priority with the 1st Gen Shuffle, and many here swear by the Wolfson DAC in the older Classic/iPod Video models, then Apple decided it was all about gimmickry.
 
Anyway, for those still sitting on the fence re the latest Nano, my advice is to beg, borrow or steal one and plug the most revealing cans you have into the thing. While I agree with Uncle Erik that its crazy to tie yourself to a corporation because they managed to release some silicon that appealed to your ears, those of us who want to see the DAP improve in terms of SQ should be happy that Apple can do this with a cheap little sliver of silicon. Now if they would just transfer the Shuffle clickwheel onto the Nano, give it 64GB of flash, open iTunes to alow drag-and-drop ....
 
 
 

 

[GreatDane]

Quote:

 my advice is to beg, borrow or steal one and plug the most revealing cans you have into the thing .
 
 

When my Nano arrives on Monday, I'll plug my T1 in and let you know how that goes.

 

 

[sml1226]

You can't use the manually manage option for your iPod in iTunes? I think that enables somewhat of a drag-and-drop scenario rather than the painfully slow syncing. I think that still works. My old buggy desktop crashed every time I tried to enable it a few years back, but I haven't tried it recently to say whether it's what I thought it was or not.

 

[estreeter]

Hey, as long as its appropriately amped, you might get a shock. Or not.
 
I'm not trying to present the Nano as a replacement for the dCS Puccini stack, but its very good compared to what has gone before. Those with fullsize rigs will probably scoff, but they dont spend a lot of time in this forum anyway - hardcore audiophiles are unlikely to enjoy it, but I'm not a hardcore anything beyond a lover of music and I dont fancy lying on my bed with a WA22 heating the room to a tropical 40 deg C

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

You can't use the manually manage option for your iPod in iTunes? I think that enables somewhat of a drag-and-drop scenario rather than the painfully slow syncing. I think that still works. My old buggy desktop crashed every time I tried to enable it a few years back, but I haven't tried it recently to say whether it's what I thought it was or not.

I want to go beyond that. Sony let me drag and drop music from any machine - Mac/PC/Linux box etc - regardless of the file manager. Apple would see this as a dangerous invitation for kiddies to share their music without someone getting the royalties - for all Steve's protestations, Apple are all about DRM.

 

[GreatDane]

Quote:

You can't use the manually manage option for your iPod in iTunes? I think that enables somewhat of a drag-and-drop scenario rather than the painfully slow syncing. I think that still works. My old buggy desktop crashed every time I tried to enable it a few years back, but I haven't tried it recently to say whether it's what I thought it was or not.

I had freezing problems running iTunes with an older laptop because it has a cheap processor but I have glitch free/ freeze free performance with my HP DM4 with Intel i5 @ 2.27 GHz with 4 GB RAM. Syncing is fairly fast with my 120 GB Classic when changing 5~15 GB playlists. With a 1GB shuffle it's as fast as I could expect for any 1GB transfer.
 
I'm not an iTunes hater. I also use Media Monkey and Foobar too but not for my iPods. I like to keep it simple with iTunes and for playback on my speaker system, it has the easiest to see organization.


Quote:

Hey, as long as its appropriately amped, you might get a shock. Or not.
 
I'm not trying to present the Nano as a replacement for the dCS Puccini stack, but its very good compared to what has gone before. Those with fullsize rigs will probably scoff, but they dont spend a lot of time in this forum anyway - hardcore audiophiles are unlikely to enjoy it, but I'm not a hardcore anything beyond a lover of music and I dont fancy lying on my bed with a WA22 heating the room to a tropical 40 deg C

I'm definitely not a fullsize rig, "I have golden ears" snob...err, not that anyone reading this is. I spend most of my listening time with IEMs or Koss & Yuin clip-on. I sleep with IEMs(PFE)...so that's 16 hours right there. Is that crazy?? I mostly work outside and can often get 6 hours with the Koss/Yuin. Add another 2 hours plus at night with fullsize. The music is of most importance to me too. I'm fairly easy to please with HPs but once I got into $300+ IEMs/HP I can't do without some serious detail for critical sessions(T1). Having said that, give me my shuffle and Koss/Yuin and I can be happy for hours.

 

[Bop]

Having listened to one briefly myself, I can remember back to the times when I listened to a 2G Nano and thought how far the sound quality came along.  From mud to pretty decent stuff.

 

[Inks]

I had similar impressions except from listening to an Ipod Touch 4th generation without an amp. This coming from Hifiman 601/602 and S:Flo2. 

 

[basementdweller]

I'm a glutton for punishment.  I use my 6g nano with my mac(you can use drag/drop through itunes if you set the synch to manual).  It might be because I have a mac laptop, or maybe I'm just used to it, but I actually never understood the itunes usability hate as I find it to be a breeze.  As of six hours ago I'll also be managing a Cowon J3 with my netbook using the old tried and true mp3 tag/drag and drop method.  Now, I'm old enough that I remember the day when one had to organize their own folders and label everything in order to get songs onto any DAP simply because there was no other choice.  In any case I got everything onto the Cowon, no problem, very easy, but it did remind me that itunes would probably be much easier for someone like my computer illiterate mother and Apple is all about easy, though limited, interface.
 
Anyway, I certainly don't have a nice home rig yet.  I do have a Nano 6g, a Cowon J3, and a NuForce uDAC-2.  I can't make comparisons with the Cowon yet simply because I want to use it for a few days, but I will say that the new Nano's signal seems to be cleaner than the Nuforce using very low impedance/highly sensitive iems.  I am also certain that no matter how much I end up liking or disliking the Cowon, the Nano isn't going anywhere.  I can't believe how much better the Nano sounds than my past Apple products and it kind of makes me pissed at Apple for for preying on my young fad-driven ways and hindering my musical experience for so many years with the first gen Touch and the older Nano.
 
The one thing that I don't like about the Nano is the steep dollar/memory ratio, but since I bought it I guess I'm not telling Apple anything they need to listen to.

 

[MoSXS]

Be careful with the 6G nano. These things do sound good, but the build quality is terrible. "terrible" is being polite, since we're not allowed to use "bad words" here.  
 
The first one I had, the sleep/wake button died after 7 weeks of use. 
 
This second one now, the screen is separating from the case. I've sent it out to repair TWICE now and BOTH times they diagnose it as "in spec". Even though the second time I shoved a freakin piece of paper under the screen to demonstrate the problem, they still say "nothings wrong with it". Even though the glue that holds the screen in place has been exposed, collecting all sorts of grime and debris and other nasty things, and I can put a piece of paper under the screen, its "in spec". Unbelievable. 
 

 

[Jalo]

Quote:

Anyway, for those still sitting on the fence re the latest Nano, my advice is to beg, borrow or steal one and plug the most revealing cans you have into the thing. 
 
 
 

Hehehe, misery likes company, you are just trying to drag everyone down with you so you can feel better about spending the money 

 

 

 

[Jalo]

Quote:

Hey, as long as its appropriately amped, you might get a shock. Or not.
 
I'm not trying to present the Nano as a replacement for the dCS Puccini stack, but its very good compared to what has gone before. Those with fullsize rigs will probably scoff, but they dont spend a lot of time in this forum anyway - hardcore audiophiles are unlikely to enjoy it, but I'm not a hardcore anything beyond a lover of music and I dont fancy lying on my bed with a WA22 heating the room to a tropical 40 deg C

I think in a few months when we are finally able to take the digital out of ipod/nano and process the signal with the latest crop of dac and amp, a lot of hardcore audiophiles will be shock.

 

[Jalo]

Quote:

I had similar impressions except from listening to an Ipod Touch 4th generation without an amp. This coming from Hifiman 601/602 and S:Flo2. 

If what you say above is anything close to truth, you'll make me very happy.

 

[Inks]

More like my opinion than the "truth", your mileage may vary. I Compared the Touch to the 601 and SFlo2 and I found it to be at least on par. It resembles more the SFlo2 in sound but it somehow sounds more refined despite having smaller soundstage than the SFlo2.  

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

I had similar impressions except from listening to an Ipod Touch 4th generation without an amp. This coming from Hifiman 601/602 and S:Flo2. 

I'd much rather have a Touch than an S"Flo2 or HifiMan....in fact, I do have one!