[arribadia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman arribadia, the Photo may be the problem. It's my opinion (although I haven't been able to do an A-B comparison so far) that the Photo is noticeably worse than previous iPods out of the Headphone Out. I use a headphone which gets around much of the 'fall-off' problems, but bass aside, I can hear a noticeably degraded sound when compared to older iPods. In using another player as a yardstick, I'm finding it much harder to tell the difference between the iPod and the iAudio X5, whereas before I could easily tell a difference. I haven't done proper Line Out comparisons since I don't use my players like that often, but who knows... maybe it's worse that way too.

I suspect the same too, I originally used to own a 4G 20GB iPod for a while before upgrading to the 30GB Photo, and that's exactly why I found the new one so lacking.

The strange thing is some other forumers did claim to do a A-B comparison between the 2 models and found them virtually indistinguishable... hmmm...

The iPod is seriously a nice player, but I just cannot accept something that produces such horrific sound. And it is really quite a shame that I can't go to the local Apple shop and ask to hear a particular track on their demo sets.

 

[bangraman]

I think it's pretty far from horrific... in absolute terms, these are fairly small changes. It's just that now, soundwise there's not a huge reason to choose it over the X5 for example. A bit of a disappointment for sure.

 

[arribadia]

It really depends on what you listen to, I mean for pop songs... it is probably ok. But for music, it is pretty bad.

 

[bangraman]

I don't listen to pop often. And I use the Sony Qualia 010 to do so... a very unforgiving headphone. If it was "horrific" I'd notice it.

 

[Jmmmmm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoSXS Again, this problem does not exist. I don't believe it. I've never heard it with any headphones, or from any of my friends using headphones below 64Ohms. The only people I've heard it from are anti-Apple folks. And theres always a suspicion of why they so insist that the iPod is lacking in bass. ... He actually did list quite a few that provide more bass than anyone needs. Including the Apple In-Ear canalphones, the Sony earbuds, etc. He just thinks they don't work well because of their impedance. It's obvious he has never used or heard an iPod and is just making assumptions to make the iPod look bad.

Haha, you care way too much man.
Go outside; play a sport. Find more important things to complain about.

 

[Nomad]

Many thanks Halcyon and Bangraman for your proven facts and for being so knowledgeable.

Many thanks MoSXS for being so funny.


The bass falloff is there. If you admit it, then you can compensate it (if you want). I can see people still confusing bass with midbass coloration. Zelda OOT still can be considered as the best game ever.


Cheers

 

[Spad]

Something to keep in mind when reading threads such as this is that they typically consist of a few informed posts drowning in a virtual sea of ill intent and half-baked opinions.

The truth is that an iPod played through even a marginally designed amp is very unlikely to have any bass roll off however low the impedance of the headphones used.

As for the sound quality of the photo models, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of some who claim theirs sound bad. But I must say that if the Nano equals the output of my 60 I will be absolutely delighted.

 

[bangraman]

Some people don't travel amped. Me for a start. In fact the majority don't. However as I may have said elsewhere, the falloff is not really the issue for me.... it never has been. The new Photo iPod's sound quality is however. It's not 'horrific' as it's been claimed elsewhere, but it is noticeably (at least to me) worse than previous iPods when comparing against a third-party source.


This doesn't IMO make it sound worse than many other players... but rather, puts it on the same level. However, as inflicted with a notable falloff with low-impedance phones and also a poor EQ as the iPod is, having merely the same core sound quality as other players would place it at a disadvantage.


That leaves the superior flexibility of navigation, loading and playback for the current generation full-size iPod as it's more or less sole definitive plus. For some that might not be enough.

 

[Spad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman Some people don't travel amped. Me for a start. In fact the majority don't.

But the thread's originator does, and he wrote specifically about his iPod, his amp, and the lack of bass roll off.

I don't always use an amp either, but when I don't I use something like the PX100 which, IIRC, you agree is a fine match for an unamped iPod. I don't have a Qualia, but I do have an SA5K which probably presents a similar load to the iPod. It works fairly well, but not well enough to forego an amp IMO.

Hey, it's not always about us!

 

[deathBOB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TenaciousO 4. With certain headphones, the iPod produced great sound. Specifically, I found great synergy between the iPod and the HD555. In fact, the iPod seemed to drive the HD555 much more forcefully than when I paired it with the Rio Karma. Moreover, when I inserted a 80 ohm adapter between the iPod and E2c, the E2c sounded MUCH better with increased soundstage and better reproduction of the lower frequencies. These findings comport with the assertion that the iPod doesn't suffer bass roll off when paired with higher-impedance headphones.

Agreed! I will take my Ipod Mini with HD555 over my computer any day. It sounds much much better. Classical + Ipod mini + HD555 =

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spad But the thread's originator does, and he wrote specifically about his iPod, his amp, and the lack of bass roll off. I don't always use an amp either, but when I don't I use something like the PX100 which, IIRC, you agree is a fine match for an unamped iPod. I don't have a Qualia, but I do have an SA5K which probably presents a similar load to the iPod. It works fairly well, but not well enough to forego an amp IMO. Hey, it's not always about us!

True about the lack of a bass falloff. The point I missed out writing was that the Photo seems to have a comparative issue regarding a sound quality loss in the line out too. I won't go into that as it doesn't worry me as much, and many other players have various issues with line outs as well.


As for amping, it depends on what you want an amp to do I guess, and what it does.

 

[Spad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman The point I missed out writing was that the Photo seems to have a comparative issue regarding a sound quality loss in the line out too. I won't go into that as it doesn't worry me as much, and many other players have various issues with line outs as well.

I haven't read that, but I do find that like all iPods, the line out and headphone jack have the same amplitude and SQ. I know I make some crazy by saying this, but they sound the same to me.

 

[TenaciousO]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spad I haven't read that, but I do find that like all iPods, the line out and headphone jack have the same amplitude and SQ. I know I make some crazy by saying this, but they sound the same to me.

I'll join you in making some folks here crazy because I completely agree.

 

[Nomad]

Well, I must say that at the same volume, the headphone output was noisier (by far), at least with the UE-10. Maybe with some other phones the effect is not so drastic.

I can't comment on the SQ, as I only did the test for 5 seconds. Enough to see that the Line Out has less noise, but not enough for a SQ analysis. I would say I found it better from Line Out but this might be subjective because of the noise perception.

I left my dock in Spain 4 days ago, so I can't repeat the test. I'm buying another one this weekend or the next one, while buying a black iPod nano.

Cheers.

 

[bigshot]

On my 3g 30 gig, the amped headphone out wasn't noisier compared to the amped line out, it just wasn't as punchy. The dynamics seem better out of the line out.

See ya
Steve