[Mr.Tom]

  the ponoplayer sounds far superior to any iPod or iPhone ever made.
 
it works just like an old iPod, except the audio is no compromise and it takes external cards up to 128gb each. 
 
the shape is also perfect for an audio player, much more convenient and useful than the slab shape of iPods.
 
it's basically the iPod Pro if apple ever bothered to make one, and if they were an audio company, which they are not.
 
put it this way - apple's products do amazing things with $5 worth of audio components.
 
but you can spend $100 for a fiio and hear an improvement, and you can spend $400 for a ponoplayer and hear professional audio.

That Pono is total *****! When I listened to it, I thought folks that buy this must have some sort of hearing loss. IMO, it's a $75. player. Just can't understand any hype for this product. My Fiio X1 leaves it in the dust!!

 

[KT66]

Bold statement, hard to get ESS sabre sounding bad

 

[arnyk]

Hard to get any of the top digital players sounding bad, once you get people past their biases and bad listening tests.

 

[arnyk]

  Yes, I think Apple was probably getting too many dropped iPods back for servicing under Apple Care.

 
Anything with traditional hard drives is going to be a reliability issue, but so were the early flash drives. Seem better now.

 

[mironathetin]

   
Anything with traditional hard drives is going to be a reliability issue, but so were the early flash drives. Seem better now.

 
Can't chime in to that.
Our daughter recently dropped her iPhone 4s. There is no hard drive to break, that is true. But the rest, the large screen first, but also the power button and the whole case is destroyed, as if a truck had run over it. Wouldn't have made any difference, if also a hd in it had been broken.

 

[interpolate]

I don't use any Apple products, so I can only speculate what others have said must be true.
 
To be honest, usually dedicated products will give you the best results for your money. Apple iPod for what is worth suits a generation of people who don't care about music fidelity anymore.

 

[RRod]

  I don't use any Apple products, so I can only speculate what others have said must be true.
 
To be honest, usually dedicated products will give you the best results for your money. Apple iPod for what is worth suits a generation of people who don't care about music fidelity anymore.

 
It suits some of us who do care about music fidelity as well.

 

[interpolate]

Perhaps. That's unfair of me to place everyone in the same category, so possibly lossless files need more promotion.

 

[mironathetin]

  Perhaps. That's unfair of me to place everyone in the same category, so possibly lossless files need more promotion.

Didn't we just a few pages higher discucss, that many of us have trouble to distingiush anything better than 192 Kbits from lossless? 
It is as if that discussion has evaporated - even in the same thread. Ahhhhhhh....

 

[interpolate]

Maybe..maybe not. I don't read every response. Should I? Personally I find it very time consuming to read every one.
 
Perhaps it has got a point where any distinguishing factors are pointless and we should be happy with cheap $20 playback units. No?

 

[headwhacker]

  I don't use any Apple products, so I can only speculate what others have said must be true.
 
To be honest, usually dedicated products will give you the best results for your money. Apple iPod for what is worth suits a generation of people who don't care about music fidelity anymore.

 
 

  Perhaps. That's unfair of me to place everyone in the same category, so possibly lossless files need more promotion.

 
No offense but I think placing the iPod under the category below hifi is plain ignorance especially in SS. Sure iPod is not perfect, but if you understand it's weaknesses and pair it with the correct headphone it is more than capable than what boutique DAPs can do. Sure it doesn't play DSD or anything above 24-bit/48khz format But both never defined what hifi means nor they are required.
 
To be honest, if you just like to enjoy music, most boutique DAPs takes away a thing or 2 (even more) from the experience the iPod has been providing for la ong time.

 

[Mr.Tom]

Bold statement, hard to get ESS sabre sounding bad

Well I'm not that impressed with player that use the best Dac's then poor implementation of the analog section. I'm not an engineer, so I can't really say whats wrong with there implementation. All I can say is it sounded ice cold to me.
 
I find my Fiio x1 (with lessor DAC) to sound Way more enjoyable. Just my opinion.

 

[interpolate]

Nobody is saying iPod is bad per se although there is a euphony of clever advertising behind it making speculative claims to be the best thing for that price when it has been clearly proven by other Chinese firms, if you forgo the fancy interface and concentrate on better components. Well OK maybe the screens could improved on Fiio units although I think they present good value for money. 
 
Nota Bene:
 
My main point about sound quality was that for many years Record Companies have only provided lossy formats and sometimes the only option. If you playback any CD quality (lossless) beside the same version which is lossy, there is definitely something amiss. It's akin to the je ne said quoi of from vinyl to CD people with good equipment could hear.

 

[StanD]

I'm not an Apple fan, however, I do have only one of thier products, the Touch 5G. Not only does it measure well, it sounds great. If one can live with it's limited internal storage, which is available up to 64 GB, you"ll be OK. If one insists upon hirez files and gobs of storage, it may not be for you. I find that 320 kbps mp3 files quite fine and studies have shown one cannot tell the difference between that and hires. If one feels that hires is a must, I wonder if they can appreciate any differences when in a less than ideal mobile listening environment.
It's amp cannot drive to the max some challenging headphones of low sensitivty low impedance or very high impedance. But it's a portable device so one is unlikely to take their heavy planars on the road.

 

[interpolate]

Nobody noticed my petit error, ah bien!
 
Granted the majority of people using iPod won't be using large scale headphone and at a push Dre. Beats seem to be popular with the iPeople fraternity. I'm not an Apple fan as you can probably fathom by now.
 
However I don't discourage others from buying any of their stuff; it is just not for me.
 
When I tried out my Shure SE425 on my LG G2, the sound lacked definition. Now that I have the FiiO X3 ii there is no perceivable hiss and the bass and mid/treble drivers get the amplification they need. I suspect an iPod or iPhone could drive them equally as well however that's another story for a different day.
 
The majority of my media files are >160K MP3, 256K M4A (yes I know, I know) or FLAC.