iPod Sound Quality August 27, 2007
Posted by Fadil in : Technology, Music , 6 comments
During the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to have a 5.5G 30GB iPod around to fiddle with (thanks Baim). The fact that I can only borrow an iPod may surprise some, but I live in Mauritius and the 30GB model, which costs around $400 here, is not quite affordable.
The thing I’d like to point out is the rather poor quality of the sound output from the device. It surprised me that the world’s most popular portable music player does not deliver better in this respect. I was utterly disappointed by how grainy the sound can get even with the equalizer turned off. Listening to electronic music such as trance or house on the iPod was not enjoyable at times. The bass from the original iPod earphones is not deep enough, and setting the equalizer to “Bass Booster” mode does nothing but accentuate the graininess. I’ve been used to Sony products for many years, namely cassette, CD and MiniDisc Walkmans. I currently have a Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone as portable music player. I have to say the sound from Sony branded products is of much superior quality than from the iPod.
The Apple Store does sell earphones/headphones from other manufacturers. According to the reviews, the sound from some of these (Sony & Bose ones notably) is much better than from the original ones. I tried the in-ear earphones supplied with my Walkman handset on the iPod, and I did notice an improvement in the sound quality. It was, however, not as good as the sound you get from Sony players. Another way of supposedly improving the sound quality is to have all your tracks in AAC format, which is the format used by the iTunes music store incidentally. From what I’ve read, the AAC decoder of the device is better that the MP3 one. I’ve unfortunately not been able to try this.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think highly of the iPod. Watching movies on the device is a great experience. The file management capabilities of the iPod+iTunes combination is impressive as well; transferring files, building playlists and selecting tracks to play were never easier. A couple of third-party applications did come in handy to load the music player with files from different libraries though. The best part of it is that, of course, you get to have the whole of your music collection on the move.
The quality of the output sound was, nonetheless, a real letdown for me. There are a few questions I’d like to ask iPod owners:
- Is your opinion about the device’s sound quality the same as mine?
- If you had actually been aware of this before, would you have bought a different portable music player?
Word on the street (web) is that the new iPod, which should be out later this year, will be remastered at various levels. It is being said that it will have an interface similar to that of the iPhone, described by Steve Jobs as “the best iPod ever made”. My wish is that the new line of music players from Apple Inc. also bears an improved audio output.
