iPod Sound Quality August 27, 2007
Posted by Fadil in : Technology, Music , trackbackDuring 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.
Comments»
I’ve got the same iPod - 30 Gb Video bla bla since Sept ‘06
I got rid of the Apple Firmware on it, I am running on RockBox - it totally ROX!
It’s got everything to make you hate the original iPod Firmware.
+ Just drag and drop mp3 to the ipod folder, no need to go through the stupid iTunes.
+ Quality sound, much better than the original Firmware, + tons of sound settings.
+ Themes - loads of them! Much better than seeing the blank white screen usually on iPods
+ Total customization of settings.
Guess I’ve said enough
lol i’ve never even touched an iPod in my life.
It’s quite well-known that iPod earphones are not the best available around(which is ironic since it’s the best-selling music player in the world).
I think Creative earphones have the best sound quality (even better than Sony).
One thing i’ve noticed with all earphones is that they get damaged very quickly if u play too loud. (& with iPod earphones, it’s 10x quicker)
LaSh: That’s very neat indeed.
I had never heard of RockBox before now! But the iPod’s not mine, so I wouldn’t have wanted to try that anyway! I will try it if I eventually get myself an iPod! 
One question: after dragging and dropping tunes, does the iPod have access to metadata (cover art and lyrics notably) during playtime?
themediaguru: Yeah you’re right, Creative products’ sound quality are among the best as well! Yes, playing your music too loud causes the cone to vibrate excessively, I think. With the new-wave in-ear earphones, you don’t actually need to have the volume near the top as you get very little sound loss from these!
For the album art, you need to bring in your own. Let’s say you’ve dropped in an album for an artist, you simply need to keep that album in one folder on the ipod, then add a *.bmp file to it. And you’re done.
I don’t know about lyrics, I’ve never tried it, but I ASSUME they must have a plugin in for also, got to check it out.
Hmm ok LaSh. The thing is that I could enable/disable the option controlling the display of albumart from iTunes only. Synchronizing with Sharepod resulted in the covers not being accessible although they were part of the tracks’ metadata.
I’ve got a 4 GB Ipod nano… man, I didn’t even ask for that. Maybe I did. I just told mom if she’s seen this super cutie thing and I got it -.- Anyway, the music’s crap. The earphones, man, they’re no good. They got like damaged on the second month itself. I’m not really responsible with my things but still, 2 months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And sure, I’d have bought something else if I could have. The only consolation I have I guess is that I still have music with me everywhere I go.