Is an Ipod good enough?

[simplysped]

Hi Guys,
I have never owned an Ipod.

I just got a pair of Sennheiser 555's. I know they aren't the best, but these plugged into my sound card with my 320kbps music is so amazing!

What I want to know is, what is the best mobile music device that has the best sound quality? Will an Ipod sound this good?

Thanks

 

[mazersteven]

You are about to enter a world where many men have never made it back. Are you ready?

www.headfi.com

This is a friend of mine. Great guy, and lots of knowledge. PM him your question. He is very helpful.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/members/greatdane/

And Welcome to Audioholics

 

[ParadigmDawg]

I actually own an IPOD but have no idea what quality (bit-rate) you can download on one. I use mine for zone two, patio music. I am sure someone can help answer this.

Opps...Steven beat me to it, I was just trying to fill a gap...

 

[gus6464]

The ipod supports mp3, aac, apple lossless, aiff, and wav files as long as they are not 24/96. Itunes on the other hard will support all of the above and 24/96 wav as well. If you have a mac you can also hack itunes to support FLAC and it's very simple.

 

[m_vanmeter]

this is far from a scientific answer to your question, but I have a very good friend with remarkable hearing and a a seriously refined taste for classical music. She routinely used one of the older model iPod's for music at work...with the supplied ear buds - and was satisfied with the results.

UNTIL....she tried my new Senn HD580 headphones on the same device. She was amazed at the compromises her iPod made when playing recorded music, the apparent compression and cut off of higher frequencies and the lack of depth to the music. She played the same files though her computer sound card (a high end card, sorry I don't know which one) into the HD580's and I had a very hard time getting my headphones back ! So it was not the aac files or the original recordings, it was the limitations imposed by the older iPod. And the moral of this long winded story.....take some files you are very familar with and actually listen to them on the iPod, or any other music player, you are considering. They try to pack a lot of compromises into the small amount of playback circuitry in the tiny devices.

 

[Midcow2]

Ipod will provide very good sound, but not the absolute best!

Hi Guys,
I have never owned an Ipod.

I just got a pair of Sennheiser 555's. I know they aren't the best, but these plugged into my sound card with my 320kbps music is so amazing!

What I want to know is, what is the best mobile music device that has the best sound quality? Will an Ipod sound this good?

Thanks

Simplysped,

The Ipod can store music in MP3 format which uses a lossy compression algortithm ( which greatly reduces the original audio data with minimal reproduction quality loss) this is not quite the level that some CDs have but the MP3 format is still very good. If you want the absolute very best sound then an IPOD is not the answer! CD players that support lossless true audio and Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD would give you the best sound.

Most of the sound is derived by the speaker system you connect to. When I input left/right stereo into my HT system from my Touch Ipod the sound is very,very good. The Sennheiser 555s would give you very good sound from an Ipod!

 

[gus6464]

Simplysped,

The Ipod can store music in MP3 format which uses a lossy compression algortithm ( which greatly reduces the original audio data with minimal reproduction quality loss) this is not quite the level that some CDs have but the MP3 format is still very good. If you want the absolute very best sound then an IPOD is not the answer! CD players that support lossless true audio and Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD would give you the best sound.
[/B]

Please link any portable cd players that output TrueHD or DTS-HD. BTW Apple Lossless, FLAC, and OGG are the same as TrueHD and DTS-HD from a technical standpoint in that they are all lossless formats. With most recordings I doubt one could hear a difference between the CD and 320kbps MP3. I have some 320k MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, WAV (uncompressed), AIFF (also uncompressed) and for a comparison I encoded a track in all those formats and didn't find an audible difference between them all. If the OP is really worried about the sound quality he should just use EAC and rip to a wav file. Although I highly doubt he will hear a difference with that WAV file and a 320k MP3 encoded in LAME.

OP: Get yourself a 160GB ipod and enjoy.

 

[Cthulhu]

You won;t be able to ABX the difference between the CD and 320 kbps mp3s unless you use specially constructed test samples or are some sort of audio super sayan. In which case, start a TV series. For us norms you can probably ratchet down to 192kbs VBR with a decent encoder (and by decent, I mean LAME and not the itunes one for the love of god) and not be able to ABX the difference on most music.

You could PM wmax on this forum for further advice re: the ipods headphone jacks, but I'd say this

The ipod will do an okay job, but some models are a bit underpowered on the headphone jack front so outboard ampflication may help. But outboard amplification is what I refer to as a 'giant pain in the arse' and when you are on the go listening conditions are rarely ideal making it all a bit of a non event.

Also head-fi is full of bullshit and chips, and if you DO start reading that, remember that they have banned discussion of objective tests since I first registered there 5 years ago. There is some useful infomation though.