Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Sound Quality of the Fifth Generation iPods?

Posted by Cliff on Mon Jan 09, 2006 01:45 PM
from the it's-all-about-the-decibels dept.
Media Music Portables (Apple) Hardware
ntropi asks: "As the drive on my old MP3 player (an iRiver H320) grinds toward its last days, I've found myself in search of a new one. Given the options the new iPod seems the best choice, but I'm hesitating somewhat over the murmurings as to the iPod's supposedly poor sound quality. However, while Marc Heijligers has provided a comprehensive breakdown of iPod performance for up to the fourth generation, I have been hard-pressed to find any information on the 5G's performance. With the exception of this CNET review, which reports that 'Audio quality is quite good and probably better than the previous iPod's, with reasonable bass, distinguishable mids, and shiny highs, plus the audio-output power is quite good.', there seems not to have been any detailed analysis of the iPod's output quality. Thus, it seemed a good idea to appeal to the Slashdot hive-mind for its personal experiences with the 5G's playback, or even analyses that people might have done which were simply never put online."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Sound Quality of the Fifth Generation iPods? 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Sounds Better Than My Old 3G (Score:5, Informative)

    by humuhumunukunukuapu' (678704) on Monday January 09 2006, @01:59PM (#14429492)
    My new one sounds a teeny bit cleaner than my old 3G 40GB.

    The issue with the bass rolloff with low impedence phones [IE in ear monitor style] is still there, but not as severe. all that requires is the use of the EQ + mp3/aac gain anyway.

    overall i like the way it sounds. i know that probably doesn't help much.
  • Seriously, are you going to be attaching one to a $10,000 hifi system?

    Okay, I know that's a bit much, but it's probably good enough for most people who have a portable player. I expect it beats out anything that you could buy in the 90s. Maybe with high-end headphones there'd be a quality difference, and even then it could be subjective.

    Suggestion: Take your headphones down to the electronics store and ask to listen to a comparison. If it is an option, it'd beat out any amount of third party reviews, and co
    • Actually, given the cause of most of the sound quality problems I've heard about, you would not notice most of them when hooking it up to a $10,000 Hi-Fi system. The problem is that the iPods apparently have output amps with current handling capability that is way too low. As a result, the amps start becoming nonlinear as hell when connected to lower-impedance headphones. (I've heard 16-ohm headphones sound like shit in iPods at any reasonable listening level, and 32-ohm headphones are so-so, while anyth

  • Other factors (Score:5, Insightful)

    by planetmn (724378) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:02PM (#14429516)
    In all likelihood, the quality coming out of the unit itself is not the weakest link. Poor headphones, poor encoding, bad ears, bad listening environment, etc. will all be a factor. Like someone above said, listen to it, if you like it who cares what reviewers say?

    I like good speakers for my home theater. But a friend of mine likes his $250 all-in-one setup. It's not that either one of us is wrong, but he gets the quality he wants, and doesn't spend nearly as much as I do.

    -dave
    • bravo. it's not the ipod directly, but the level of encoding of the audio file, the headphones you listen on and even your own ability to hear the entire spectrum from 20 - 20k hertz.
    • Apparently you've never heard an iPod. :-)

      My first gen iPod (not very helpful to the original poster, I know) actively distorts sound! No environment, headphones, or ears are going to help that. It's like they have a hardcoded digitial amplification going on which just kills any music that recorded at at full volume. Which is to say, any rock album that came out in the last 5 or 10 years. Music older than that wasn't so heavily compressed (and I'm not talking about the mp3 sense), and so it doesn't distort.
      • Check the EQ settings. I've got a 4G that clips out aocustic jazz when I have the EQ set on Electronic. Turning it off gennerally gives me the best results overall.

        I know in iTunes you can apply EQ settings to the individual track, but it occurs to me that I've never actually check to see if the iPod honors those...

  • It sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by duffbeer703 (177751) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:04PM (#14429530)
    Only vinyl provides the warmth and depth that the artists really intended --- But Steve Jobs refuses to support vinyl because it won't accomodate DRM.

  • sound quality not the thing to worry about (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tumbleweed (3706) * on Monday January 09 2006, @02:20PM (#14429677) Homepage
    I'd first worry about how long the ipod will last. Everyone I know who has an ipod for any length of time (>6 months) has them start breaking down, either a battery issue, or a control wheel issue. One of them has a theory as to why the ipod is so popular: people get their first ipod, love it, while it works, and they then recommend them to all their friends. Their friends get them, and love them, etc. Then the original guy's ipod starts flaking out. By this time, Apple has come out with a new generation of ipods, so the guy decides to upgrade to the new generation, thus starting the cycle all over again.

    Anecdotal, yes, but it seems to be pretty universal among the people I know with ipods. *shrug*
    • I've had my ipod over 1.5 years. I listen to it almost every day for 4+ hours. I carry it all over the place. I've dropped it once (on carpet, whew). Still works like a champ.

      Ancedotal and useless comment as you yourself pointed out. Why post.
    • As anecdotal as it may sound, I have a first gen iPod that I gave to my wife. It still works. I'm now running a 4th gen iPod and I have had it over a year and it hasn't failed yet.
    • I just replaced the battery in my 1st generation iPod and it works better than ever (longer battery life than original). How hard was it to do? I bought a replacement battery for $20, which came with the necessary plastic tool to open the iPod. 10 minutes is all it took to replace the battery without marring the case in any way. It was about as hard as putting a SIM card into a cellphone. If I had to replace the $20 battery every three years I don't see a reason to complain. The battery in my cordless phone

  • Truthfully (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist (898384) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:22PM (#14429696)
    iPod's audio quality isn't the best. Its not overly powerful, its quiet on most good quality headphones. I here some faint digital "chatter" in the background, such as noise caused by the hard drive (or so I thought). I still hear this chatter on my Shuffle without any moving parts, so this leads me to believe that its a hardware issue. However, I don't here this chatter on a good quality pair of headphones like Sony DJ's or Sennheiser's, only on the really crappy Apple headphones which are way too tinny for my tastes. Not enough bass comes out of Apple's headphones. I generally have not heard any static or background noise as I have heard from cheaper digital music players.

    When you hook the iPod to any good receiver or external speakers, the audio quailty is about as good as any digital media player. A system with good bass and good processing handles the relatively weak output of the iPod well for good overall sound.

    The end result is, NO digital media player is for audiophiles, but the iPod is about as good as any. You will get lots of bias feedback saying Apple is the best, or the worst, but its about middle of the road, the digital chatter I hear is annoying only if you like your treble levels high, which most people don't.

    In the end, compared to Creative or another comparible price/featured product, I doubt your going to find any of them setting themselves appart greatly in terms of audio quality. Only that the Creative actually uses a real equalizer feature to help fine tune things unlike the cheesy presets Apple uses. In my experience, using ANY iPod preset results in lousy audio quality as their digital audio processing isn't that great and make the music sound overly processed.

    Would I not recommend the iPod based on audio quality alone, no. There are a lot more features and benefits using an iPod then a few audio quirks which are mostly overcome using better speakers/headphones. Just that I get sick and tired when people seem to feel that one digital audio player is better sounding the the next, except for really cheap ones, most in the $300 range are comparable, just depends how much bias is behind the person recommending them.

    • Re:Truthfully (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SIGFPE (97527) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:36PM (#14429820) Homepage

      However, I don't here this chatter on a good quality pair of headphones

      If there really were some "digital chatter" in the line out signal then you'd probably hear it more clearly with good headphones. More likely it's a problem specifically with the earphones (and hence an analogue problem) or something in your imagination.


      And using my 64 ohm Sennheiser HD580 headphones my iPod nano isn't quiet at all. I have to admit I was surprised by this.

      • Re:Truthfully (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If the original post were describing coding artifacts, it is actually possible to hear coding artifacts more clearly on "cheap" headphones (or ear buds) vs an expensive set of headphones or good quality speakers. (As strange as this may seem.)

        The reason is that "lossy" perceptual coding algorithms (MP3, AAC, etc) work by applying what is known as a masking threshold. A tone of sufficient amplitude masks our ability to hear other tones below this threshold. When compressing the audio the stuff under the m
      • "I will certainly agree that as far as sound quality goes, the Shuffle is definitely an inferior product. "

        Interesting. I personally don't have the ears to tell the difference, but I this PC Magazine article [pcmag.com] by Bill Machrone disagrees with your assertion:

        "Apple's new iPod shuffle has stellar audio performance. In the bass registers, it blows away the competition, including its bigger siblings.... The iPod shuffle's near-perfect rendering of the [40-Hz] square wave means that it uses push-pull output instea

  • Its a compressed mp3, not a cd. Its more portable! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acomj (20611) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:28PM (#14429751) Homepage
    For crying out loud. Ipods sound great, as good as any portible audio device I've owned. I listen with good headphones too. Much better the the "walkman" casette players I've owned.

      If your an "audiofile" then listen to lossless or a cd or even better "VYNL RECORDS".

    The whole point of portable MP3 is to carry as many songs in as small a space. If people wanted perfect CD quality in a portable package they'd buy mini-disc. But they didn't. However people want good->excellent quality and small files.

  • Head-fi (Score:2, Informative)

    by frogblast (916870)
    The people here will be able to help, its a great place to find out about portable audio/headphones: http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/ [head-fi.org]

  • If you're happy with it, why not upgrade the HD? (Score:3, Informative)

    by infojunkie (96487) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:38PM (#14429840)
    I was under the impression the H320 used a standard laptop HD. The latest models even sport 7200rpm and 16mb buffers that might breath some new life into it... unless you're looking for an excuse to get something different. I'm not judging, but I just dropped a Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm w/8mb into my old Archos JBR, and haven't looked back. Not as sleek or shiny as a new Ipod, but with the Rockbox firmware does everything I need.
    • Here's a photo [wonko.com] of my H120 (same form factor as the H320, unless I'm mistaken) next to a Hitachi laptop hard drive. Unfortunately, the H120 is too small (especially in width) to contain the drive. It's a shame, too, because I love my H120 so much I don't know what I'd do if the drive failed and I couldn't replace it.

  • If you're using an ipod with the supplied phones (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Biotech9 (704202) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:40PM (#14429874) Homepage
    or without a headphone amp, odds are you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an ipod mini (supposedly the worst sounding ipod) and any of the other offerings, or any iriver/archos alternatives.

    iPods are mainly for portable music, most of the time music on the move doesn't need audiophile reproduction, and even the cheapest MP3 players offer very decent music quality.

    If you are mulling over splashing out so you can get GREAT sound quality from an iPod, just concentrate on the parts that count, the headphones. A pair of sennheiser or etymotics will set you back just half the price of an iPod and will make a stunning difference to sound quality.

    http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/all-h eadphones/sennheiser-hd-555.php [headphone.com]
    http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/all-h eadphones/sennheiser-hd-595.php [headphone.com]
    http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/in-ea r-monitor/etymotic-er-6i.php [headphone.com]
    http://www.headphone.com/products/headphones/in-ea r-monitor/etymotic-er-4p.php [headphone.com]
    • I bought HD-580's [headphone.com] for my iPod and had to buy an amp shortly aftererwards. I needed to crank up the iPod so high that the sound really suffered. Things have been great since the amp [shellbrooklab.com] arrived. In short, once you replace the weak link of the headphones, the next weakest link, the amp, becomes annoyingly obvious.
      • I found that my iPod would drive the 580s to reasonable listening levels without any real problem. If you NEEDED an amp, it's virtually certain that you're listening to the music too loud, and damaging your hearing.

        That said, an amp is a very good idea on 580s. They're wonderful headphones, but they're high-impedance... 300 ohms. The iPod, like most devices, is designed to drive about 30. You can still get pretty good volume out of it, and it still sounds pretty good, but the clarity and bass will perk

  • We'd know if it sounded bad (Score:3, Informative)

    by chia_monkey (593501) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:48PM (#14429942) Journal
    Being that it's all mp3 technology, the difference should be negligible. And trust me...if the sound was THAT much different from one generation to another, we'd definitely hear about it. Apple can't even fart now without it being all over the Internet. A screen on the iPod scratches easily? Class action suits abound! If the sound had deteriorated, there would be hell to pay. Thus...go buy it and enjoy your new iPod.

  • Oh okay, here is an expert opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Monday January 09 2006, @02:52PM (#14429972) Journal
    Not mine of course. I am not an expert but I do work as a rigger and so spend time around real audio freaks and MP3 SUCKS. It is bad. It is very very bad, it is so bad that you cannot believe how bad it is.

    Proof? Hook up your iPod to a real sound system and blast it through a concert hall. YIKES!

    You will truly not believe it. I cannot hear the difference between normal audio equipment but when it is amplified by the kind of equipment that can blow fuses you really do hear that is not a complete sound.

    So what does it sound like really? Well it sounds exactly like those really really cheap radios you used to get free with things amplified in a drum.

    So asking wether an iPod sounds good is a stupid question. All DAP players suck because the content they reproduce sucks. The hardware itself also doesn't have the quality needed either.

    BUT DOES THIS MATTER. No.

    It is not meant to be played to a thousand people, it is meant to power a couple of small earbud speakers and considering all the limitations involved both in the hardware and in you it is okay. Yeah sure some people will swear that they can hear the difference between Player X and Player Y well good luck to them. For the majority of people there is no difference and if you need to ask you are one of those people. Do not try to claim you are audiofreak by asking other people. Audiofreaks never listen to other people.

    Note that the above is a bit extreme, you can do a successfull presentation from a laptop with powerpoint and mp3 audio but you are pushing it. Do not play music this way to an audio fanatics audience. Please note that their is also a hell of difference between the sound needed for a presentation and that for the party afterwards. If you think of holding one afterwards check with the sound engineer before and ask if the setup is small enough to be played from your sound source. They don't mind if you ask not simply tell them to do it and then complain it sounds bad. They are used to people thinking consumer hardware is good enough. Personally I had to explain more then once that a companies own top of the line projector was just not going to cut it for a conference hall. Their can be carried in a suitcase. Ours sits in a large trunk and can only be lifted with hydraulics.

    • The 10:1 compression (from CD) is lossy, and it certainly shows: just pipe your MP3 player through any decent home stereo, and sync the CD with the MP3. There certainly is a difference. But it doesn't much matter under the usual [noisy] MP3 listening environments.

  • The ipod sucks. (Score:4, Informative)

    by molnarcs (675885) <molnarcs&gmail,com> on Monday January 09 2006, @02:58PM (#14430019) Homepage Journal
    I'm ditching my ipod mini (2g) - and will buy an SE W800i phone. I have a k750i - which is a superb phone. For one thing it uses standards (png for transparency on themes, jpg for images). Connects out of the box via usb in FreeBSD. 2Mpixel camera. Nice menus. I'm selling it too along with my ipod, so I can buy a w800. No more struggle with the nightmarish interface of itunes. Just drag and drop my music dirs into an mp3 dir on the phone. Comes with an 512Mb card, which can be upgraded to a 2Gb one. That's good enough for music and photos. And sound quality on this baby [mobileburn.com] is infinitely better than on the ipod, thanks to these earbuds [mobileburn.com] and the excellent audio player. Has a built in fm radio with rdf support as well. And believe it or not, it is perfectly usable - in fact, given it's functions (organizer, phone, camera, walkman) the interface is an UI marvel. Costs as much as an ipod btw.

    Despite to the raves I read here on slashdot, the ipod was a HUGE disappointment for me - I guess I'm not the target audience. I'm more concerned about sound quality and features than the fancy click-wheel. Give me something that I can figure out easily (the W800 works while the phone is switched off, providing 30h long playback. The ipod mini's battery life sucked big time as well), is small, has at least 2Gb space, and doesn't need a separate program just to copy files to it. W800 provides me with that - and much much more (actually, the camera is pretty good as well). Yeah, I'm absolutely anti-ipod. So my advice is: don't buy an ipod. Buy something much much better for the same money. If you don't need a new phone, buy a player that supports ogg and flac (not just crappy mp3s - without gapless playback support! and AACs). The ipod is overrated.

  • I can't really tell the difference. I can hear the difference between 128kbps and 160kbps mp3s but not between my 2 iPods but I usually use the standard earbuds. I just ordered a set of Sony MDR-EX81LP in-ear headphones so maybe I could when I get them but honestly I'm more worried about scratching my screen then sound. Depends on what you'll be hooking your 5G up to.
  • I've found the fifth generation iPod to be a very solid product. Needing to use iTunes to add music is a weakness, but even on Windows it's a good program, so it's not a big weakness. Battery life could be better but I've never had it run out on me on the road; just be close to a charger if you're planning on watching more than a few hours of video. I used to take it to school and watch Doctor Who between classes, then charge it over USB during classes with computers handy. I could get through several episo

  • What I worry about... (Score:5, Funny)

    by joto (134244) on Monday January 09 2006, @04:02PM (#14430598)

    Ah, you're an "audiophile". For the best sound-quality, I recommend that you get the new deoxidized monster ultraTHX speakerphone cable. It will really increase the "warmth" of the music. We also have in stock a specially shielded cable you can run between the battery and the unit, to remove interference from the battery. And we also have these practical spikes to mount your ipod on, that will reduce vibration from the ground... Moreover, if you open your ipod, and use a green felt pen around the case of the harddisk, it will improve the sound-quality a lot!

    Personally, I think the sound quality of most portable audio players are more than adequate for a portable audio player. What I really want is a portable disk-based audio-player that has a completely normal USB harddisk interface to the computer, and that supports ogg vorbis, musepack, flac, and other common formats. But I guess there's no market for that, people really want to limit their choices to the iTunes I guess, and never have a need for portable harddisks in the same unit...

  • Stereophile loved the audio quality of the 3G iPod (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2006, @04:03PM (#14430606)
    The review is at http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/93 4/index.html [stereophile.com].

    "The iPod's measured behavior is better than many CD players--ironic, considering that most of the time it will be used to play MP3 and AAC files, which will not immediately benefit from such good performance. But if you're willing to trade off maximum playing time against the ability to play uncompressed AIFF or WAV files, the iPod will do an excellent job of decoding them. Excellent, cost-effective audio engineering from an unexpected source.--John Atkinson"
  • Dear god, do they really intend that to be a meaningful description of sound quality?

    What they should be doing is a proper analysis of the iPod's output. In other words, take a sample track; encode it; decode it again, to provide your baseline data; play it through the iPod, capturing the result with a high-quality, known-good A/D converter; and then comparing the result the the baseline data. This will give you an actual response curve that lets you talk about the audio quality in genuine, objective, num

  • The worse mp3 player will sound better than the best one if you use good headphones and good audio files (44.1Khz / 16bits losslessly compressed).

    The player itself is not so important.

  • What Snobs We Have Become (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thatguywhoiam (524290) on Monday January 09 2006, @04:58PM (#14431150)
    Sometimes I really wonder where we get our perceptions of 'quality'....

    I guess I am a graybeard now, I remember recording an FM signal off the radio, onto a casette tape (magnetized particles, young'ins! and we liked it!)... trying to get a clean 'rip' without the DJ trampling the beginning or end (impossible)... futzing with levels to hit that magical peak 0dB (but not too much over!)... applying Dolby B 'noise reduction'.... all of this took, usually, an entire afternoon to assemble one good tape. Which your buddy's car deck would then eat the next day.

    Not that I miss any of that really, but now its 'Transcode the file from AAC to MP3?!? My ears would BLEED, such a thing is beyond the pale! Were you raised in a cave?'

    Of course, a lot of it is bullshit. There are true audiophiles and then there are those who just want to know that they have The Best. These are the people who have $10k stereos that don't notice when the entire left channel disappears at a club. I find its usually me and maybe one or two other people in the vicinity who looked shocked when that happens... the rest have no idea....

    • Re:Your decision (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not all of us live near an Apple store, or any store selling ipods. If I were to want a new ipod, I would have to mail order it, or drive several hundred miles, neither of which I'd want to do without knowing how the sound quality is.
      • No Best Buy? Circuit City? Fry's? Microcenter? CompUSA? Yikes... sounds like a tough place to live.
        • What you describe sounds like pretty much everywhere outside the U.S.

          In Europe, at least, iPods are pretty hard to buy retail. You are lucky if you can find a store that stocks a shuffle. I know in Brussels the high tech mega mart ("Media Markt", comparable to Best Buy) still only sells iPod Minis - no Nanos or 5G iPods. And there are only Apple Stores in US, UK and Japan.
      • Just to quote a few:

        "6th Avenue Electronics, Boscovs, Bose, Brandsmart,Circuit City, Crutchfield, Electronic Express, Fred Meyer, HH Greggs, J&R, Longs, Meijer, Mobile Planet, Musicland, PC Richards, Radio Shack, RCS EXPERIENCE, Rite Aid, Sam's, Shopko, Sharper Image, Target, Tweeter or Wal-Mart?"

        Yeah, I don't live near any of those, actually, parent poster is quite lucky only to need to "drive several hundred miles", I would probable have to fly several hundreds or even thousands of miles to get to

      • What provides a more accurate idea of the sound experience under normal use for most people? Is it:

        A)a sound-isolated listening booth

        or

        B)a busy Apple store

        How it sounds and how it sounds when I'm using it can be two different things, and personally I'd be more interested in the latter. Going and listening to it is better advice then taking some random slashdotters word for it.
    • Do they have gapless playback and ReplayGain support yet?

      I am pretty sure the answer is no for gapless playback. From what I understand, the standard mp3 codec doesn't support it, but AAC can. Apple doesn't support it, the iRiver does, IIRC, and some guys have a hacked [rockbox.org] up mp3 codec/firmware that supports it. Also, Sony players will do it if you use ATRAC...So as you see this gapless playback seems to have been not a big priority for many companies, and I personally haven't heard many people complaining [petitiononline.com].

      • If the mp3 codec doesn't support it, then how was the Rio Karma able to do it with mp3 files?

        As for the sound quality issue, when you're talking about a lossy (and pretty crappy IMO) format such as mp3 or even aac, any differences between players are going to be negligible at best. Are you listening to them through reference-quality headphonese, or earbuds? Are you using it in a car with lots of road noise? Are you listening to 128 kbps mp3? You see where I'm going with this.

        On a personal note, I

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.