New iPod classic has "badly engineered" audio circuitry?

Hey, look, it's a small portable audio player, anytime anywhere.... I have a Cyrus/B&W system and use THAT for serious listening, I use the Ipod for on the move listening... what do you do when you're walking? stop and listen to the cymbal fading? no, you walk with hundreds of tiny noises around you all the time.. audiophiles need a completely quiet listening room, so every naunce of the music can be heard, not trucks/busses/trains/plains and people all around...I would say Ipods are for medium/good quality listening pleasure...use your hi-fi at home for that serious listen....

Just to add........... if people was not interested in sound like some...... then continue to listen to a gramaphone like in the old days, do you agree then that opinons matter when striveing for better qualities, as this is needed to move things foward, like most things really, (cars, remote controls, sat nav, central locking heated seats, the list goes on........ i bet some of you have fell foul to buying something that is good to the public opinion? so why not argue a case like this to apple about poor quality if it doesnt suit you?

Forget the if's and but's...........this ipod classic sounds unpleasingly different.
I like quality......i sold a video G5, not perfect, but this has a better envelope of a warmth sound, no matter what type of music.
So people, is this subject like wine, where some like red, white or beer?.............it's so subjective isn't it?

Audiophiles bug me.

All I have to say is that they are usually flat-out lying about what they hear, because they know nobody can prove that they CAN'T hear in the same range as dogs and chipmunks.

Most people don't notice any difference. Don't let this story scare you. If you're the type of person that listens to MUSIC and not the equipment the music is playing on, then you'll be fine.

Audiophiles are about four steps above Furries on the annoying geek hierarchy. Furries have "yiffing" and audiophiles have their "golden ears"... It's all the same; A weird fetish and claims that you can do something nobody else can do, which makes you *special*.

Bleh. Just listen to the music and stop playing with your equipment.

These are the same audiophiles that claim vinyl sounds the best. These are the same audiophiles that have no problems with a stylus tracing tracks in a groove that gets more and more compressed as the stylus nears the center of the LP. They are perfectly happy with the inferior signal-to-noise ratio, or stereo separation of a record, and once loved cassettes, but hate the iPod. These are the people that will go haywire over a $50,000 Continuum turntable but claim they can hear a difference between a 15kHz sawtooth wave vs a 15kHz sine wave in a digital signal (i.e the first harmonic is at 45kHz).

and there's no line out via the dock!

GrossGreg, I wasn't playing Devil's Advocate; I was flat-out disagreeing with Big John ;-) It's not a matter of a few exceptions; saying "Audiophiles, the iPod is not your friend" is just plain wrong. Sure, far more teenagers than audiophiles own iPods, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the iPod can provide enjoyment to audiophile ears.

(To answer Big John's question, "Why the hell would you plug [good headphones] into a $2-500 device?" The answer, for many audiophiles, would be "because a high-end CD player won't fit in my carry-on" ;-) )

Here are a couple of links, Aaron...

On this page is a Flash example of volume of broadband noise descending in .3 dB steps. This is double the amount of difference measured in the 6g iPod.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/dB.html
(scroll down to What if the difference is less than a decibel?)

And here is a test tone showing what 15kHz sounds like...
http://ia301124.us.archive.org/0/ite...z_audacity.wav
(Adjust your volume carefully before clicking. This can hurt if it's too loud.)

Less than half that degree of difference at that barely audible frequency... The guy's analysis of the numbers is just plain wrong. There's no two ways about it.

By the way, you'll find mention of the decibel being just about equal to the JND (Just Noticeable Difference) for sound level on the University of New South Wales page linked above.

See ya
Steve

DF, way to play "Devil's Advocate." Big John has a point; you just happen to know a few exceptions. Although the appeal of the iPod has shifted, the fundamental cornerstone still exists: being able to cram truckloads of music into a player the size of a box of tic-tacs. For every "audiophile" you show me that owns an iPod, I'll show you several thousand teenagers that own at least one.

Hey guys, I'm by no means an audiophile, but I do enjoy my tunes and my 5.5G 80GB that I upgraded from my 5G 60GB.

I read the page by that guy and decided to test it for myself, went to an apple store, tested out the exact same song, synced 'em so they were playing the same, used the stock iPod headphones in each and I could tell that mine was the better sounding one. While the 6G sounded trebley AKA "clearer", the 5.5G sounded fuller and had more depth.