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>The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods I do not think this is the case at all. I recall the early iP

>The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods I do not think this is the case at all. I recall the early iPods being blasted for their sound quality. One of the huge "wins" for the Microsoft Zune over the iPod was the audio quality. Everyone I know who owned a Zune was an audiophile. I have no idea what the sound quality on current iPods/iPhones/iWhatevers is like. Maybe the DAC on the old iPod was held back by the codecs that Apple chose to use at the time. I know Apple created ALAC, and improved the quality of the lossy codecs at some point. Regardless, the audio quality of the oldest iPods was poorly regarded in general.

legodt 10y ago
You are correct about early Zune having an advantage over the iPod. As time went on though, the larger iPods, now known as the Classic, began to ship with Wolfson DACs- a well respected DAC for portable audio. Side note: ALAC, although lossless, never upset FLAC for a reason. Primarily because FLAC was open and ALAC was closed. EDIT: Please disregard last comment, it has been corrected by a reply below this
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  Re side note: back in the day, yes. ALAC went open many years ago: https://alac.macosforge.org/ https://alac.macosforge.org/
  - legodt 10y ago
    Oh wow, my bad. I had no idea ALAC went open. Very interesting, thank you for bringing this up. Time to burn half the work day poking around ALAC now and learning more!
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      Christ, I hope it's mirrored somewhere other than macosforge. I don't think anyone's actively looking after that site any more.
rplst8 10y ago
I disagree entirely. I'm not an Apple fan boy, but I've actually run my own tests on iPods as early as the 3G iPod (the 30 GB hdd based one, not the phone) and the sound quality from the electronics was excellent. The MP3s are a different story because they were selling 128 kbps files back then. But you could load full bit rate PCM audio (WAV files) on them, and they sounded just as good as any quality CD player.
bonaldi 10y ago
I think you're misremembering or are thinking of the later models when you think of "oldest". The first iPods used Wolfson DACs and were hugely well regarded. Apple changed this for the 3rd gen iPod, which was a duffer in nearly all respects (not just audio). Things started to get better again from 4G on.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I'm definitely not misremembering anything. The original (1-3rd gen) iPods sounded horrible. Maybe the amp was to blame, instead of the DAC, but they sounded bad. If you look back at the discussions regarding portable music players from the time, the Creative ZEN series always comes out ahead of the iPod in objective and subjective testing. I was slightly late to the MP3 player game myself, but after listening to several different MP3 players I ended up with a Dell DJ because it just sounded better than the competition. That's just my personal, non-audiophile opinion, of course. I'm not knocking the iPod. It was a better device than the competition in a lot of ways. It just didn't have audiophile quality sound.
  - bonaldi 10y ago
    The audiophiles disagree on this one, I'm afraid. The iPod absolutely did have audiophile quality sound. Then it compromised on this when they were going for growth (and using cheaper parts). It returned to form by the time of the later iPod Classics. It's difficult to find cites from that far back, but the types over at head-fi appear to broadly agree http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound-chips-cards-from-generation-to-generation http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound...
    - Unklejoe 10y ago
      Maybe audiophile quality sound when driving the high impedance input of an amplifier, but certainly not when driving headphones directly, IMO. The best portable music players I've listened to (in terms of headphone driving capabilities) were the portable CD players from back in the day. My experience from way back in the early iPod days was that it simply did not have the power to drive my headphones hard enough to provide good sounding bass, where as my old CD player (which could play MP3s on a CD), sounded much better. I always thought it was a result of some law which limited the power of headphone ports to prevent hearing loss in kids, but this could be all BS.
nradov 10y ago
Quantitative tests indicate the iPhone 5 at least is quite good. http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm
marklyon 10y ago
The Zune did sounds really good, up until the day it turned itself into a brick. Before the cause of the one-day bricking was known, I'd already tossed it so hard against a wall it would never work again.

legodt 10y ago

You are correct about early Zune having an advantage over the iPod. As time went on though, the larger iPods, now known as the Classic, began to ship with Wolfson DACs- a well respected DAC for portable audio. Side note: ALAC, although lossless, never upset FLAC for a reason. Primarily because FLAC was open and ALAC was closed. EDIT: Please disregard last comment, it has been corrected by a reply below this

theandrewbailey 10y ago
Re side note: back in the day, yes. ALAC went open many years ago: https://alac.macosforge.org/ https://alac.macosforge.org/
- legodt 10y ago
  Oh wow, my bad. I had no idea ALAC went open. Very interesting, thank you for bringing this up. Time to burn half the work day poking around ALAC now and learning more!
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    Christ, I hope it's mirrored somewhere other than macosforge. I don't think anyone's actively looking after that site any more.

rplst8 10y ago

I disagree entirely. I'm not an Apple fan boy, but I've actually run my own tests on iPods as early as the 3G iPod (the 30 GB hdd based one, not the phone) and the sound quality from the electronics was excellent. The MP3s are a different story because they were selling 128 kbps files back then. But you could load full bit rate PCM audio (WAV files) on them, and they sounded just as good as any quality CD player.

bonaldi 10y ago

I think you're misremembering or are thinking of the later models when you think of "oldest". The first iPods used Wolfson DACs and were hugely well regarded. Apple changed this for the 3rd gen iPod, which was a duffer in nearly all respects (not just audio). Things started to get better again from 4G on.

Declanomous 10y ago
I'm definitely not misremembering anything. The original (1-3rd gen) iPods sounded horrible. Maybe the amp was to blame, instead of the DAC, but they sounded bad. If you look back at the discussions regarding portable music players from the time, the Creative ZEN series always comes out ahead of the iPod in objective and subjective testing. I was slightly late to the MP3 player game myself, but after listening to several different MP3 players I ended up with a Dell DJ because it just sounded better than the competition. That's just my personal, non-audiophile opinion, of course. I'm not knocking the iPod. It was a better device than the competition in a lot of ways. It just didn't have audiophile quality sound.
- bonaldi 10y ago
  The audiophiles disagree on this one, I'm afraid. The iPod absolutely did have audiophile quality sound. Then it compromised on this when they were going for growth (and using cheaper parts). It returned to form by the time of the later iPod Classics. It's difficult to find cites from that far back, but the types over at head-fi appear to broadly agree http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound-chips-cards-from-generation-to-generation http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound...
  - Unklejoe 10y ago
    Maybe audiophile quality sound when driving the high impedance input of an amplifier, but certainly not when driving headphones directly, IMO. The best portable music players I've listened to (in terms of headphone driving capabilities) were the portable CD players from back in the day. My experience from way back in the early iPod days was that it simply did not have the power to drive my headphones hard enough to provide good sounding bass, where as my old CD player (which could play MP3s on a CD), sounded much better. I always thought it was a result of some law which limited the power of headphone ports to prevent hearing loss in kids, but this could be all BS.

nradov 10y ago

Quantitative tests indicate the iPhone 5 at least is quite good. http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm

marklyon 10y ago

The Zune did sounds really good, up until the day it turned itself into a brick. Before the cause of the one-day bricking was known, I'd already tossed it so hard against a wall it would never work again.