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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 ba

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.

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.