I too don´t like the idea of purchasing DRM lossy music. I listen to the kind of music which is very non-mainstream so I kind of fear that some albums on CDs won´t be available in stores forever. I plan to eventually buy all my favorite albums to have them in my collection in CD quality before they disappear from the shelves and because it´s investment for the future when and if I get some decent hi-fi system. (Actually I was close to putting together one entry-level system. I bought used Harman Kardon amplifier which was connected to PC. I listened to it via low end headphones. Still it sounded decent. I wanted to get mission m71 loudspeakers but it didn´t happen in the end and I had to sell the amplifier because I needed money for something else which couldn´t have waited. I regret it a little bit .)

I have ZERO interest in using Amazon MP3, the iTunes store or Zune Marketplace. For that reason I'm not too worried about any Apple DRM issues. I intent to use the device solely as a means to carry around a significant chunk of music without moving CDs from the car to the house and back constantly. I only intent to copy music from CDs that I own to the device in a lossless format.

Raptor,
Thank you very much for the link to the story. Kind of confirms a lot of what I was hearing about bypassing the iPod's junky D/A converters.

A.F.L.M.,
I was wondering about the possibility of mechanical noise off the HDD based units myself. I'll have to dig a little deaper into my high capacity solid state options like SDHC vs. the solid state players like the 64 Gb Touch.

If your thinking seriously about the iPod Touch then the Onkyo NDS1 digital docking station may be worth a look as it has a digital audio output for connection to a dedicated DAC/Amplifier.

http://www.eu.onkyo.com/products/ND-S1.html

It should make for a reasonably good source at a reasonable price.

Typically the cost for such an audio source would be

iPod Touch 64GB - $399
Onkyo NDS1 docking station - $210 (based on UK prices)
Cambridge Audio Dacmagic - $429

Then of course you will need you amplifier or preamp/monoblock amplifiers and speakers with some decent interconnects and speaker cable.

I also use a Archos TV 250Gb (has a HDD and was found on sale for around $70) along with an original Cambridge Audio DacMagic 2 and very cheap but surprising good Accoustic Solutions SP100 amplifier (again on sale for $75), which I mainly use with the HDTV in another room. The HDD in the Archos TV device can be heard at very low audio levels in the same way that I could hear the 50Hz hum from the original 3 frame powerline transformers than was in the 12 year old DacMagic 2 (which were swapped out for toroidal transformers). But the HDD sound volumes in the Archos TV are about what you may get spinning a CD in a mid level CD player. The HDDs in the Apple iPods will probably not be noticable to most folks though. This is why I have eliminated any mechanical rotating parts and power line 50Hz hum from my current setup and why I am now using a DC Solar/SLA Battery supply. The difference is actually very noticeable (well for me that is) i.e. greater than the difference between playing Red Book PCM CD and high bit rate lossy MP3 tracks IMHO.

One of the best hi-fi system I have ever heard was a Sony SACD reference system about 10 years ago. But the cost of the system was around $50,000 even then.

http://www.avland.co.uk/sony/sacd/sacdproductsbig.jpg

The problem with these very high end systems is that they are so good that the limit of the hi-fi sound reproduction is actually now in the recording studio and the technology of the recording studios from the 1970s (I like my 70s music as most of the music today is really quite tedious to listen to) really wasn't as good as some folks would like to believe despite the re mastering that is now common place. Even modern CD recordings may have waveform clipping when being mastered leading to very high levels of distortion and generate inappropriate harmonics.

You might not now, but After ripping all my CD's I put them away and now I prefer to not buy CD's rather buy the electronic format, so you may want to think about the future. Put a new radio in m wife's car with a CD player but then saw it had a USB port on it so we just copied a bunch of music on a cheap flash drive and plugged it in and it plays. I bought myself a new phone and then went and bought its car dock and started using it that way and play music through it rather than CD's. Sooner or later your going to want to buy more music, I bet you could find a place that sells the files lossless.

Re Desperado,

I don't know who fed you that line but the issue with charging newer ipods from a car or older USB to iPod cable was that the original iPod was designed to charge via Firewire and used different pins on the dock connector for charging the battery. Today most iPods and iPhones are USB only devices. Some of the older charging cables were actually just re-routing the USB power to the "firewire" pins on the connector. It worked but could cause the iPod to over draw the source since USB doesn't provide as much power as firewire, no real hazard for the iPod but it could damage a cheap USB driver circuit. The more recent devices no longer use those pins so they are correctly reporting that they cannot charge when power is present on those pins instead of the expected "USB" pins.

Newer charges will say something like made for iPhone, I think.

- Eric

The sound quality of the audio format(s) used by the iPods are as good as any other digital music format. iPods support several standard audio formats for both lossless and lossy audio recording. How the music is encoded (bit rates, format choices) will impact both the file size and audio quality.

The music you purchase online is a compromise of reasonable quality for reasonable download times. This is similar to the compromise that digital music on a CD represents. Some people (me a long, long time ago) can actually hear the distortion introduced by the standard CD sampling rate - not as a tone but as a "harshness" in the sound. Today I can probably tell the difference between a CD and a downloaded MP3 on a good day, if I'm lucky.

As far as DRM goes - apple had/has about the least restrictive DRM setup out there. Buy the music, create a playlist, burn to CD, read back into the computer in the format of your choice. Not great but at least you can burn the CD.

I'll take my old turntable any day but it just won't fit in my pocket .

- Eric

I haven't really had time to read this thread in detail, but I thought I'd point out there are a couple issues other than compression.

- Quality of the DAC in the unit.

- Ability to use the line out instead of the amplification section in the player (which typically isn't very good on portable players).

So, even with a lossless format, sound from an iPod might not sound optimal when run through the headphone output into a good stereo system.

Likewise, it has a so-so DAC.

In the case of the iPods, you can get an adapter to provide a line out such as:

http://www.sendstation.com/us/products/pocketdock/lineout-miniusb.html

In addition, it is possible to bypass the internal DAC on the iPods all together with a device like:

http://www.wadia.com/products/transports/170i/design.php

That said, I'd suggest for a car, you don't really need an off-board DAC. My guess is line out is plenty good enough.

As for home stereo, harder to say. Some people will be pretty happy with line out, some won't be happy until you run lossless to an outbound DAC, re-clocker, etc.

To really dig into this, spend some time hanging out on head-fi.org forums.

-john


An iPod touch running an line-out adapter to an external amplifier:

JohnN,

Nice toys! I agree the DACs and drivers on most portable devices are pretty poor compared to dedicated equipment. Compromises are a significant part of engineering something that small and portable. I spend enough money on my other hobbies that I don't dare check out the forums you suggested.

- Eric