[goo3]

Originally Posted by Great68

The iPod, for all it's great innovation has TERRIBLE sound quality.

I would think that sound quality should be the most important attribute in something that plays music.

Of course most of the general public can't tell the difference between a 96kbps mono MP3 and FLAC, but I can.

No question with the iPod Apple was on top with it's interface, features and "cool" factor however I was willing to trade off those things for better sound quality, since I spend most of my time Listening to my Mp3 player, and not playing with it's features.

This is a pretty good discussion:

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/...ortable-player

Examples:

Ooh, I can feel the animosity oozing from the OP. The ipod/phone has quite possibly the best overall package of apps, web browser, intuitive UI, and sound quality. A jack of all trades, master of maybe some. Have you tried, like, actually reading the portable source forum? Here's one thread discussing the iphone's SQ: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/...-sound-quality

Fairly positive from what I could tell, I also owned one, acceptable sound to say the very least.

I would never have touched an iPod - especially after reading some of the threads on head-fi. The problem is that you have some who say great things about them - then others who scorn their SQ.

This year, I got a Touch Gen4 (through a rewards scheme). My original idea was to sell it for reasonable money in NZ - then buy a J3 when I'm in the US next month. I was coming from a Cowon iAudio7 (great little DAP) .... and I'd read a lot of bad things about iPods not having good SQ.

So I got a chance to actually try it.

How wrong I was. The SQ on the Touch I think is as good if not better than the J3 (personal opinion OK) - I'm talking about non/flat EQ. Cowon has excellent EQ capability and BBE - but I just really like the straight up sound of the Touch now. And there are two apps (EQU and Equalizer) that add full manual EQ capability to the Touch as well. Mostly I listen with no EQ - and just use the apps when I need to.

I have an entry level amp/DAC on the way - so I'm looking forward to seeing if that makes even more improvement.

For those who do 'bag' the ipods - I'd suggest actually trying a Touch - and if you get the opportunity, try and do it for at least a day. I'm keeping mine, and only regret now is that I only went 32Gb instead of 64Gb. I have the Cowon iAudio7 as a backup - but I don't think I've actually used it for weeks now.

The one thing that peeves me a bit now is the people who do make comment on the ipods - without actually trying them. IMO they're contributing to a continuing myth that the ipod has poor SQ.

I'm pretty sure some iPods have had terrible SQ. But the recent ones seem to be at least good.. and they support lossless compression but only Apple's own ALAC.