Parts choices are said to have been made with an emphasis on sound quality, availability, and "time to market" considerations. Parts vetted include PortalPlayer's own MP3 decoder and controller chip, a…
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One item that's invisible but indispensable is the iPod's operating system, which, I've been informed, is not of Apple design. PortalPlayer, a company that specializes in developing OSes for cellular phones, PDAs, and other streaming and wireless applications, designed the iPod's human interface. The iPod is so easy to use that it's obvious Apple chose the right company for the job.
What a thing to do!
The iPod is different from CD players, SACD players, DVD-Audio players, and pretty much any other consumer audio player in that it is a data-storage device. At the moment, it offers a variety of data-storage formats; but while I'm aware of no plans to do so, in the future it could accommodate others—even higher-rez options.
The iPod is different from CD players, SACD players, DVD-Audio players, and pretty much any other consumer audio player in that it is a data-storage device. At the moment, it offers a variety of data-storage formats; but while I'm aware of no plans to do so, in the future it could accommodate others—even higher-rez options.
The formats the iPod accommodates at the moment offer a wide range of options that balance disc storage space against sound quality. And this, not the iPod's size, is the revolutionary part: the consumer gets to choose which set of tradeoffs…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Portable data-storage device capable of playing compressed (MP3, AAC) and uncompressed (AIFF, WAV) digital audio files. Internal hard drive size: 30GB as reviewed; 10GB, 15GB, and 40GB also available. Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz. Maximum output power: 30mW/channel.
Dimensions: 4.1" H by 2.4" W by 0.73" D. Weight: 6.2oz (176gm).
Serial number of unit reviewed: U23220DNNLY (auditioning); O2326CEFLV (measuring).
Price: $499. Approximate number of dealers: not specified.
Manufacturer: Apple Computer, Inc., 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA…
Sidebar 2: Bottom Liners
Great lines of numbers
all bright and shiny
all through the ether
some huge some tiny
all through the ether...
—Brian Eno, "Bottom Liners"
One of the most ballyhooed bits of news buoying the music industry recently was Apple's launch of its iTunes Music Store website, which offers AAC downloads of songs for 99 cents each. Despite the fact that the service is available only to owners of Apple computers (indeed, is accessible only through the iTunes4 software), which means that the 90% of computer users tethered to PCs can't use it yet (PC…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
To measure the iPod's technical performance, I used Bias Peak 3.0 running on my Macintosh PowerBook to prepare uncompressed AIFF files of the 16-bit test signals I use to assess CD players, and prepared a playlist using Apple's iTunes program. Plugging the iPod into the laptop with its FireWire connection automatically updated the contents of its hard disk; from then on, I merely selected the appropriate track with the iPod's menu button.
With a full-scale signal, the output clipped at the two highest levels of the volume control. The maximum distortion-…
Letters in response appeared in December 2003 (Vol.26 No.12):
iPods & MP3s
Editor: Almost two years ago, after reading a thread at rec.audio.high-end—go to groups.google.com and enter "what makes a CD player high-end" in the search field—I held a brief e-mail discussion with Kalman Rubinson, both about the iPod and the sound quality of MP3 files compared to 16-bit PCM. According Mr. Rubinson, while MP3 was okay for very casual listening, it did not cut it for serious listening over a decent system.
Having connected my 15GB iPod to my Krell and B&W Nautilus rig…
Jonathan Scull: Gordon, please tell us what you see as the basic difference between single-ended and push-pull.
Gordon Rankin: Well, first let me tell you that we actually used to build push-pull amps—they were EL34-based units—for a good five years before we tried our first single-ended amplifier. In any case, as a musician I would say the detail of the output of a single-ended amp seemed more pure and less distorted in some ways.
Scull: How did you get single-ended, Gordon?
Rankin: I'd gotten a pair of single-ended transformers and a bunch of tubes from a kid at the…
Some products are destined never to be seen for what they are. Instead, they exist as avatars, the very embodiment of their ages or concepts. The Wilson Audio WATT (Wilson Audio Tiny Tot) and its nigh-unto-ubiquitous subwoofer, the Puppy, have achieved this legendary status—no, have manifested it almost from their creation 10 years ago—to such a degree that they've come to stand for the entire class of no-holds-barred-monitor loudspeaker. They serve as the focus for a whole realm of the industry; indeed, to show any customer an expensive speaker possessing a modest footprint and not to…
The single pair of speaker connections is a nonstandard type manufactured by WBT. Wilson claims that of all the hardware the company has tested, these sound the best. I believe this in the superstitious way that I believe that nasty-tasting medicine does the best job—I hated them, finding them difficult to use, and impossible to tighten to the point where my cat couldn't dislodge the connection just by stepping on the cables. Of the crossover, the company will reveal only that the finest-grade components are used, that the slopes are matched to achieve acoustical phase linearity, and that…
The soundstage they threw, when positioned in this manner, was staggering. "Wide" doesn't begin to cover it—the image spread not from speaker to speaker but from wall to wall, its rear boundary seemingly limited only by the resolving power of the components upstream from the speakers. This took some getting used to—my old listening room, while not huge, was generously sized, but by the time speakers were set up a third of its width from each side wall, you didn't have a gigantic spread between them at all. I could get tightly focused soundstaging, but if, in an ensemble recording, only one…