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Apple iPod portable music player Measurements

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-…

Apple iPod portable music player Letters, December 2003

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…

Gordon Rankin, Wavelength's Single-Ended Man

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…

Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy System 5 loudspeaker

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…

Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy System 5 loudspeaker Page 2

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…

Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy System 5 loudspeaker Page 3

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…

Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy System 5 loudspeaker Page 4

So how do you describe a chameleon? Fast—staggeringly fast, in fact. This is a dynamic speaker that's as quick as any electrostatic I've heard. It shares with 'stats a phenomenally low level of coloration as well. Tonally neutral, it favors no one frequency range over another. I've heard it described as lean and lacking in low bass, but I didn't find this to be so. Perhaps, with a rated response going down only to 28Hz, it doesn't offer deep bass, but I couldn't have exploited anything lower in the rooms I used it in.

The bass it does reproduce is articulate and well-defined—I have never…

Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy System 5 loudspeaker Page 5

My buddy Ruben, a lutenist who also plays electric geetar (as he would have it) in a noise-rock band, maintains that since the 17th century, instrument makers have increasingly opted for volume over tonality. He points to the baroque guitar, which emphasized warmth and an over-rich (to 20th-century ears, at any rate) harmonic signature and contrasts it to a contemporary concert instrument which is a lot louder and has greater sustain, but at a sacrifice in the seductive body of the tone.

Look at keyboard instruments: far from being a parlor instrument, an unamplified piano these days may…

The Stereophile Test CD Track 5

Track information, Track 5

[5] "Why Hi-Fi Experts Disagree" (DDD) 6:17
J. Gordon Holt reads from Stereophile Vol.1 No.4 (March-April 1963), recorded in mono by Robert Harley with, in order, the following microphones: Shure SM57, AKG D190E, Sennheiser MD441, Electrovoice RE20, Coles 4038, B&K 4006, Crown PZM, Milab LC25, Neumann TLM170, AKG C414B, Neumann U87, Neumann U47FET, Neumann U67, Telefunken U47, Telefunken ELAM251, AKG C12, AKG C12 (modified by Stephen Paul), EAR The Mic. (Index points 2-19 mark the edits between each microphone.) Mikes are mainly courtesy of Audio Rents,…

The Stereophile Test CD Tracks 6-9

Track information, Tracks 6-9

[6] E. E. Bagley: The National Emblem (ADD) 1:18
Nether Providence High School Band
Recording Venue: Nether Providence, PA
Recording Date: 1948
Recording Engineer: J. Gordon Holt
Microphone: Brush crystal
Recorder: Brush BK401 Sound Mirror ¼" open-reel recorder (mono)
Transfer to digital: Nakamichi 1000 R-DAT
Digital Transfer Engineer: Robert Harley

[7] Theodore Dubois: Les Sept Paroles du Christ (excerpt) (ADD) 4:32
Philadelphia Oratorio Choir
Recording Venue: First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, PA
Recording Date:…