Ipod Dock with direct out?????

I'm going to assume I'm misreading something at the sound4sale.com page linked above. The upper image is labelled as being an analog output. The lower image is a digital output. Nowhere is the upper image referred to as digital interface jitter that the MSB product solves.

Having done my own Dante's Inferno with jitter a few years ago and realizing my budget didn't allow me to care about it any more than the high speed collisions between my stylus and microscopic intruders in a record groove, I can't much join the several species of small furry creatures gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict over the jitter that is obviously inherent in any device orders of magnitude less expensive than %insert author's DAC brand here%.

I will say this, though. Nowhere can we assume that the flow of information from the iPod to the Wadia is a 44.1khz sampled stream jammed into IEC958 24-bit words subject to jitter. For all we know, the data could move from the iPod to the Wadia just like it moves from the iTunes store to your computer to your iPod in the first place: buffered, with checksums and plenty of time for error correction. The same sort of error correction that ensures I can type the words puck and punt in this post without offending anyone.

On another note, I would advise against opening the box as a method to learn anything about the authentication handshake occurring between the Wadia and an iPod. If the people who advised Apple on how to do it have a background in hardware crypto devices, you can safely assume the chip will break itself if you get too close to it. I have a $32 device on my desk that if I try to open it, the two halves of the chip separate, so tamper proof delaminating chips are well within the price range of a $379 box.

I tend to agree with the gathering mob that wishes that the iPod's content could be navigated on the big screen. Hopefully, it's a Wadia design decision not to implement a typical iPod navigation interface along with digital out rather than an iPod design limitation that it won't output digital and allow access to metadata. I doubt Apple's that dumb, so Wadia gets an attaboy but no cigar.

I like the idea of digital out very much, but I don't like my iPod reduced to a Shuffle. Sign me up for the model 180, some day.

No, I understand Brian. The difference in my case is that I sit 12-ish feet from my equipment and I don't have a reasonable way to bring the iTransport closer to my listening position. I'm certain I can use my iPod when it is docked, but as an earlier post mentioned, somewhat like how I would use a turntable.

On the other hand, there is a very reasonable argument that it is stupid to fire up a plasma display and generate all that heat and noise just to pick songs.

Maybe I just need to make better playlists. I use my iPod in my car, and I have the old Alpine interface that is not the greatest for finding a specific track. So I've had to rely on good playlists to avoid bouncing on the next track button. I suppose using this iTransport would be pretty much the same: pick a playlist, go sit over there, hit the next track button when the mood hits me.

But on the other hand, I choose music from the PCs in my house using my Xbox 360 and I wish I could have that interface to tinker around in my collection when that mood hits me.