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Latest iPod Configuration -- Any New Hope?

I know there are several threads on the pieces of this question, but I hope this will be a convenient all in one place update for iPod users who really care about the sound.

I was an early adopter for iPod with great hopes for portable, audiophile sound. I know they are fine for convenience, working out blah blah blah, but that was not my main goal. Rather I wanted truly portable and truly high end sound for traveling. And even 20 or 30 uncompressed CDs would be wonderful and -- maybe Im weird - but more than enough for most plane flights!

In the end, I got frustrated and kept hitting dead ends even with the so called experts, so at this point, I have two iPods, several sets of headphones, some noise cancellation headphones, one of the original top of the line Headroom portable amps, circa 1996 with D Cell outboard battery pack, a 9V battery powered Grado headphone amp, and expensive custom earpieces gathering dust in my drawers.

I have tried the Apple lossless scheme and for me, it is unacceptable, not to mention the devious tricks which apparently limit the number of times the files can be copied.

Maybe some of you have cracked the code, but I have had nothing but problems trying to easily "tag" uncompressed files.

In addition, it seems WAV files drain the battery life and cause brief skips in the operation of the hard drive.

Taking my iPod for the first time for months today on my motorcycle, I was reminded that the Etymotics high end headphones DO NOT play well with the wimpy internal amp of the iPod.

I was so disappointed, that I thought I should somehow velcro the Grado amp into my bike jacket or something, but aside from the geeky complexity of this there is no line level out?!

You get the idea...

Dont get me wrong, its a great little gadget for casual listening.

But WHY isnt it so so so so so so much better?!?!?!?!?

Or have I missed something?

Thank you.
cwlondon
herman
2,253 posts
 
Which Etymotics do you have? The ER-4 is not designed to be driven by sources with limited drive capabilities such as the I-pod, the ER-6 is a better choice.
lazarus28
339 posts
 
herman - the er-4p is indeed meant to be driven by portable devices. the er-4s, however, is not.
sgreent210f
16 posts
 
There are many Entymotic earphones. I have the high efficiancy ones. Call "Jamie" at Headroom.com These things are wonderful - almost as good as my Sennheiser 650's.
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
I dunno, my Rio Karma driving the Shure E2Cs and playing 320k MP3s sounds pretty darn good to these ears. Just got back from a full-day trip on my motorcycle and the tunes were great.

If you're looking for "audiophile" quality in a noisy environemnt like that, you're being completely unrealistic. Nonetheless, I found the sound to be quite good, and the earphones didi a respectable job of cancelling the wind noise, too.

-rw-
ultraviolet
105 posts
 
Cwlondon, a few comments:

First, I'm using an ipod with APS and APX mp3 into Shure e5's unamped. I Tried the "portable" amp thing with a few different headphones and the whole setup drove me nuts.

The reason why I am using mp3 and not .wav is because I have never ever ever been able to hear the sound difference on any headphones--ever. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't tried every headphone there is. However my experience with some highly rated ones (Senn 600's, Ety 4s (with 4p adapter cable), the Shure e5's I have now and a few others), has just shown me that headphones (or the ones I tried at least) are seriously flawed and simply not capable of the detail and resolution that allows one to routinely distinguish between high bitrate mp3s and .wav. On my main system, there's often quite a difference. I think the problem here is not the ipod so much as it is the limitations of headphones in particular. I got the e5's because I thought the sounded "fun". At first I was horribly disappointed. I was expecting highend sound and they weren't close (neither were the Senn's or Ety's IMHO). If I go away for a week or so, after a few days of being away from my stereo, I start to enjoy the e5's even more. When I come back and listen to my stereo, I think they suck.

Basically, while the ipod is an overpriced piece of plastic I think it takes a bad rap from the audiophile community. I've said this many times on here before, but I think the VBR mp3 also takes a bad rap (generally from people who have never tried it). I would never chose the mp3 given a choice where it was equally practical to use .wav--with the ipod it clearly is not though. Headphones however, in my experience, are the truly flawed portion of the chain.
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