Is an IPOD hi-fi?

In a couple of previous issues of UHF magazine, they've been investigating using iPods, Squeezeboxes, and similar devices as a music sources. (You can find partial reviews on their website in their "Reading Room"). It's turned into a continuing project for them. Indeed, they've purchased an iPod to add to their reference system for further investigation. Their results to date are that they've been pleasantly surprised at how these things can be a very good source. When you are able to bypass the internal DAC and feed the signal into an outboard DAC of higher quality, they are very impressed. I'm not sure if you can do this with iPods as of yet, since I don't have one and don't know their capabilites, but with other devices you can. So using an iPod as a music source is certainly something worth investigating, even more so if and when they make them with a digital out. Perhaps I'll have to buy one for the kids as "present" and play with it myself.

My 80gb iPod playing uncompressed files sounds awesome through the Grado SR60 'phones when I listen to it at work and it sounds even better with my Senns HD-580 at home.

Ferrari, I would not call it a complete junk.
If the files are uncompressed(I use .wav for the stuff that I like the most) it sounds very acceptable.
However, I tried it via Belkin adaptor into my system at home and it was nowhere near the sound quality of my cd player. I never expected it to be, but still, it sounded pretty good.
The main purpose of an iPod, at least to me, is convenience. I can bring it to work and listen to it on a good pair of headphones and totally enjoy the sound.

If anyone knows of a good quality cable to connect the iPod to the preamp, please post.

Ferrari ... what was the encoding format of the music ? It makes all the difference. Lossless and 192kbps AAC sound pretty good through my sennheiser cans.

128kbps MP3 on the other hand sounds absolutely terrible.

I'd agree with all the initial responses: If it makes him happy, why pinch a loaf in the middle of his listening room?

OTOH - since you are soliciting opinions, which are worth the aforementioned pinched loaf; I have done a bit of back and forth listening of my iPod (line-out with Signal Cables Silver IC's), through both my systems as well as through a great headphone setup. If it's not critical listening, but is being used for background music instead, I could see using it for the convenience. But I'm pretty confident I could tell the iPod from my front-end, and even from PC-Audio, every time. It is not as resolving, and does not get my foot tapping and my head bobbing. Through heaphones the differences are magnified even more. It's a great way to take lots of your music with you. I've used it at work, working out, on the road, and in the car. In all those non-critical listening scenarios works brilliantly. If you have a decent front-end at your disposal, and the software to play the music, I see no reason to use an iPod as a front-end in a home stereo.

Now who's going to clean up that mess in the middle of the room? It's starting to stink in here!

Marco

PS Per the tomato condiment dude - There is no native digital output on any current iPod (that I'm aware of) - you cannot go to an external DAC witout serious modifications. The best you get currently is a line-output, which still uses the mediocre DAC in the iPod for conversion. There is at least one company doing a digital-output conversion at a very significant price tag (why bother). Apple supposedly did release some kind of USB protocol for the Ipod, but has not implemented it in any of the models at this point.

I've been living with an iPod too, and with a variety of headphones (including Grado 60's). While the iPod is quite listenable, I don't see it as approaching hifi. I see it more like a portable CD player (i.e. walkman type) with a hard drive source. I don't think it was ever intended to be more than that, though I hope for the day when it is (i.e. USB out for streaming music to a decent DAC).