Is an IPOD hi-fi?

And Steve Jobs thanks you so very much. I am sure he is doing hand springs all the way to the bank, uttering the phrase of P.T. Barnum.(Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence or taste of the American public.)

Ferrari, I do realize now that you are much more intelligent than most of us here and Audiogon.....heck forget Audiogon...you are more intelligent than the American public! Simply by displaying the pride of non-ownership of an iPod.
Way to go man, because this is what I call intelligence.

So intelligent that he can't answer my question. What type of encoding did you listen to ? Apple lossless ? WAV ? AAC 192 ? AAC 128 ? MP3 128 ?

Don't get me wrong here - I applaud the crap out of Steve Jobs. He had a vision of what to appeal the masses and has sold it to death at the expense of others. This is marketing genius at its very best. Roughly only about 1 percent or less of us can be called audiophiles, so that gave him 99 percent of music lovers go to after and he made it and big time. Hell I wish I had thought up this idea myself. Never would have thought the masses would embrace the I Pod in the numbers it has, and to think his bare bones cost in these things is about $25.00 and they sell for WHAT???? Way cool man, now thats entreprenauership at its best. He should get a Nobel prize or something.

And remember the words of Adolph Hitler: The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

And to Audphile1, many thanks and I am most humbled beyond my wildest expectations.

The iPod is a toy, but it's one of the best audio toys EVER. Thousands of songs in the palm of your hand organized the way you want to hear them. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's bad.

BTW, it's not really an audiophile toy, but it can certainly sound better than than any boom box/portable CD player/Walkman type device. As a mass appeal item it represents substantial audio quality progress.