Latest iPod Configuration -- Any New Hope?

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-

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.

Ultraviolet

Your point about headphones is curiously counterintuitive to me.

Shouldn't transducers just next to, or even IN, our ears be capable of resolving fine detail and differences? I have never liked them, but dont many audiophiles go on and on about their Sennheiser 600s or whatever? The pros them in the studio during mastering blah blah blah?

Of course one way to test thsi theory is to simply run this iPod type stuff into your big rig.

As you can read in another one of my threads on this same subject, I found the difference between WAV and MP-3 files wasy to discern EVEN IN MY CAR. A PORSCHE. CONVERTIBLE. WITH AN ILLEGAL STAINLESS STEEL EXHAUST?!?!?!?!?!?! We're not talking Maybach here.

(Not sure what the exact MP3 settings were but I did use the geeky EAC and LAME encoder.)

So to respond to the points above about driving motorcycles and horrible signal to noise ratios, I disagree.

No offense, but maybe those posters could save a lot of money on audio equipment and not care.

I dont think I have the worlds most golden ears, but I have been at this for about 25 years and I am well tuned into the differences of good and bad audio.

I once heard an audio salesman in the 70's complimenting the allegedly golden ears of one of his colleagues, saying the "trick" was "knowing what to listen for".

Isnt that a bit like saying the "trick" to expert wine tasting is to not be suffering from a cold and congestion?

A lower noise floor - of course - contributes to a greater sense of dynamics, a greater sense of detail etc.

But I dont need perfect dead silence, the worlds greatest speakers or some gifted ability to "know what to listen for" to detect a hard edged, strident, fatiguing, compressed sound being blasted directly into my ears.

If you brought a lawnmower into your listening room while cranking your analogue and vacuum tubes, it wouldnt make your stereo sound BAD?!?! It would just add noise.

So with headphones, on a motorcycle, in an airplane -- I still wish these things sounded better, but despite the progress which has been made its still all processed cheese to me.

Here are some suggestions:
Rip all your music using EAC FLAC -> convert to WMA lossless -> Apple lossless. (Delete WMA lossless afterward)

This ensures perfect CD ripping and you can keep all the files in an open format and still use iPod. Need a lot of HD space though.

Get an iPod line out add-on. It's about $30. Basically hooks up to the bottom of the ipod connectors. Hook that up to a decent portable headphone. Then, pick up your favorite headphones. For example, Senn HD650 for quiet room and Eytmotic ER-4 for airplanes. Total price: $1500.

This headphone system should rival a regular audiophile stereo system under $10-20k easily.

Hi Folks, I just got my I-pod a few days ago so I'm way behind on the tech talk. I started loading songs from CD to i-tunes, then over to the ipod. After i loaded about 40 cd's I erased them off I-tunes as not to bog down my comupter. The next time I up-loaded to my i-pod it erased the 40 cd's that I spent 2-days loading. What are you folks doing, leaving all your stuff on I tunes? I have about 600 cd's and that's a lot of memory(40 gig?)

Please advise

More dumb questions to follow,

Thanks!