The iPod and the Audiophile

I agree it's more for someone who wants the best they can get on the road. It's still fun to listen to with good in ear phones, but I wouldn't consider the ipod an audiophile anything - despite the audio rags efforts to promote it. Non audiophiles think we are people that buy Bose and spend up to $1K on our systems (that's crazy sounding to them). They don't realise how insane we actually are ;(

I agree with Mapleleafs3. I love my iPod and use it all the time, but it's not up to audiophile standards, and probably never will be. Apple doesn't really want you hooking the iPod up to your home stereo - that's why there's no digital output. They want you to buy an iMac as a "digital hub". Why sell a consumer only one device when you can sell them two?

The problem is that I think newer pop and rock recordings are being produced to sound better in an Ipod/MP3 environment, with a prominent upper-midrange and lower treble, along with too much stress on vocals. All this stuff makes modern rock sound like scraping paint off the wall on good, revealing systems. Maybe next they will engineer music to sound better on cellphones (ringtones?).

Using my iPod 5G with 256 AAC VBR (converted from lossless ripped via EAC), my Etymotic ER4Ps (with custom molded inserts) and my Headphile modified HF-1s sound amazing. It is not as good as through my more expensive headphone amp setup, but I would DEFINITELY call it audiophile quality.

I have also heard that a Red Wine modified iPod proves an excellent source for 2 channel systems.