ipod as source?

I gave my nephews cables for their ipods some years ago that bypassed the volume control and amp of the ipod, and even they (not audiophile hobbyists) noticed the sonic improvement.

As for bypassing the ipod DAC, I wonder what Apple is charging firms for the rights and/or hardware to control that. It does seem like any available components to do that are expensive.

Art

Tried both the Onk and the Wadia digital out docks. It is a giant myth that the iPod DAC is inferior. The headphone stage is inferior. Tap the fixed audio from the iPod dock connector on the bottom of the unit. Route this trough a preamp or good headphone amp and be prepared to be blown away assuming your files are not overly compressed.

took your advice and started using a dock and the sound improvement was great. not as good as thru my vdac and cd player but still much improved

I have an iPod cable from Ram Electronics similar to this, but without the USB drop. Wish I'd gotten it that way as it enables you to keep the iPod connected to AC power. Even so, this type of cable (and the RAM is a well-made cable) extracts the analog audio from the dock pinouts, thereby bypassing the iPod's opamp behind the headphone jack.

However, the best analog sound I've extracted from my iPod Touch is by using a Zu Pivot mini-to-RCA cable. The Zu cable is so much better that it trumps bypassing the opamp with a mid-level cable.

Pleased to agree with Johnnyb53. I use the Zu Pivot cable when I need to take my iPod as source for some type of auditioning or demonstration, sometimes paired with a Winsome Labs Mouse that I take along too, and it never fails to astonish music listeners. For this reason, that the headphone output stage is inferior is probably a monster myth too.