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Ipod and quality sound

I added, via I-tunes some Wagner Opera to my Ipod Classic 160g. It sounded terrible, tinny and thin, even though the system is a high end system, (Kora Galaxy tube system, Martin Logan speakers etc. Is there a way to do this correctly without compression so the sound will be as good as from the CD direct. Would I be better to use Media Monkey, or should I just abandon the whole idea as not practical
davimack
mrjstark
1,112 posts
 
Compression, software - have that.
Missing - quality hardware (iPod).

Wadia looks promising - maybe a mod candidate.
But iPod on to Go still sucks.
cmo
471 posts
 
A friend told me that the older iPods use Wolfson DACs and have much better sound that the newer Classic, and touch screen models..... I forget what DACs he said are in the new one's.

I actually heard his iPod playing through a pair of Wilson Sophia's, and damned if it didn't sound pretty good; and that was in comparison to an Ayre CD player!

Chris
hitman_hifi
75 posts
 
Cmo, your friend is correct. Here's a September 2007 quote from noted computer insider, Robert X. Cringely from his website:
This time independent testers are finding the new iPods have lower audio quality than the iPods that preceded them. Perhaps this stems from Apple's switch from PortalPlayer to Samsung as the source of its iPod chipsets.
I had a first-generation Nano and could swear it sounded better than my new video Nano.
clipsal
80 posts
 
Go Wadia iTransport go
wdrazek
100 posts
 
The new DAC's are made by Cirrus. This link has lots of graphs and discusses the sound differences, and includes several links to the topic at the bottom:

http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijligers/audio/ipod/comparison/measurements/measurements.html

So far, my favorite sounding Ipod was the original shuffle.
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