From: Brian Wolven <bcwolven_at_jhu.edu>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 18:40:48 -0400

Robert Menes wrote:

> What audio codec are you using? And that's strange, because I bought a
> 30GB iPod
> video and have very few problems with the audio on it. The regular iPod
> firmware is
> pretty weak in the audio department, but I tweaked the sound a little in
> Rockbox
> and it sounds excellent.

I was listening to VBR MP3's ripped with CDeX and processed with MP3gain. They
sound fine on my Archos JBR, my ipod Mini, and even an old 512 MB Creative Muvo
I have laying around. It's not the source material or the codec - it's the
electronics. If you pause the music - or even if you haven't done anything yet,
just turned it on - you hear a distinct hissing in the headphones. It goes away
if you crank the volume all the way down to zero, but remains more or less
constant in amplitude for all other volume settings, increasing slightly near
max volume. Someone solved their problem by getting a headphone attenuator and
then cranking the volume all the way up, but I'm not going to go out and buy
(and carry around) something extra in order to get a brand new device to produce
decent sound.

> I use mostly Vorbis and FLAC for my music collection, with some MP3s
> here and there.
> I also have a huge collection of NSF (Nintendo music) files, many C64
> SIDs, and several
> sets of SNES SPC files, and with the exception of muted audio on the
> SPCs, everything
> sounds clean as a bell.
>
> But it could also be the headphones you use. Try another pair.

Yes, the impedance of the headphones does make a difference in the perceived
volume of the hiss, but I can hear it with every pair I've tried - the stock
iPod buds, Sony and Sennheiser in-the-ear models, and also some Sennheiser
supra-aural cans. It's just completely unacceptable for a device at that price
point, IMO. I have to try reaaaaallllly hard to hear it with the Mini, but 4GB
just isn't big enough, and I wanted to be able to display photos and the
occasional movie/TV show/video podcast as well. Unless the folks at the Apple
Store can set me up with one that doesn't sound like this, it's history. I
checked out my daughter's 80G, too, and it had the same problem, even perhaps a
bit worse at the top end. It's not an issue with the stuff *she* listens to,
however. ;)
Received on 2007-05-22