Want killer sound from your iPod? Here it is...

[tonepub]

Just announced on Gizmodo today and at CES next week,
Wadias new iPod dock:

http://gizmodo.com/340518/itransport...ital-ipod-dock

It will be in my hot little hands the following Monday after CES. Pure digital output from your iPod. The only one that does it (for now) All the others take the analog output and go back to digital first.

160gb iPod and uncompressed files (not apple lossless) and you have about 200 albums at CD quality resolution that you can put in your shirt pocket! Plug it into your DAC and go!

Very exciting and you will see a full review in the Feb 6 issue of TONEAudio!

 

[David Matz]

Sounds like a great feat. However, is there a large market for something like this or is this only for audio/ videophile niche?

 

[tonepub]

Well, we'll certainly find out....
Considering the amount of business that the guys that mod iPods for a higher quality analog out, I'm guessing pretty big.

Also, with the huge install base of iPods out there, I'm suspecting it will do very well.

Wadia has a lot of experience with digital, so I am wishing them the best on this.

I'll know a lot more on Monday!

 

[amey01]

I want better quality when I'm using headphones too!

 

[Audiophiliac]

This is awesome! Might be the piece of gear that finally gets me to buy an iPod. For $349, and knowing Wadia, this thing will be killer. Now if Steve at Empirical Audio would speed up development of his Formula One DAC, that would be the perfect combo.

 

[music again]

iTunes downloads

Jeff,

I WON an iPod at work last year and my daughter uses it more than I do for sure! In fact we got her a $50 gift certificate for the iTunes store to do downloads. I loaded just about ever CD I have onto the iPod and we currently only have about 15 songs that we downloaded. These are played on the iPod itself, a Bose dock which I also won at work ( would not have bought the thing), and an iHome AM/FM clock radio in the kitchen which was a Christmas gift, and isn't all that bad for what it does. I don't have it in any way attached to my stereo system.

Here is where I am clueless . . .

I noticed we can "upgrade" certain songs for .30 each. What are we downloading from iTunes and what are we "upgrading to?

I'm assuming that all of the CD's that I copied to the iPod are available at the highest sample rate to play on the Wadia. Or is that a bad assumption?

Can you give me (us) a quick tutorial on the available file types and WHERE you get them? My CD collection, iTunes? Others sites? I we throwing money away with the .99 downloads?

Thanks!

JM

Just announced on Gizmodo today and at CES next week,
Wadias new iPod dock:

http://gizmodo.com/340518/itransport...ital-ipod-dock

It will be in my hot little hands the following Monday after CES. Pure digital output from your iPod. The only one that does it (for now) All the others take the analog output and go back to digital first.

160gb iPod and uncompressed files (not apple lossless) and you have about 200 albums at CD quality resolution that you can put in your shirt pocket! Plug it into your DAC and go!

Very exciting and you will see a full review in the Feb 6 issue of TONEAudio!

 

[sleepysurf]

I dunno... for $299 ea, you can get a bunch of Squeezeboxes, and access your entire lossless music library (FLAC, Apple Lossless, other) from any/all listening locations (via your hard drive/NAS), without needing to dock your iPod. The Squeezebox also has a decent remote and display, for easy control from your listening location. The Wadia has neither, and I don't think it has a built-in DAC, so I'm not sure what you're gaining (except for not using a computer network).

 

[Audiophiliac]

There is definitely a niche market for this type of product. Not for everyone obviously. But for someone, likely a semi- or pseudo- audiophile, who uses their iPod as their primary music server, both for portable listening, maybe in-car use, and wants to be able to just walk in the door, dock it, and go...this is the nicest dock available for them.

The biggest accomplishment is bypassing the internal DAC and outputting the raw digital stream. Now that Apple has started allowing 3rd parties to do this, there will likely be other similar products on the horizon from other high end companies. I might wait and see where other manufacturers take this new development. I would think an integrated amp with a built-in DAC and iPod dock would make a real slick package for someone wanting a one box solution. Or even just a preamp/DAC/dock combo....add your amp and voila.

Of course, I am still on the fence...I am looking at SONOS and other solutions for streaming my digital music collection. This may or may not play into that decision, but good job Wadia. Krell also has the KID....worth a look-see I suppose. I dont think it has access to the digital stream from iPod though. And its $1500

 

[gstring]

I dunno... for $299 ea, you can get a bunch of Squeezeboxes, and access your entire lossless music library (FLAC, Apple Lossless, other) from any/all listening locations (via your hard drive/NAS), without needing to dock your iPod. The Squeezebox also has a decent remote and display, for easy control from your listening location. The Wadia has neither, and I don't think it has a built-in DAC, so I'm not sure what you're gaining (except for not using a computer network).

Your absolutely right. M iPod is for bringing lossless music with me. The squeezebox takes care of me at home, and boy does it ever do a great job at that. I realize that this community supports these types of leading edge technologies; but for anyone outside of this forum I've tried to turn on to a Squeezebox just wants to know if their iPod will work. Unfortunately, they don't grasp the difference in formats.

 

[TheBobGoat]

Music again

The upgrade improves the quality of the songs and should remove the DRM so you can put them on anything you want easily.

http://ipod.about.com/od/itunesplus/a/itunes_plus_up2.htm

 

[music again]

iTunes Plus vs. CDP vs. Squueze box

Quauestion and clarification . . .

I see that iTunes Plus files are encoded at 256 kbps vs. 128 kbps for the normal iTunes downloads. What are regular CDs encoded at? If they are both at 256 kbps then it would be safe to assume they would sound the same.

I obviously have some investigating to do here. It sounds like if I had a Sqeezebox, I could use my PC as a server to play all of my stored music on my 'reference" 2 channel system. Is the music I loaded onto my computer via the iTunes program (both copied from my own CD collection, plus the iTunes Plus downloaded file) available to the squeesbox, or would I have to load the CDs again in some other program?

It also sounds like I maybe do not need a $3,000 CDP if the squeezbox plays at the same sampling rate as a CD in a CDP.

JM

Music again

The upgrade improves the quality of the songs and should remove the DRM so you can put them on anything you want easily.

http://ipod.about.com/od/itunesplus/a/itunes_plus_up2.htm

 

[gstring]

Quauestion and clarification . . .

I see that iTunes Plus files are encoded at 256 kbps vs. 128 kbps for the normal iTunes downloads. What are regular CDs encoded at? If they are both at 256 kbps then it would be safe to assume they would sound the same.

I obviously have some investigating to do here. It sounds like if I had a Sqeezebox, I could use my PC as a server to play all of my stored music on my 'reference" 2 channel system. Is the music I loaded onto my computer via the iTunes program (both copied from my own CD collection, plus the iTunes Plus downloaded file) available to the squeesbox, or would I have to load the CDs again in some other program?

It also sounds like I maybe do not need a $3,000 CDP if the squeezbox plays at the same sampling rate as a CD in a CDP.

JM

The squeezbox serves as the gateway between your computer and your "reference" 2 channel system. There are quite a few very respected forum members here who use this as their reference for playback. A quick education on lossless codecs i.e. FLAC, .shn, .ape opens up huge possibilities regarding management of your music library via a computer. I use a laptop connected via firewire to an external hd and stream using a wireless network to connect to the squeezbox and then DAC.

Your squeezebox can manage your music folder of lossless files and playlists, or you can use iTunes to do this for you depending on how things are set. They key here is we are talking about lossless encoding of music as opposed to lossey codecs such as the mp3 variants (including iTunes plus). If you couple the squeezebox with a great DAC, then your capable of producing music fidelity costing several times as much. Seriously. I can't speak for sleepy smurf, but this the future and the future is now.:rocker:

 

[amey01]

Your absolutely right. M iPod is for bringing lossless music with me. The squeezebox takes care of me at home, and boy does it ever do a great job at that. I realize that this community supports these types of leading edge technologies; but for anyone outside of this forum I've tried to turn on to a Squeezebox just wants to know if their iPod will work. Unfortunately, they don't grasp the difference in formats.

Agreed - Squeezebox wins every day, however this is for the many many people who:

* Don't want to leave their computer on 24/7
* Don't want the hassle of setting up a wireless network
* Don't want the hassle of setting up and maintaining a SlimServer
* Wouldn't know how to set up a SlimServer

 

[Craig]

I'm interested to see if Wadia will use their standard billet/laser cut aluminum chassis for this or something else. You can't tell what material they used in the cheesy computer generated picture. For all we know it could be a plastic molded case but then that wouldn't be very Wadia like. I can't imagine their heavy duty casing being used for an iPod DAC/Dock component at a $345 price point.

 

[Peter Hogan]

Quauestion and clarification . . .

I see that iTunes Plus files are encoded at 256 kbps vs. 128 kbps for the normal iTunes downloads. What are regular CDs encoded at? If they are both at 256 kbps then it would be safe to assume they would sound the same.

I obviously have some investigating to do here. It sounds like if I had a Sqeezebox, I could use my PC as a server to play all of my stored music on my 'reference" 2 channel system. Is the music I loaded onto my computer via the iTunes program (both copied from my own CD collection, plus the iTunes Plus downloaded file) available to the squeesbox, or would I have to load the CDs again in some other program?

It also sounds like I maybe do not need a $3,000 CDP if the squeezbox plays at the same sampling rate as a CD in a CDP.

JM

Hi,
Regular CD's have a bit rate of 1.411 MB/s or 1,411 KB/s, which is more than 10 times the 128KB/s of a regular MP3. MP3's do use compression algorithms, but you can't help but lose some quality when you're throwing out more than 90% of the data. Even the iTunes Plus files sacrifice more than 80%.

More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)

Peter