ipod and dac?


Has anyone used an ipod or similar device with a high quality d/a converter? I love the idea of the convenience with the ipod and duplicating my cd collection, but I hate the idea of compressing the data and losing the sonic quality. I welcome any ideas on this topic as well as ideas relating to how to make the ipod and the like a high quality digital source. (Can you modify the recording rate to make the music quality better?) thx
emster

Showing 2 responses by cwlondon

Onhwy61

Thank you. Probably not so I will check the downloads.

To clarify my other comments, my "skipping" was not from vibration or jarring.

It is a brief pause or dead space in the music -- only on WAV files -- that seems to relate to the mechanical movement of the internal hard drive. Annoying.

Dont think this would be resolved by firmware. By the way, the chief guru I have met on this subject is a visitor to Audiogon.

Following a previous iPod thread on the tedium of ripping CD's, he has set up a service where he does this for people. UPS your CDs and he will send it all back to you, conveniently copied onto a portable hard drive.

I have no affiliation with Stuart, but have found him to be extremely knowledgable and a very good guy:

[email protected]

He, too, seems to think that tagging WAV files is not perfectly straightforward.

So I am still a big fan of the iPod device, but do look forward to progress in the lossless schemes and external DACs.
The iPod is a wonderful device and using an external DAC is a great idea, but here are two other problems I have had with mine:

Even using a cable into my car stereo in a fairly noisy Porsche convertible, the difference between WAV files and LAME compressed MP-3 files were clearly audible to me.

The MP3 file sounds, well... COMPRESSED. Honking and fatiguing in the midrange, and lacking in dynamics.

Another thing I realized -- even with my car stereo -- was that the MP3 files create a vague, wandering image compared to the WAV files on my iPod.

So I would also rather have 20-40 CD quality WAV files than a zillion MP3s.

On the WAV files, however, I seem to get a "skip" on every song and I also have not been able to grab the tagging information from the web, so the files are not categorized like MP-3s which is one of the main reasons to use the iPod in the first place.

Or am I missing something?

So please do let us know when WAV files can be easily tagged, they dont skip, and an output on the iPOd will handle a high end D/A.

Nonetheless, a very cool toy.