SlashGear Japan
What’s up with QA over at Apple these days? The iPhone was plagued with battery issues when it was launched, the iPod Touch has difficulty displaying dark colors (along with an identity crisis), and now people are reporting that the iPod classic has poor audio output.
Some people might call the latest complaints a bit picky. However, for those that have an ear for music, some minor quality issues can drive you to a different product. One such person was upset by this and decided to run a series of tests to confirm that he wasn’t crazy. His tests showed that the the iPod the following issues:
A slight uplift in treble.
A group delay that depends on frequency.
A strong modulation with 22.1k, causing intermodulation distortion.
These issues are likely caused by Apple’s decision to switch to a Cirrus Logic audio codec chip. Luckily for most of us, the quality issues are barely noticeable.
New iPod classic has “badly engineered” audio circuitry? [via tuaw]
3 Responses to “iPod Classic – Plagued with sound quality issues?”
Andrew Servania September 18, 2007
Daaaang! heheheh. I’m glad I have a good ol’ 80Gig iPod Video that works just fine. That’s what happens when you try to minimize production costs on a high quality petty-good-selling product. Especialy when you have critical buyers out there. :P
+2Russ Simpson September 22, 2007
I wouldn’t say I have a ‘golden ear’ for music, but I do prefer to put music onto my iPod at 320kbps just so it sounds brighter when played through speakers. For this reason, I just purchased the new 160gb iPod Classic. I never used the standard iPod headphones before, I always preferred my Etymotic ER6i in ear headphones. I couldn’t fault my old 60gb iPod video for sound quality (I always leave the EQ flat for all types of music). My new iPod on the other hand has noticeably worse sound quality – fuzzy and not as bright. Electronic music doesn’t sound as clear as it should. Rock music sounds OK with a treble boosting EQ setting. I am thinking of using the standard headphones to make it less noticable. I’m hoping this issue will be resolved with a firmware update, or i’ll remove the hard drive and fit it into my old iPod… :-(
NeutralChris September 22, 2007
Sorry to hear that you’ve noticed this too Russ. We’ll let you know if we hear of any firmware updates that fix this, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, there’s a good chance this is a hardware issue.
If you decide to go switching out your hard drives, let us know. I’d like to hear how it goes.
Neutral