80GB 5th Gen - Sound Quality

[blisteringblue]

Father Christmas left me a nice sparkling 80gb Ipod video which looks the business.

I've had an old 2G (looks like a brick in comparison ) which has served me very well for many years, however is the sound quality on the newer generations really that much better?

Reason I ask is that a lot of my early MP3 collection is only at 128K and while they sound OK (ish) through the stock headphones in my car they were pants.

I have a Dension ICE>Link direct into my head unit which also has a 10 speaker Hi-Fi upgrade system. So the kit in the car is as good as I'm going to get, but I was horrified how different some of the music sounds with the 5G. It sounded fine with the 2G.

I really hope it's my new iPod showing up the limitations of my mp3 collection at 128k, but these really did sound OK on the 2G through the same system.

Today was my first 3 hour drive with the new iPod and I was horrified at some of the distortion at higher volume.

Luckily for the last couple of years I have been using 192k for downloads and these do sound as good as before so it does make me think it is the mp3 that is at fault. But is there really that much difference between 2G and 5G iPods?

[kevH]

Hi Blistering

Although i cant really comment on 2G 5G aspect all i can say is ive got much the same car set up and whilst playing my 80GB anything 192kbps and up sounds ok you can really hear the difference when playing 128. So im guessing that is your problem as i have done much the same as you nothing less than 190 for playing thro both the car and the home hifi set up.

[blisteringblue]

Just had around the same drive home this evening and I'm totally blown away by the 5G.

It really does show up the bad quality of my 128k mp3 files.

Before I would have just said an mp3 is an mp3 and they would all sound the same, but you really can tell the difference now the gulf is enormous between 128k and 192k !! Heaven knows what they would sound like at 320k !! I'm going to have to rip a few CDs to find out

Nice one Apple too, the 5G ipod is premier division while I'd put my old 2G below the GM Conference It really is that noticable.

[Autopilot]

Have you tried turning the volume down on the iPod and up on the car stereo?

As the iPod has a headphone socket (not a proper line out) it will distort if you have the iPod at high volume. Thats to do with the way the music is amplified, not due to the quality of your MP3's and iPod circuitry.

[KingOfGondor]

ipods do have a line out, you can get cables which use the docking port to access line out

[PJTX100]

Bitrate should not affect distortion one way or the other.

Most likely cause of distortion is equalizer settings. I always have EQ off on the iPod.

Also if you dig around here some very credible people say that there's nothing in it quality-wise between the headphone and the line-out on the dock.

[blisteringblue]

I did set the EQ off coming home and it was better, will try the volume down on ipod as well. I always had it around 90% which was the dension recommended level for their kit.

Its not worth swapping to a dock connector as I will swap the car this year, I can put up with the old classic connectors till then.

Just interogating my itunes too and am horrified that some of my mp3s are as low as 96k !! Time to look out some of those CDs.

[gerbilly]

I now have the same I Pod after having the I Pod Mini for the last few years.
With the mini I always had the volume about 90% and that was with the EU volume restriction removed with Go Pod.
With the 80gb Pod the sound quality I think is superior for most of my 14gb of music (50% 192, 35% 226, 13% 128 and 2 % loseless). Voulme levels are also a lot lower with about 60% volume levels being more than enough.
Listening to Bjork's all is full of love earlier today and it sounded amazing and that was with the stock earphones and not my senny cx300's.

I love it but I am having problems with loading music due to this -48 error.

[Autopilot]

Originally Posted by PJTX100

Also if you dig around here some very credible people say that there's nothing in it quality-wise between the headphone and the line-out on the dock.

I did not say there was, it has nothing to do with the quality of the outputs, i am sure they are fine. It's about levels, and the way they get amplified.

You should always use a line out for this kind of use, i.e anything other than headphone use.

And I realise the Ipod acts as line out when using the docking port, just wondering if the OP was doing that as I have never used a Dension ICE>Link. But from what he is saying it does.

You will notice the limitations of files @128 with very good kit, even much medium end kit, but they should not 'horrify' you (well, some audiophiles may beg to differ) and be distorted, just flat, week in detail and a bit lifeless sounding with a few artefacts maybe.

OP: Nice to hear someone who cares about the quality of music The forum is seems to be full of people advising newbies to 'just rip to 128, it sounds just fine'.

[KingOfGondor]

Originally Posted by dangerous_dom

OP: Nice to hear someone who cares about the quality of music The forum is seems to be full of people advising newbies to 'just rip to 128, it sounds just fine'.

here here!

[blisteringblue]

Originally Posted by dangerous_dom

I did not say there was, it has nothing to do with the quality of the outputs, i am sure they are fine. It's about levels, and the way they get amplified.

You should always use a line out for this kind of use, i.e anything other than headphone use.

And I realise the Ipod acts as line out when using the docking port, just wondering if the OP was doing that as I have never used a Dension ICE>Link. But from what he is saying it does.

You will notice the limitations of files @128 with very good kit, even much medium end kit, but they should not 'horrify' you (well, some audiophiles may beg to differ) and be distorted, just flat, week in detail and a bit lifeless sounding with a few artefacts maybe.

OP: Nice to hear someone who cares about the quality of music The forum is seems to be full of people advising newbies to 'just rip to 128, it sounds just fine'.

Yes the ICE>Link caters for all ipods as it is a modular system. The main box is roughly the same for all systems and this attaches to your head unit in some way (mine is specific for the car and replaces the CD changer input). As you've ordered it for a specific model of ipod you then get either a dock cable for 3G and above or a headphone & Firewire cable for attaching/charging to the old iPod classic 1G/2G.

I now have a Female Firewire to Dock converter to allow it to still charge and also use the headphone socket as before. Output is fine like this and other than an ugly dock converter I can live with it for 6 months.

128k is sounding OK again now, it was the EQ settings as somebody pointed out that caused the distortion.

However this really has enlightened me to the bitrate quality as I can REALLY tell the difference. I will start to spend some time re-ripping most of what I can.

Plus just waiting for Amazon to deliver my i-deck !! £79 delivered was a bargain !! Time to get back into my music properly !! I've not even had a hifi system since the CDs got life laundered to the loft

[PJTX100]

Originally Posted by dangerous_dom

The forum is seems to be full of people advising newbies to 'just rip to 128, it sounds just fine'.

I'm surprised by that statement, can you give some examples?

Having hung around this particular forum for around a year now since I decided to digitise my whole collection, I've found the advice on MP3 bitrate to be pretty fair ie 192K min, 256K or above ideally.

I could point to dozens of posts by myself alone to this effect (some below) but I can't recall a groundswell on this forum that 128K was anything other than a compromise.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...09&postcount=4

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...71&postcount=4

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...0&postcount=17

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...17&postcount=3

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...25&postcount=4

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...12&postcount=2

[blisteringblue]

I just think it was a generalisation about peoples attitude to bitrates.

To be honest I was firmly in that camp before the new iPod and most of my collection was 128k and as stated some I'd even done at 96k !! And I wondered why they sounded a little FLAT

Now I'm all i-decked up too I'm loving my music again, I find the TV is even going off for a couple of hours at night and my music is on. Not done that for over 10 years I would say.

I've read all the posts about lossless and 320k etc and in the end I've sort of compromised, I'm re-ripping my CDs to MP3 VBR (192k lower - 320k higher) using CDEX and Lame 3.97 with the VBR extreme profile. They sound mint to me and you can do each CD in around a minute. I know there will be some loss but I can't hear it.

[Mr X]

Originally Posted by PJTX100

I'm surprised by that statement, can you give some examples?

Having hung around this particular forum for around a year now since I decided to digitise my whole collection, I've found the advice on MP3 bitrate to be pretty fair ie 192K min, 256K or above ideally.

I could point to dozens of posts by myself alone to this effect (some below) but I can't recall a groundswell on this forum that 128K was anything other than a compromise.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...09&postcount=4

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...71&postcount=4

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...0&postcount=17

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...17&postcount=3

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...25&postcount=4

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showp...12&postcount=2

Excellent post thanks! Have been thinking about re-ripping my cd collection again as first did it many years ago with a 1st gen Ipod/iTunes!

Most of my newer stuff has been ripped at 192 but Im really after best quality. I can understand the desire to go mp3 but I tend to stick with apple products. What I'm comfused about is...

1) Is AAC supposed to be better than mp3
2) What bitrate is Apple Lossless and I assume its AAC format?
3) And reading your posts it appears that for best sound (if space is not an issue) I should go FLAC. Is this compatible with Itunes and Ipod thoughas I can't find an option in itunes to rip using flac?

Thanks

[PJTX100]

Originally Posted by Mr X

Excellent post thanks! Have been thinking about re-ripping my cd collection again as first did it many years ago with a 1st gen Ipod/iTunes!

Most of my newer stuff has been ripped at 192 but Im really after best quality. I can understand the desire to go mp3 but I tend to stick with apple products. What I'm comfused about is...

1) Is AAC supposed to be better than mp3
2) What bitrate is Apple Lossless and I assume its AAC format?
3) And reading your posts it appears that for best sound (if space is not an issue) I should go FLAC. Is this compatible with Itunes and Ipod thoughas I can't find an option in itunes to rip using flac?

Thanks

1) Though I have an iPod I chose MP3 hence I'm not an expert on AAC. I think on a "like for like" basis (ie filesize) AAC may sound slightly better.
2) If you want to go lossless and want to stick with Apple then Apple lossless would seem the way to go.
3) FLAC is another lossless format but as you say is not compatible with the iPod using it with itunes.

To be honest if you want good quality you'd be hard pressed to hear the difference between 256K / 320K MP3 and CD.

However, MP3 is only there because of bandwidth / disk space constraints. In the not too distant future lossy compression will be unecessary.