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Media (Apple) Media

Inside the iPod, Past and Present 409

Posted by michael from the outside-of-warranty dept.
We mentioned the iPod Shuffle dissection a couple of days ago. Reader UtahSaint writes "Electronic Design have got a neat little article giving non-Apple employees an insight into the makings of the original iPod and the revisions made (on a technical level) with the 2nd and 3rd generation iPods. The third-generation iPod contains two power-management chips from Royal Philips Electronics, a TEA1211 and a PCF50605. The TEA1211 is a dc-dc converter that can switch automatically between step-down and step-up operation in response to changing input voltage. The PCF50605, a single-chip power-management unit (PMU), can adjust power-supply voltages to the lowest thresholds needed for functions in a particular power domain." And finally, sammykrupa writes "PC Mag has a great review of Apple's iPod Shuffle. It covers the quality of the audio output saying that it is has dead-flat frequency response, less harmonic distortion, and most notably, better bass response than its bigger siblings. The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes."
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Inside the iPod, Past and Present More

Inside the iPod, Past and Present

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  • Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:16PM (#11437662)
    iPod Shuffe, no wireless. Less space than a regular iPod. Lame.

    • Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:20PM (#11437700)
      Troll? It's hilarious, it's a paraphrase of our illustrious Taco's first comment on the iPod...
    • It is 200 dollars cheaper. Probably the cheapest, yet useful apple product.

  • Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Simon (S2) ( 600188 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:17PM (#11437666) Homepage
    The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes.

    The iPod is designed to take with you and hear music on the bus, or while jogging - with headphones. Does it really matter how good the bass is if you listen to it with headphones anyway? I think not.

    • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sure it matters, I can just imagine some kid running past *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* Older jogger, "Damn kids!"

    • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:22PM (#11437712)
      You can get very good bass reproduction in high-end headphones for MUCH cheaper than you can in high-end stereos. Unless you're a rap fan, where it seems the point of bass is to vibrate your rib-cage, high-end headphones can reproduce a wide spectrum of frequencies very well.

    • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:23PM (#11437717)
      Actually, bass performance is one of the principal things i look for in portable devices when it comes to audio quality. In most music genres, if the bass "ooomph!" is lost the sound becomes lackluster, not to mention that good bass isolates you from outside sounds (for me, at least).

      My Sony Minidisc does bass wonderfully, and even compensates a bit for it's limited maximum volume.

    • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by radish ( 98371 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:34PM (#11437773) Homepage
      Good head/ear phones can do bass very well. SO if the player can't, then yes, it's a problem.
    • the low frequencies in high quality headphones are much better defined than the same low frequencies in high quality speakers.

      Of course, when you on the bus or jog, you wear less than high quality headphones, but even then, those cans often have fairly decent bass.

      From my experience: my speakers are KEF 104.2, good cans I use for listening at home are AKG 240DF, their lower frequencies are much better than KEF. But even my portable cans, Koss Porta Pro (and Sporta Pro), provides some really decent low fre
    • I give up, what is FLAT response? I'm guessing it's a good thing but it doesn't sound like it?
      • It's what you want if you're into accurate reproduction of sound. If the response (to input) curve is flat, it means that the output of the system is an accurate reproduction of the input. The curve is along a graph with decibels on the y-axis and frequency along the x-axis.

  • In classrooms of the future... (Score:4, Funny)

    by OneOfAKind ( 842855 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:17PM (#11437668)
    "Eek! How gross! I'm not disecting that iPod!"

  • Makings of the original iPod? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gob Blesh It ( 847837 ) <gobblesh1t@gmail.com> on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:20PM (#11437699)
    The linked article is interesting from a technical standpoint, but it's also pretty dry--after the lead paragraph, the author doesn't really talk about the sweat and tears behind the scenes. Fortunately, the Times Magazine ran a story [nytimes.com] (reg-free link) a couple years ago about the human side of iPod, from conception to birth. Turns out the iPod didn't spring whole from the tip of Steve Jobs' magical wang. The article's worth a read if you're into this kind of thing.

    • Re:Makings of the original iPod? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @08:26PM (#11438095)
      Apple apparently cornered the market for the Toshiba disks for a while. But now there is, inevitably, an alternative. Hitachi now makes a disk that size

      Buried in the article, there was this key fact. Owning all the tiny hard drives on the market for more than a year translated into a long-term perception advantage for Apple -- that iPod == Smallest == Sexiest now and forever.

      Had they not had the foresight to monopolize the formfactor, the iPod would have been one of a half-dozen similar models on the market just as it was picking up and it might have been lost in the pack (especially because the early models were firewire only).

  • Sound Quality (Score:5, Interesting)

    by exquisito ( 789236 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:24PM (#11437723)
    The point is that the old Ipod headphone preamps didnt't have enough juice to power most headphones properly. What is the hardest frequency to reproduce? The bass. So, even with headphones and the eq turned up, the bass didn't sound as full and punchy as it should have. This was probably the worst flaw sound quality wise. The AAC or MP3 encoding at 128K are virtually indistinguishable from CDs for most listeners, but most listeners can hear the lack of bass. Its like something is missing.

  • Hard on the batteries (Score:4, Informative)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:27PM (#11437734)
    is a dc-dc converter that can switch automatically between step-down and step-up operation in response to changing input voltage.

    Without examining the circuit myself, I could imagine that when the batteries fall below Vcc that the converter switches from step down to step-up to provide additional play time, until the batteries are completely drained.

    Maybe someone can confirm/deny this.
  • The article says the first iPod had buttons directly below the screen. Apparently, they've never seen the original iPod, a picture of it, or the "Media (Apple)" logo on Slashdot. The buttons were around the wheel.

  • huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:33PM (#11437772)
    The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes."

    I had a 3rd gen, now I have a 4th gen. Both drove my Grado SR-60 headphones (think Radar from Mash) just fine. In fact- they do a noticeably better job driving them at low frequency than my Powerbook.

    Any problems with low frequency response probably have something to do with the fact that, despite the Steve Reality Distortion Field, you cannot get good low-frequency response in a tiny little earplug. You can put marketspeak on your website till the cows come home about Neodymium magnets make 'em better- they're still just tiny earplug speakers.

    • Re:huh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 )
      Actually, there's a lot of earplug headphones that do a very fine work of reproducing bass. Of course, nowhere near a proper headphone set, but you can get a good bass kick from relatively cheap earplugs. I own a pair of el-cheapo TDK earplug spearkes that play metal, electronic and classical music just fine - all heavy-on-bass genres. I can't recall the model right now.

      For some reason, a lot of portable devices have poor low frequency response. Most of the time is to save a few bucks in parts - i've
    • I too own a pair of SR-60s that I swear by (btw, get the sr-80 foam cups from headphone.com if you haven't already, $15 noticable sonic improvement), but how do you account for the etymotics in your in-ear = crappy bass theory. From what I understand the etymotics blow away the sr-60s. I think you'll find that bass is transmitted wonderfully though the walls of the ear canal even better than though air. In addition the etymotics provide 30+db of isolation.
    • The terminology surrounding the sound quality is quite confusing. Namely, suggesting that it is flat but has better bass response or that it is flat but has trouble "sustaining" big bass notes hardly makes sense.

      Flat is flat. Either the old players are not flat and deficient in the low frequency spectrum, or the new player is not flat and has some kind of boost. The fact is that when most people hear flat they think, "Where's the bass?"

      The article says nothing of the test data, equipment or methodology

      • Re:The real huh! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Woody77 ( 118089 )
        Yes, and no.

        Because frequency response is measured with a purely resistive dummy load. Speakers tend to have wildly varying impedances depending on the frequency, and if the impedance goes low enough, then the driver which has a flat frequency response at high impedances now can no longer push enough current to keep the frequency response flat.

        Numerous high-end headphones will try to pull more current than a lot of consumer equipment can push, which is why there are headphone amps (well, that and to add

      • Re:The real huh! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        You are correct, the origional iPod was flat or neutral in its frequency response. In fact it got rave reviews from audiophiles for exactly this feature. Unfortunatly most people are used to compressed, bass pumped, overproduced pop and new rock which is made to sound "good" on car stereo's and other cheap systems. If you have good cans and appreciate good music you should love the origional iPod. Of course if you have high resistence headphones the iPod might not be the best pick since it's not terribly hi
    • If you read the article you'd notice that they tried different headphones when reviewing the iPod. The problem with the bass response has to do with the amplifier in the iPod.

      Of course, you can always plug your iPod into a real amplifier and get all the bass you want through real speakers.

    • my brother's 4th gen doesn't put out good bass with my earbuds, but my iRiver iFP flash player sure does. I'd say that the iPod's bass sucks when compared with the competition, but I haven't compared HDD-based devices to it. My point is that you actually can get decent bass from earbuds but you need enough power to do so. The iPod only cranks out 5mW/channel (roughly) whereas my iFP does ~13mW/channel. The difference in overall sound quality as well as loudness is considerable.

      Hopefully my new iShuffl
    • Well Shure and Etymotic do some canal phones with pretty impressive bass, I like my e3's but I hear the e2's actually have louder bass.

  • It kinda cements my desire to get an iPod Shuffle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:35PM (#11437776) Journal
    I don't need a massive capacity player, I just want to get my top 100/200 songs ever and carry them with me for those times I'm out.

    Not only is it diminuitive, great value (probably because of the lack of screen, but the 1GB Shuffle is £10 cheaper than a 512MB Sony, and £30 cheaper than a 1GB Creative in the UK). but it is actually pretty damn good.

    Will this be the first Apple hardware I ever buy? Where will it end?!
    • don't do it, it's like a drug addiction...you start with the ipod, and it's great...you get a great buzz, and dont feel any harm...next you decide to see what the OSX experience is all about, so you grab a Mac Mini (with additional RAM, of course)... next thing you know, you're living in a shabby flat in the cheapest part of town with no utilities (save electricity and internet) to help pay for your dual g5 tower of doom. it's a slippery slope.

  • Cringely on Mac Mini, iPod, and Apple's plans (Score:5, Informative)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:38PM (#11437790) Homepage
    Not directly involving the iPod, but this week's I Cringely [pbs.org] has a discussion of how the new Mac Mini may be a move by Apple to get into the movie distribution business, trying to repeat with video the success they've had with the iPod for audio. He has some interesting speculation on synergy from Pixar (which Jobs also controls) and Sony ("...you don't get the head of Sony at your event just to sell camcorders"). Well worth a read.

    • Mini + iTunes = Apple's HD TiVo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @11:46PM (#11439040)
      One thing Cringely forgot is that people love to download past episodes of TV shows and watch them again. I do that all the time with BitTorrent.

      I'm sure there'd be a subset of people willing to buy the current season of 24, Lost, Housewives, or American Idol and play it on their TV anytime - and burn it to disc.

      HD Movies? Who cares. Today's TV shows? Sure! At a dollar an episode, why the heck not? It comes out to be cheaper than the DVD. Fans'll buy the DVD anyway, because of the extras.

      Who knows whether this'll happen or not. But the box is just sitting there, waiting to be plugged into your TV.

  • Hidden iPod Shuffle features? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:38PM (#11437792)

    With all of the iPod Shuffle discussion and disections, I am surprised to see that no one has commented on the extra lines in the USB connector.

    If you look in the connector, there are five small lines between the main USB lines. (BTW, these are not included in the Shuffle's dock.) There is also NO USB logo's in any of the packaging or documentation.

    It looks like Apple may have some secret features up their sleeves.

    • Possible secret features:

      solder resistor between lines 2 & 3 - Shuffle grows full color OLED touch-screen!

      open Shuffle and cover circuit board with cream cheese, insert in USB slot - $500 USD springs from CD drive!

      stick bent paperclip in headphone jack - Steve Jobs comes to your home and cleans your car!

      ..now thats insanely great!
    • Probably test points for burning/debugging the firmware.

    • Re:Hidden iPod Shuffle features? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jschrier ( 852198 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @08:45PM (#11438189) Homepage
      Probably no secret features.

      Standard USB specifies the existence of hosts (with Type-A connectors) (such as desktop computers) and peripherals (with Type-B connectors) (such as hard drives, cell phones, digital cameras, etc.) Hosts are not supposed to connect to each other, and neither are peripherals.

      The USB-To-Go specification was created in order to allow pseudo-peripheral devices to connect to each other (e.g., you might connect your cell phone to camera so that the phone can send the data, even though both of these are peripherals to your Mac). By connecting the fifth pin of the type-B connector to ground, Vcc, or letting it float, you indicate to the other (type-B) device whether you want to act as the host, act as the peripheral, or whether you just behave like a standard USB device.

      Coincidentally, most of the mini-B connectors sold these days are 5-pin, because legacy devices can just leave the fifth pin floating. From the manufacturer's point of view, there is no reason to have two types of interchangable items in stock. So my guess is that AAPL bought what was for sale on the market.

      --js

  • "Loud enough to cause hearing damange" is a *feature*.

  • on simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by weiyuent ( 257436 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:41PM (#11437813) Journal
    "La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien à ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien à enlever." (Perfection is achieved, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away).

    -- Antoine St. Exupery (1900-1994)

  • You hear what you want to hear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by youbiquitous ( 150681 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:48PM (#11437867)
    I mostly use my 4G iPod connected to a Soundcraft mixing desk, which is connected to a set of Tannoy midfield studio monitors, each of which is powered by a separate beefy power amplifier running in bridged mono mode.

    I've compared an .aiff file played back through my computer's rackmounted audio interface (made by MOTU, for those who care, and also connected to the Soundcraft desk) and the same track played back from the iPod. I don't hear a significant difference in bass response. The people who complain about bass must be using 'phones with impedance that doesn't agree with the iPod's headphone jack.

  • It's not true, u dont need a test, its just not... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NeedleSurfer ( 768029 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:52PM (#11437893)
    Dead flat!? I dont believe it, the Telefunken at SNB (a mastering studio in montreal) is the flatest piece of equipment you might come accross and this baby isn't perfect flat, it cost 85000$ originally and required over 50000$ modification to achieve such audio performance.

    Dead-flat? I really doubt it, then again PC mag made the call, not Audio-Media, Post or Mix...

    Computer mags and websites should sincerly refrain from judging audio... because when they do, a million techno morons go down the street speading bullshit like they know what they talk about, they just repeat lies and since no one even them knows what they are talking about and those geeks have techno credits in other peoples mind, other people start spreading the same bullshit but with the telephone game kicking in (story gets modified each time it is told...), sentences changed to "my friend who studied programming told me that the audio performance of...".
    • Dead-flat? I really doubt it, then again PC mag made the call, not Audio-Media, Post or Mix...

      I agree that a lot of computer magazines don't know audio, but getting ruler-flat frequency response (when driving low-voltage loads) has been pretty easy for a long time - this isn't 1975.

      Of course flat response isn't the whole story - linearity, distortion, jitter (or WOW/Flutter for analog people), cause lots of problems, and this is where some of the sonic differences arise. There may also be problems in dr

      • Re:It's not true, u dont need a test, its just not (Score:5, Informative)

        by Chris Johnson ( 580 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @08:53PM (#11438218) Homepage Journal
        I'm a mastering engineer and hang out on mastering web boards, and the iPod came up in conversation.
        FWIW, a tech heavyweight (trying to remember if it was Bruno Putzeys?) said they'd measured the iPod and got a perfect 10K tone out of the bugger with virtually unmeasurable sidebands.
        NOT easy. That outperforms a heck of a lot of high-quality CD players, never mind mp3 portables. iPods apparently have very good tech if you know how to measure them. Jitter is what that 10K tone test measures, and it performed very, very well, I'm told.
    • It just shows you what a good deal Apple products are. The iPod shuffle is an example of being able to buy $85,000 worth of audio equipment for $100. Make that $135,000 when you include the mods! Now, who says macs are more expensive?

  • What does this mean? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @07:52PM (#11437894) Journal
    although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes
    If the response is flat then by definition it can play back bass notes. This reads more like audiophile verbal diarrhea than something with semantic value.
  • Quote:
    "Supported File Types: Audible, MP3, WAV, WMA"

    Hehe. ;)

    OK, I stop this lame joke.
    Seriously: What is "Audible"? Never heard of that file format.
    • Seriously: What is "Audible"? Never heard of that file format.

      Audible.com [audible.com] is the #1 online source for downloadable audiobooks. As far as I know, it doesn't use its own format; that's just a journalistic gaffe.
      • As far as I know, it doesn't use its own format; that's just a journalistic gaffe.

        Audible files come in either ".aa" files (Audible's homegrown DRM system) or iTunes DRM. The aa files are wrappers around low bitrate voice codecs (from voiceage, i believe) for formats 1-3, and format 4 is mp3 (32kbps, 22khz).
    • audible.com - audiobooks.

      used to have a "$100 off mp3 player" signup deal - which was pretty slick (signup was for a year at 15 or 20/month). Now looks like it's just a free trial - sucky.

      The cool thing is you can always come back and re-download the files - unlike certain unnamed music services - even if you no longer have an active paid membership.

    • Outpost.com claims that too:
      40 GB [outpost.com]
      20 GB [outpost.com]

      I've sent them 3 e-mails since Thanksgiving. I eventually gave up.

      Scott

  • Does anyone really care what "we prefer"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by LoadStar ( 532607 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @08:04PM (#11437967)

    From the review of the shuffle:

    Still, overall we prefer a player with a navigation window. When we use random play on our personal digital audio player, we often find that it stimulates a musical mood; we'll then switch to a specific playlist or group of albums.
    Are we supposed to CARE how you use random play? How you use random play is a personal decision, and should NOT factor into the review or the score you give the product. You might play it that way - others might not.

    The review should have been, not on the way they would prefer to use the device, but how well the device works within the parameters it was designed for. That is, it was designed as a small-form random-play digital music player, and it does very well within those parameters.

    This would be like reviewing a Kia and mentioning "We tend to drive luxury vehicles like a BMW, and wished that this car was a luxury car instead of an econobox," and scoring it down simply because it wasn't a BMW.

  • Apple has done it... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Moustache N Tits ( 828608 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @08:30PM (#11438115)
    I really have got to say, I love my iPod Shuffle. Although I played with the idea of selling it on eBay for a quick buck, the $10 was worth it to me to have something this chic. I never expected it that small or light, and it's so simple. I never looked at the screen of my iTunes, and in my car I put it on shuffle and never manually change the song. It works well for me but what's amazing is how popular the thing has been. Just like their big brothers they are getting scooped up left and right. You have to admire a company that can take a 4 year old player, put it in a nice case and have it back ordered for 4 weeks. Now if they would just release a product to compete with Microsoft's Media Center.
  • Apparently the Shuffle may not be immediately compatible [bitsplitter.net] with linux tools already available. Gnupod apparently has trouble copying music to the shuffle.

    According to the author of foo_pod [hydrogenaudio.org] for FooBar2000, there's the usual iTunesDB database, but also a new one, called iTunesSD [hydrogenaudio.org]. They haven't been able to completely reverse-engineer this one yet. It turns out it isn't sufficient to simply write to the iTunesDB database -- songs won't play.

    Searches on Google [google.ca] show nothing about the iTunesSD database.

  • Low bass on purpose (Score:3, Funny)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @09:33PM (#11438455) Homepage
    Could it be it was done because Apple engineers are sick of hearing someone with rediculus bass driving down the road when they are trying to sleep?

    Maybe they did it so they don't have to hear:

    thud, thud thud..

    every time someone with an iPod comes walking.

    If I were a car manufacturer... that would be my motivation for better soundproofing. To stop people from being so annoying.

    (it's always sounds like the same damn song too doesn't it?)

  • My mini sounds pretty great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sjonke ( 457707 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @10:32PM (#11438696) Journal
    Since when is PCMag an audiophile magazine? I'm no audiophile either, but the last thing I would have thought about my mini is that it had poor bass response. If anything, when listening with my headphones (admittedly inexpensive, but well rated Koss phones) there might be a bit too much bass, but I blame that on the headphones, not the mini.

    In any case, mostly I listen, not via headphones, but via line-out hooked up to the car stereo. My car stereo isn't great and the car listening environment is inherently sucky, but it doesn't suck with the iPod any more than with CD. And that's my glowing review of the iPod mini.

  • Power management (Score:3, Interesting)

    by line.at.infinity ( 707997 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @12:49AM (#11439369) Homepage Journal
    One thing I liked about the iPod mini over my Rio Volt MP3 CD player is - besides the fact that it fits in a pocket - power management. Amazingly, the Volt would crash if you plugged in the DC power cord, so you'd have to restart the player. When I plug in the DC power cord into my iPod, on the other hand, the power indicator icon changes, and that's all -- the audio still plays smoothly, no crashing involved. The iPod just works.

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