I found this comment on an audiophile blog about the guy who made the comment about how good iPods are compared to CDs. The comment is as follows:
"I have met Ashley James, back when he worked for ATC. He is NOT an audio engineer, he's a salesman. And he's well known in the industry as someone with very polarised viewpoints. I am undecided as to whether he genuinely believes everything he says, or if it's just so much marketing hot air. One thing's for sure: most of what he says has an ulterior motive."
Based on how brash his comments were I would tend to believe he is more marketing guy. Not to say that the iPod isn't a high quality product but I don't know if audiophiles will conclude it is high enough for them. Many didn't accept when CD's came out and digitized music. Analog was said to be far superior. Then MP3's compressed it even more, blasphamy! But for 99% of the music listeners, the iPod offers so many benefits over a CD player or records that any slight imperfections are irrelevent.
I must say that I find it hard to believe that an audiophile would really say that an iPod is better than a high-end cd player. There must be some ulterior motive at work here, as the comment that Stitch posted said. That is not to say that the iPod isn't a fine audio player - it most certainly is. But, there are inherent restrictions in the iPod's ability to reproduce the music that make it unable to compete with a fine cd player on an even playing field - things such as compression and decompression software, digital to analog converter, power supply, and wiring limitations. And, why shouldn't the iPod have these restrictions? The iPod was not designed to compete with high end home audio. It's designed to be a portable music player - and to that end, Apple has designed probably the finest one you can buy, both in audio reproduction and in ergonomics/ease of use.
2 comments:
I found this comment on an audiophile blog about the guy who made the comment about how good iPods are compared to CDs. The comment is as follows:
"I have met Ashley James, back when he worked for ATC. He is NOT an audio engineer, he's a salesman. And he's well known in the industry as someone with very polarised viewpoints. I am undecided as to whether he genuinely believes everything he says, or if it's just so much marketing hot air. One thing's for sure: most of what he says has an ulterior motive."
Based on how brash his comments were I would tend to believe he is more marketing guy. Not to say that the iPod isn't a high quality product but I don't know if audiophiles will conclude it is high enough for them. Many didn't accept when CD's came out and digitized music. Analog was said to be far superior. Then MP3's compressed it even more, blasphamy! But for 99% of the music listeners, the iPod offers so many benefits over a CD player or records that any slight imperfections are irrelevent.
Gents,
I must say that I find it hard to believe that an audiophile would really say that an iPod is better than a high-end cd player. There must be some ulterior motive at work here, as the comment that Stitch posted said. That is not to say that the iPod isn't a fine audio player - it most certainly is. But, there are inherent restrictions in the iPod's ability to reproduce the music that make it unable to compete with a fine cd player on an even playing field - things such as compression and decompression software, digital to analog converter, power supply, and wiring limitations. And, why shouldn't the iPod have these restrictions? The iPod was not designed to compete with high end home audio. It's designed to be a portable music player - and to that end, Apple has designed probably the finest one you can buy, both in audio reproduction and in ergonomics/ease of use.
-Le
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