Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Mixed Marriage: Can a retro tube-based amplifier live happily ever after with the Apple iPod? (11 Jun 2005) Sadly, playback from iPod recordings was uniformly disappointing, including both tracks ripped from CDs and downloads from Apple's iTunes service. A particularly interesting comparison was provided by a download of Nelson's version of the song "Blue Skies," which appears on his greatest hits album on iTunes and also on the SACD version of Stardust. The difference was shocking. The iTunes version lacks highs, clarity, and convincing stereo reproduction. The discrepancy is on the order of that between AM and FM radio. The fault does not really lie in the N&S amplifier. Music from the iPod is still sweet and musical, but it does not provide a lot of realism or reveal the details of the performance, simply because the compressed audio formats used with the iPod and other portable digital players do not reproduce those features. The iPod amp makes an interesting conversation piece, and it provides superior audio reproduction with good source material, as long as you have efficient speakers and do not demand lease-breaking playback levels. But it can't make MP3s into something they're not—a true high-fidelity medium. Article URL: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/jun05/0605tool.html Read 87 more articles from IEEE Spectrum sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Take Breaks! A Simple Way to Improve Your Heuristic Evaluation Results     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy