Ipods are a major leap backwards

Is this Andrew the same Andrew that is currently selling one of these technological dinosaurs on ebay for 155 pounds?!?!?!?

[If he is, he's fired. Ed.]


Yeah Yeah.. and the vinyl LP was better than digital CDs...

c´mon....

Even if a lot of people uses Ipods with low quality stolen music from emule, it doesn´t mean the concept is useless...

You can load your ipod with good quality 320 Mp3 or AAC records...

I agree on those Walkmens... they were awesome... but don´t exaggerate...

I currently own an iRiver H10 20gb player whose battery is finally dying after three solid years. 

Which is fine by me, really - I encode my music at 320KBps, and I actually have a large CD collection, so the 20gb of space is already not enough for my collection, or really even close. 

But it has some features - I'm thinking FM radio and voice recording here - that Apple *still* refuses to put in their players. As a self-professed NPR fanatic, this is an absolute deal-breaker.

My next player will either be an 80gb gen-2 Zune or, if I'm feeling cheap, maybe a 60gb Creative Zen Vision:M. Either way, it will have enough space for my entire collection and room for a little more, the ability to feed my NPR addiction, the ability to record the moshpits of life, and if I want to move up to a lossless codec... well, it may not have FLAC, but at least it has WAV, right?

Frankly, I rather think that Apple intentionally cripples their consumer products both to force upgrades and to keep themselves from working much harder than they have to. 

Granted, their design team is top-notch and always has been, but their lack of passable earbuds paired with their low-quality, DRM-infected iTunes downloads is a match made in hell. 

I will buy a physical CD any day before I am reduced to buying from an online music store that doesn't let you download in 320KBps MP3 minimum, preferably FLAC - *without* an extra fee.

And, you know what? That kind of sound file on a decent MP3 player, with a decent set of earbuds - well, you actually *can* get decent music out of a modern-day player, after all.

I am glad see somebody actually say it: These mp3 players come with lousy ouptut circuits !! I have an old Magnovox CDB650 that runs rings around the creative Zen music player, Echo DJ sound card, and EMU sound card. What's with these digital idiots, can they not make a sound card to rival a simple Magnovox CDB650 ?

Cheers, 

Audiophile from the Colonies.

Oddly, the audio quality doesn't matter so much for me. The killer app for me is podcasting and, as far as I can tell, it is very accurately named. My 1st Gen Nano crapped out recently and I devoted a lot of time tosearching for recommendations around MP3 players that adequately handle podcasts. Unless someone can dispute the finding, this is an area where Apple distinguishes themselves and I will, grudgingly, pay the brand upcharge for this feature.

you are kidding right?

I have a "Wollensak Model 8075" Stereo-8 deck, which is by far better then any cassette walkman, and it plays Dolby Stereo too.

and Dan, you can get an FM receiver for your iPud if you want it when you buy that thing.

The thing that amazes me about STUPID arguments like this is that no one is forcing you to buy an iPod, and as Dan pointed out, iRiver, Toshiba, Microsucks, Creative, and a million others offer good alternatives.
STOP WHINING about ipods, its a waste of time, and really quite childish.
And DEFINITELY not worth time even on the inqs home page.
how about reviews of real alternatives, real analysis of the iPod business model and its failings, and real explanation of why most of the competitors just SUCK.

Walkmans? PAH! Edison's wax cylinders are where it's at, baby.

Tapes hissed like crazy on everything but the absolute best equipment, stretched with time, and would inevitably end their lives as a chewed up ribbon of plastic wrapped around the inner workings of your player. And they were bulky. Carry a few with you? Only if you had nothing else whatsoever to put in your pockets and didn't mind having access to no more than 4 hours music at any one time. 

If you think MP3 is old-fashioned then what's stopping you from using AAC instead, or FLAC, or even uncompressed WAVs? iPods support all of those formats. 

AA batteries were crap. Any argument that they are better than a rechargeable is too laughable to even bother writing a counterargument to. The only thing they had going for them is you didn't have to worry about where you were going to recharge your player if the battery ran out, just where is there a store within range. 

And as for your implication that all iPod owners are thieves, yawn, nobody cares. We've heard that argument before plenty of times and plenty of times it's been shot clean out of the water. 

But, by all means mate, keep your bulky lumpen chunk of metal of that's what gets it up for you.

To add to the comment about the H10, I have the older brother H340 which, with the addition of RockBox (open source firmware replacement), is a superb portable recording device. I've replaced the old battery (after three years, the original Li-poly wasn't at its best) with one with nearly double the capacity so I don't need to charge it when travelling for a couple of days.

RockBox firmware eliminates the crippled MP3-only recording option of the original iRiver firmware, though even then the 320kbs MP3 quality is indiscernable from CD quality under normal listening conditions. With RockBox, recording to WAV is possible so no problems about compression in this case.

The H340 has inbuilt microphone pre-amp as well so with the addition of a decent stereo mike makes a handy portable recording set-up. It's replaced my Sony TCD-7 DAT recorder in this capacity. There is no comparison with cassette in term of quality, the newer devices are far superior. A walkman recording to cassette cannot compete with recording to 16bit 44.1kHz WAV. For long gigs, no need to change tapes either, 40GB is good for 60 hours.

The sound quality of the H340 is very good, plus it can play uncompressed WAV at up to 16bit 48kHz (DAT sample rate) as well as most of the other sound formats including FLAC. Listening with a pair of Sennheiser HD25 headphones is great, even on the train or plane, no need to listen at max volume all the time due to the powerful headphone amp and the sealed cans.

Sadly, the H340 is discontinued and no direct replacement has been released or announced by iRiver. Finding new spare compatible 1.8" HDDs is getting near impossible these days. Come on iRiver, give us an updated H340 with a 64GB SSD, microphone/line-in recording to WAV, compressor/limiter, improved interface and styling.

The *Freestyle of 2007* or MP3 player as some put it.. is still smaller than any Walkman. Use one with flash memory and viola no moving parts.. wich gets you hopefully a longer lasting device with great battery time.

Ive ordered a Sandisk Sansa E280 (8Gb) some 3 weeks ago.. hopefully it will be a good and pocket friendly freestyle.. 

my only gripe is that it do not take flac files.. ill make sure to order a flac player with 12-16 Gb flash memory next time around (then I should have my Sansa for the next 3-4 weeks of wait, should it come to that), that should be some 24-32 albums in 'true-cd quality' and at a smaller size than a your beloved walkman.. im not aware if any such device does exist yet.. but it should be a nice step up (:

1. iPods can play lossless music, so you can have higher quality than cassette tapes.

2. My 4GB iPod holds about 10 albums in lossless format. That lets me listen for hours at work without needing a stack of cassettes (or CDs). I change what's stored every few days to get some variety.

3. My 30GB iPod holds about 70 albums. Enough so that I have music in my car for a whole week-long trip without bringing along 70 CDs.

4. All my music is ripped from CDs I own. If my iPod gets stolen, I will still have the ripped lossless copy on my computer (a perfect backup) and I will still have the original CDs.

5. It was really slow for me to "rip" my vinyl albums onto cassettes. My computer rips CD's to lossless about 26x faster than I could rip to cassette. Also, my computer automatically downloads artist and song information so I don't have to write any labels.

6. The last Walkman I owned came with a rechargeable battery. If I wanted to use AA cells, I had to screw on an adapter which made the player bigger. The rechargeble battery was replacable, but it was in a custom Sony form factor.

7. There is nothing stopping you from finding a digital recorder that is every bit as convenient as a cassette walkman, and probably has better quality. It is true that iPods won't let you record, but cassette walkmen that could record were very rare too.

I have owned cassette walkmen (even with Dolby noise reduction) and portable CD players. An iPod is more convenient, has better sound quality than cassette and is smaller. There is no benefit to a portable player that uses physical media, compared to an iPod or any other MP3 player that supports lossless file formats.

You're 0 for 2 today Andrew. How drunk /were/ you last night when you mashed away at these?

As far as MP3 players go, I still think the iRiver H1xx and H3xx series have to be the best damn sounding mp3 player I've ever heard. My god it's so clear, rapes the iPod. But then back then it wasn't all that cheap either but hey, you get what you pay for. Replaced the measly 1200mAh battery for a meaty 2200mAh one and it runs for around 35 to 40 hours. Fantastic for long journeys. :)

"Come on iRiver, give us an updated H340 with a 64GB SSD, microphone/line-in recording to WAV, compressor/limiter, improved interface and styling."

Joel, holy crap! A 64GB SSD in an MP3 Player??? Even a "cheap" low quality 64 GB SSD will be four digits on the cost side. That's about two (or even three) zeros more than I am willing to pay to listen to music. Especially when a 60 GB 2.5" hard drive can be had for about 30 quid and in 1.8" form for about double that.

My 2.0 x 10^-2 pounds worth.

- Russ

So here are just a few fixes to your lame article.

1. you can buy a plug in that allows you to record anything anywhere straight into your ipod.

2. How much do batteries cost? pennies? the last time I found batteries that were close to costing pennies it was because they were on a 5 finger discount. Ipods can get up to 20 hours on a single charge... if only having 90 minutes of music at a time is good for you and your relic of a music player then having to charge your ipod once ever week or two, at what really is only pennies (yeah that thing called an outlet on the wall really does only cost pennies for power)

3. It sounds like a personal problem that you only have 3 albums. If that is the case then don't pony up the cash.

so I'm just going to call it good here. You my friend are an idiot. If you are middle aged and you don't have the mental facilities or the know how to operate a computer to use an ipod then that is totally fine. But don't spew your old diluted senile views on a product just because you are mad/ so egocentric that you can't use a product and see everyone else using it. Things change for a reason... because they are better. 

Now maybe you could take a hint from Apple and do the same with your writing.

Another old man complaining about modern technology. Ipods do more than just hold music, but I wouldn't expect someone with this kind of attitude to know that. And why pick on ipods, surely you should be attacking all mp3 players. Walkmans are dinosaurs, you have to carry cassettes around with you, and what if you want to skip a song, fast forward..oops too far...rewind...oops too far...fast forward....

And your quality argument is just nonsense.

You're comparing an analogue device, that was made with very high end components, to a mass produced digital consumer device. The two are not even in the same league. It's like comparing my well-sounding $80 Sony earbuds to a $5000 set of headphones that come with their own dedicated amplifier.

In the end, you're reaching the state of diminishing return. For 99% of people, 128k or 192k or whatever, is adequate. They are not audiophiles. So an iPod or iRiver or Roxio or ugg, even a Zune, is just fine.

However, I do have to point out that calling attention to the iPod, instead of generalizing the digital music players, as they are all pretty much the same and would have been more appropriate, is a sad attempt to bring attention to your article. Why not just make your headline "My 20 year-old Walkman is the next iPod killer"? That would be more in-line with every other wags attempt to discredit and smear what is overall a nice device. 

For those of you interested in high-end audio, a certain generation of 1st Gen Sony Playstations had D/A converters that many, true audiophiles actually find quite pleasing to their ears. 

As for the market value of such a device; I've noticed that the very best of any older tech is usually prized. Not to bring undue attention to Apple but just look at the value of 1st Gen iPods. You, sir, know very well that if you had a brand new, unopened, 1st Gen iPod that it'd be locked in the safe, right next to the original Han Solo action figure and Babe Ruth baseball card... For another example, look at the ebay market for the original iSight. It's disgusting how much they're valued at.

Tscheuss.

Good grief. Most people stopped banging this tired old drum years ago.

What the iPod managed to do is is make mp3 players popular, and open up a whole new way to get music easily- and legally- online.

I don't care what you say- without the iPod you simply wouldn't have a legit way to get hold of music online today. Really. What else would have been so successful? Sony's HiMD and the Connect store? Please.

Believe it or not, there are those of us who like our iPods not because they are a fashion icon (I store mine in my pocket, I don't wear it round my neck and I don't have white earbuds)

Some of us like them because they are just stupidly easy. The iTunes/iPod combo is bloody brilliant and that's that. It's piss easy to buy a song and get it on the device. With the iPod touch I don't even need the computer anymore.

So shut the whining and stick with your CD collection or whatever. Of course they sound better. A single CD is twice the size of one iPod nano, I should bloody hope they sound good.

And I'm sorry- the sound quality just isn't crippled. It isn't. It i_s_n_'t. I don't believe that your tapes sound better. You're lying. 

I'm quite happy to accept that if you plugged the iPod into an Arcam amp and hi-fi rig it would sound awful compared to an SACD. But I'm listening to the music on a set of speakers small enough to fit in my bloody ear, not ceiling high boxes. 

So forget your argument about the sound quality, it just don't wash. 

In fact, not much in your little rant does.

What are you going on about really?! 

Cassetes were crap and the sound quality was even worse! Even with Walkman CD players you could only get 6~ hours of music out of them. Atleast with iPods I can carry 1 thing around with me and I know that I could probably do the best part of london to new york and back on a single charge and still not gone through my 16days of music! 

Get with the times, and more importantly if u think the sound quality isn't upto scratch then use ipod wizard to uncap the sound and buy a decent pair of headphones.

As for loosing my entire collection if I were to leave it on the bus? What sort of idiot doesn't have atleast 1 back up of thier files these days?

*rant over*

The iphone & some iPods run OSX...pull your head out of your ass & think about that.

vinyl LPs do sound better than CDs in many respects. Which is not to say that CDs don't have many things about them which make them the more attractive format.

Equally - the Walkman Pro? It rocks. It still rocks. It's a lovely piece of kit. As a go anywhere recording device its credentials are beyond question.

But ...
- it's hellaciously bulky
- who the flip carries 'extra tapes' in their pocket??
- granted I might not listen to more than 90mins of music on my commute. But with an MP3 player I get to choose 'which' 90mins I can listen, and even then change my mind on the fly. Or walk.
- and commercial tape is and always was teh utter suxxorage, a vile debasement of proper recordable tape. With a Nakamichi or a Sony and decent metal tape you could get decent or even good sound quality, but it was always the best of a bad job, and was, excuse me, never a match for real tape (yes - put it next to a studio master and the difference really would be incredibly apparent).

So what we're left with is this: an MP3 player with the robust build and high-quality output circuitry of the Walkman Pro? *That* I would pay top dollar for.

Why don't you go get Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti on cd and 200g vinyl and listen to the both of them. Vinyl blows red book away when it comes to any musical selection that has anything resembling dynamic range.

As for this article, it's a load of trash. Buy an ipod or any other music player, load it with wav files from your cd collections.

Having 1600 store-bought (many of them Amazon used) CD's which I've spent the time lovingly ripping with EAC and LAME VBR, I'm very excited about Apple finally releasing a >80GB iPod! I've got ~110GB of music and love the idea of having my music collection travel with me in the pocket that used to carry my walkman. 
Hmm... what do I feel like listening to next??

Although I must say, I bought an original Ipod Nano. Not for any specifically Apple related reason- it was just so small. I won't even consider any of these Nanos that have come out since. They are too big. I want something that could accidentally be breathed in, like a dust mote. Whomever can offer me this in a thin and flat rectangular shape wins.

1gb is just fine for me- its enough for me to create a playlist that rivals any classic rock radio station and best of all has no commercials. I can bring the nano and my cd wallet of other music on business trips and all is awesome.

I can save the audiophile quality for the home, most of the time on the road, car speakers suck and headphones are illegal to use while driving anyway.

You can get all that any more for that price, it's just that few people need it. Who says you should be satisfied with 128kbps mp3s and crappy hearing-damaging iPod headphones, or even an iPod itself? Will kids even appreciate Dolby audio on their hardware? Would the music, even if streamed directly from the studio, have enough fidelity to be worthy of it?

Blame a generation that has low standards, not the consumer equipment that caters to it.

Who says you should be satisfied with 128kbps mp3s and crappy hearing-damaging iPod headphones, or even an iPod itself? Will kids even appreciate Dolby audio on their hardware? Would the music, even if streamed directly from the studio, have enough fidelity to be worthy of it?

Blame a generation that has low standards, not the consumer equipment that caters to it.

*sticks nose in air* _I_ have a motorola krzr that _I_ paid 400+ us dollars for with a _1_ GB card that plays music, and _I_ don't even use it for that.
get over it, andrew, i stopped reading after the first paragraph just as anyone else should. i work with people that own ipods and they aren't anything like u describe...
how'd u get ur job, anyway? _I_ could do the same thing. *sticks nose in air again*

I loved my Walkman Pro -- I've had 3 of them. Only thing is it's a lousy Walkman. Great as a hifi deck or interview machine but too big and heavy and battery hungry for listening to music on the go.

with some cheap heaphones (the good ones arent really mobile anyway) and the background noise one cant tell the difference anyway if it comes to soundquality. 


The old Walkman Pro was nice in its time. That time is over. 

The ipod is a nasty, function-deficient and DRM infected thing, so I guess the WalkmanPro wins over that, but still not as good as CD, (which is NOT as good as vinyl BTW) and all the above sound like pants compared with my home/work tape machines (which run 10" reels of tape at 15 or 30inch per second!) or my 24bit/96KHz multitrack recorder. 

The next thing down from that is probably the Iriver H340 with Rockbox software. 

I sometimes use this to record (in wav format, and defrag first!) bands, connected via attenuator (resistor) leads to the mixing console, and the results, after editing and tweaking on the computer, just final EQ and limiting, are easily commercial release grade. 

Yes.. I'm a pro sound engineer, and I love the Iriver/Rockbox combination. 

IIt is not as good as the MR-70, the PR-99, the trusty A80, but it is a very good bit of kit, and very usable.

And its cheap enough to use as a personal hi-fi. :-O

So leave the ipods and walkmans for museli munchers, joggers and cyclists, or those people who ride segways.

And no, I'm not selling one. Are you? I might be interested.

I stopped listening to the sound years ago and started listening to the music instead. I find it far more enjoyable. Each to their own. As for the pro Walkman sounding that fantastic I doubt it. Compact cassette has a limited bandwidth which is made slowly worse by wear and tear. Even Nakamichi Dragons wear out eventually and that's a true pro deck.

As much as I love the theory of what you are saying here...I cannot help but notice the obvious holes of practicality rearing its ugly head.

Adding to some other commetns, lets summarise.

Walkman:
Bulky (in case you want more than on casette)
Less battery time
Needs batteries (no recharge pack, retro)
Prone to vibration (can't jog with it)
Takes too long to rewind
Must rotate tape to play other "side"
Cannot fit in your pocket
Falls if you try to job with it
Has no "shuffle" mode
Skipping/replaying tracks a hassle
Can destroy the media (given time)
No features; clock/games/calender/notes
Has no play lists
Limited to single tape/album/artist
Media copy/rip a real bother
Comparable content in MP3 takes 0 space
Media requires special care
Tape head require cleaning
No cutom accessories (solar power etc)
Media quality degrades over time
No interoperatability e.g. play music on PC, hookup to dock station etc.
Prone to mechanical failure (casette "door" spring was usually the first to "go")

Well Andrew...I think it is now even more apparent that an iPod or ANY MP3 player is vastly superior to a walkman & that goes for quality too. As there is always the possiblity of better quality MP3 or better formats.

Also, I happen to own an 80gb iPod. I have 9gb of music & some 50gb of movies (iPod format) Also have some extra data content. 

And yes, the iPod is a fashion, it is trendy & thats another selling point. 
So go on and walk around with your walkman for another 20 years...don't be surprised if people look at you like the thursday weirdo on the tube.


P.S.

Do you still have those unsightly cheapo headphones with the ORANGE muffs???

We're all happy that you're completely satisfied with the investment you made 20 years ago, but I for one DO use all the space on my 30gb Archos 404, and quite enjoy the fact that I can listen to anything from my musical collection at any time I want, anywhere. The battery life is 8 hours, more than enough for any given day. The quality is great, assuming all of your encoding is in high quality. I don't even really understand how you can say cassettes offer better sound quality than anything released in this decade. I also highly doubt any of the Finnish extreme metal bands I listen to would have a problem with the near-CD quality music, considering CDs account for the mass majority of their sales.

Posts like this make the site seem like a blog of some whiny antisocial nerd. Some random dude preaching to me about what I need as thought he knows better than I do.

Yeah, I don't like iPods either, I'd never buy one, because it is a fad and people do buy them as social statements while often being inferior to similar products. However, mocking the technology behind it seems very misguided.

Yeah, my grandma told me how farming is the real thing and all these city folks waste their time in polluted areas eating junk food. Maybe I can hook you up with her and you can go show her your walkman? I'm sure she'd agree with you.

This article is very inaccurate! iPods may be over-rated but cassette walkmans??? Come on! I had plenty of these, up to the S-class Panasonics from mid nineties when was their golden age. And it is simply not true that they are better then a decent (maybe not iPod) MP3 player! Sensitive to movements, full of noises, variable head angles, loss of quality when noise reduction is on etc. I have six years of musical aducation behind me, and care very much about sound quality and would certainly notice if the above was true! I currently enjoy using iRiver series 300 and 700 as they are better compared to the latest ones. These have unmached sound quality, replacable/rechargable battery that can last for two days straight, are durable (did your wife ever tried to smash your Sony walkman against the wall? Doubt it.) and everything is so easily accessible! Plenty of MP3 players out there are rubbish (including my wifes iPod mini). You just need to find the right one and the right earphones! Why not try iRiver IFP-395 with Sony EX-71 earphones. Pump the bass all the way up, reduce mid low range and start believing awsome power with no noise at all! And then let us know if you still think this way.

" Yeah Yeah.. and the vinyl LP was better than digital CDs..."


If you get really technical... since vinyl is an analog signal, and digital CDs are a sampling of analog audio, claiming the vinyl LP as a lossless format, thereby better, is not that much of a stretch :-)

iPods don't sound TERRIBLE. Unamped, the quality is passable if you're listening to 320. No one I know of can honestly point out the difference (blindly listening to the music) between 320 and FLAC (wholly uncompressed).

Amp'd it sounds decent. And there are modified iPods availible as 'portable' hi-fi rigs.

Other MP3 players (Zune included) sound solid, no noise, good response on the whole. (iRiver, as well)
With a decent set of earbuds ($150/200) they sound relatively impressive.

Compared to $6000 home setups, anyway. Bang for your buck wise, after $300/400 dollars the returns get pretty insignificant.
Palladium cables, for instance.

Side note, I prefer having a selection of music to listen to without having to carry around a load of cassettes. Even if you carry two cassettes, you're still to 20 songs or so--and maybe you'll get bored of those as the day wears on?

The neXt gen group gets bored rather easily. ;)

I'm also curious about the eBay thing.
Wonder where that'll go?
-TC

MP3 players, no.

iPods are a step backwards because Apple doesn't particularly feel the need to put out quality media players with lots of features and functionality, and because they're more concerned with size rather than substance. 8 or 16 GB iPod touch rather than, say, 80 or 160 GB, because they want it to be thinner? That's truly a step backwards.

Portable digital media players, however, are not necessarily so. While it's true your player might not last you for 20 years, I doubt most consumers are so pressed for money that they can't treat themselves to a new player every handful of years. You trade some amount of longevity for a great deal of convenience, which apparently most people are willing to do. In a device barely larger than a cassette tape itself, you can store 24 straight days worth of 320kbps MP3, or if you're a real quality nut, over 7 straight days of 1mbps audio files from whatever source you can come up with.

You must realize that you're really making an unfair comparison. You say that the Walkman is marvelous because you can do your own high-quality recordings and fiddle around with cassettes, but the iPod (or MP3 players in general) are garbage because people just use 128-160 kbps MP3s that sound terrible when amplified. That's not a fair comparison because you're pitting an audiophile with his cassette player against an idiot who is content with poor-quality pirated MP3s. If you're going to assume that one person is a music lover, assume they both are. What is the best that you could get with a high-quality MP3 player? Personally recorded or ripped songs at very high quality levels, meticulously organized and matched up with album art, simultaneously stored on a computer and external drive for further backup. Gone are the complaints of low quality and having your whole music collection stolen.

Spare me how great your analog device sounded. I-pods and their ilk rule because of convenience. Carrying and swapping physical media OF ANY KIND is a pain. Ignoring that is missing the point entirely.

I can deal with some quality loss, becoz I have my tunes where and when I want them. Much better than a crystal-clear Walkman for which I don't have the album I'd like to hear.

Join the ranks of DOS defenders and shut the heck up, please.

I agree with this, but Cassettes have poor quality compared to a good condition 8-track and a a high-end 8-track deck. Records can sound even better with the proper equipment.

BUT I will have to agree, Cassettes are probably the best medium for portable music (or at least better than MP3 players). It is a pin in the butt to cycle through the songs on my MP3 player, or to change to a different album (I have a Phillips MP3 player). Cassettes, you gust open it up, pull the tape out, and pop a new one in, close it and press play. Not waiting for loading, or anything.