To get a hifi sound quality from your iPod, here are recommendations :
- Get good EARPHONES: Shure in-ear earphones are well known for their very good quality. Etymotics has also very good reputation in earphones.
or good HEADHONES like Grado.
- a good quality head-earphone AMPLIFIER. Best of the best: RSA Tomahawk, a must in this domain. Another good amp is the C&C XO
- a good interconnect cable between iPod and amplifier. This is essential and it is quite easy to ear the step up in sound quality when you use pure oxygen free copper cable compared to standard audio cable
- APPLE LOSSLESS format for the music to get a CD quality total equivalent, but at half the size of the AIFF CD file
Now sit comfortably and enjoy those delicate tonalities in bass and high tones. Hear the better soudstage, being able to distinguish instruments and musicians on a scene. Listen to the noise of the fingers tapping on piano keyboard or pinching guitar cords. This is definitly an experience to look for!
I’m running a Pro-Ject Head Box II with my 5g iPod in a dock, which lines out to the amp. I use Ultrasone HFI-700 phones and the sound is really nice. Really, really nice. I forgot my iPod this morning so I put my iPhone in the cradle and was surprised by the quality. I’d like to find some time to do more comparisons but it would be awesome if I could ditch the iPod and just have the iPhone. Once it reaches 80GB, of course.