The iPod as the Source
 Daddy,
what’s a CD?
I used to be a strict albumist -- someone who listened to
an entire album in one sitting, from start to finish. An albumist respects the
artist’s intentions and the statement made by the entirety of a full-length release,
even tolerating a few songs’ worth of filler that still are parts of experiencing a
recording as a single work of art. An albumist’s attention span of about 45 minutes
can, if necessary, be split in half to accommodate 20 or so minutes of listening time.
But with the introduction of the CD, a funny thing
happened. At first, there were the benefits of listening uninterrupted by not having to
get up and flip anything over, and of being able to pause and easily move forward and back
within a disc. However, listeners began to realize that they were paying a lot more for
albums that, at the usual length of 45 minutes, left room for another 30 minutes of music.
Record companies made fortunes reissuing lengthy compilations and greatest-hits packages
of artists who had disappeared from the stores. Musicians began to realize that they could
take advantage of the CD’s longer playing time to include extra songs and experiments
that in the past would have been excised. What used to be released as two-LP sets in
gatefold sleeves became the norm on CD.
But as more and more albums clocked in at over an hour,
they became harder to listen to all the way through. CD players made customized listening
easy. You could skip a track with the touch of a button. You could program your own
sequence and selection of tracks, or leave it up to the unseen hand of the player itself.
Why would anyone want to listen in Shuffle mode?
Mixing up the track sequence of an album’s prescribed
order was difficult for albumists to comprehend. It violated the albumist’s trust in
the artist to determine how the artist’s work would be heard. If Jimmy Page wanted
you to hear "Stairway to Heaven" before "Black Dog," he would have put
the songs in that sequence, right?
But listening to albums in different sequences can be
rewarding. Soon, CD changers allowed listeners to mix three or 300 CDs. Hearing a single
song from a disc you hadn’t had the urge to play all the way through in a while could
help you rediscover your record collection in a wonderfully unexpected and gratifying way.
The jukebox was back. The age of the albumist had passed.
Is it all just data?
When Apple Computer’s iTunes software was made
available in a version for Windows in October 2003, the camel’s nose was under the
tent. Three years later, the camel has lifted its head and the tent with it. The iPod is a
marvelous device for playing music whose outrageous popularity can be attributed to
everything from the addictive action of operating the click wheel to a simple accident of
marketing -- but the real work of genius is Apple iTunes.
Importing CDs into iTunes is as simple as marking tracks
and dragging them to the library, and arranging the tracks in playlists is intuitive and a
lot of fun. What format those recordings are imported in is another matter. iTunes lets
you import songs as MP3 files, which gives you the advantage of having your music in a
format understood by players other than the iPod -- or, if you’ve thrown in your lot
entirely with Apple, you can import songs in Apple’s proprietary AAC format, which in
the early days of computer listening was claimed (mostly by Apple) to offer better sound
than the MP3 format.
Both AAC and MP3, however, use data compression, which
discards data from the original signal deemed inaudible to the human ear, in order to
reduce the amount of memory storage each song file occupies. Audiophiles routinely bemoan
the quality of compressed files such as MP3 and AAC, but using Branford Marsalis’
1989 album Trio Jeepy [Columbia CK 44199] as an example, I was unable to detect any
loss in quality through a pair of Grado SR-80 headphones. The original recording sounds
very open and alive, in keeping with the spontaneity and relaxed atmosphere of the
sessions. Even as MP3 files, you can still hear the producer’s voice as he calls out
the take to the musicians, and the players’ verbal asides. Milt Hinton’s bass
pops and resonates with low-end decay, drummer Jeff Watts attacks his kit with the
controlled violence of a nail gun, and Marsalis’ tone is as full and strong on the
compressed file as it is on CD, as the spatial microphones follow his movements around the
soundstage.
While the audio press is generally critical to the point of
dismissal of the value of compressed files, there is growing respect for a third download
option, Apple Lossless, which creates an exact, bit-for-bit duplicate of the source track.
Listening to Trio Jeepy in Apple Lossless, I heard perhaps a small improvement in
detail and depth of field, but that little bit of benefit was paid for with a noticeable
amount of memory storage. As I loaded each uncompressed 10-minute track onto my iPod, I
watched the disc space click downward. I imported disc 1 of the Fred Anderson Trio’s
Blue Winter [Eremite 47] -- 45 minutes of freely improvised jazz by three masters in
full communication. The music sounded wonderful, Anderson’s tenor sax reverberating
off the walls of the Dibden Center for the Arts in Johnson, Vermont, and William Parker
and Hamid Drake shifting tempos like the sands of the Sahara -- but the Apple Lossless
file consumed an enormous amount of memory. The same music in AAC format was just as
enthralling, yet some room was left over on the iPod’s 20GB hard drive.
It’s a tradeoff: More music or slightly more
resolution? When the iPod can produce such a degree of crispness, focus, and overall
dynamics with lossy compression, Apple Lossless seems an indulgence.
Simply a glorified Walkman?
The iPod can deliver much more than the simple satisfaction
that comes from being able to carry around a large portion of -- or even your entire --
music collection in a single portable device. The iPod is most efficiently connected to a
home system via a dock (such as those manufactured by Apple, DLO, or Kensington) that
provides a line-level output, but the output from its headphone jack works nearly as well.
Turning the volume all the way up to approximate the line-level output, however, puts your
ears in jeopardy if you take it on the road and forget to turn it down. I’ve had a
couple of close calls.
Connection from the dock or headphone jack is most often
made with an interconnect terminated with a 1/8" stereo mini jack on one end and two
RCA plugs on the other, available from RadioShack, Monster Cable, Cardas, and other cable
manufacturers. I leave such a cable connected to one of the inputs of my reference
amplifier, an NAD C320BEE, for use whenever I want to connect the iPod. Unfortunately,
this leaves the live end of the interconnect dangling freely, which at best is unsightly,
and at worst can damage the amplifier if the free end is bumped the wrong way.
 One product that solves this problem
is Outlaw Audio’s Retro Receiver 2150 ($599 USD). Outlaw, an Internet-only company,
has built its reputation on high-quality, affordable home-theater gear, and they’ve
applied this contemporary mindset to the design of the RR2150. In addition to its
comprehensive functionality (which includes a USB input for going directly from your
computer to the amplifier), the RR2150’s front panel includes an auxiliary input that
accepts a single stereo 1/8" mini jack. No more reaching around back, no more exposed
interconnect terminations.
I connected my iPod to the RR2150 with a simple
1/8"-to-1/8" RadioShack interconnect ($6), hit Shuffle Songs, and let it play
for nearly eight hours before I needed to recharge the iPod’s battery. Paired with a
set of Athena Technologies AS-B2.2 bookshelf speakers ($249/pair), the high-powered Outlaw
was able to convert the signal from the iPod with ease, and the warmth of the Athenas
rolled off the digital signal with just the right amount of smoothness. Pete
Townshend’s vocals on the MP3 of "Was There Life," from The Iron Man: A
Musical [Atlantic 81996], were brought to the front over the sparse and airy
instrumentation. Ivan Neville’s bass on "Wicked As It Seems," from Keith
Richards’ Main Offender [Virgin 86499], had all the richness you could ask
for, lowering the noise floor impressively. For "Take Me Back," from Blue
Pony [Hightone 8079], the voices of husband-and-wife team Buddy and Julie Miller --
his wailing country tenor, her fragile twanging soprano -- interwove with clear
separation, while Buddy’s strumming on acoustic guitar was accurate and shimmering.
Conclusion
In 2006, hi-fi innovation no longer comes from companies
such as Sony or Panasonic, or even from established audio electronics manufacturers.
I’ve heard Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, described as an audiophile. As someone
who has staked his company’s future on music technology, Jobs has a real affinity for
music and the way it’s played back. When paired with a wisely chosen amplifier and
high-performance speakers, the Apple iPod can form the foundation of a truly affordable
high-end system. As the first link in the audio chain, it can supply all the variety your
music collection has to offer through a clean, easy-to-access signal.
...Jeff Stockton
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