First Audiophile Approved review of the iPod Hi-Fi over at American Wired (new issue!). If you don't remember, His High Holiness Steve Jobs claimed in his keynote the iPod Hi-Fi will replace your entire music system, even if your system sports 300B tubes, diamond tweeters and extruded plutonium cables hand wrapped by Samoan virgins. Does American Wired agree?

Had Apple come out and promoted the Hi-Fi as a genuine step-up over traditional mini-systems with bookshelf speakers and a stepping-stone to even higher levels of fidelity, I would have embraced it with great enthusiasm.

Asking me to pretend that it even comes close to the sound of my Fi X and Cain and Cain Abbys or the Shindo Labs Montille, is like asking me to pretend that A&W root beer tastes like Boylan’s Creamy Red Birch Beer, or that White Castle tastes as good as a double-double from the In/Out.

So the iPod Hi-Fi ain't no Double-Double. Naturally, the Apple boombox is a convenience device, regardless of Jobs' BS cannon. My hope is Apple has planted the seed that will get people to start talking about sound quality for the first time in their lives. If the internet chatter is any indication, people who used to think smaller is better are now talking about things like "treble" and "bass" and, gasp, "sound stage." Is there hope on the horizon?