iLounge reviews the iPod Hi-Fi and gives it a "B" rating -- solid midrange and bass but the treble is weak. Sound aside, the B rating is really for lack of ingenuity. The iPod Hi-Fi is basically just a shiny white boombox without any of the cool stuff people would want, like wi-fi integration. Though iLouge does make the mistake of believing EQ settings equal audiophile-approved features.
Couple more reviews from PC Mag (4.5 out of 5) and the LA Times who gives it the big thumbs down.
The really interesting element in all this is just how much ink is spilled on the sound quality. People are now using audiophile language like "sound stage" and, you know, "treble" to describe a product rather than "cute" and ""portable." In fact, if you read the comments, a number of people are upset that Apple didn't do more to advance the home stereo cause.
Also, an article over at iPodGarage postulates that Apple is releasing somewhat lackluster products (like the leather iPod case released along with the boombox) not to try and capture the accessory market, but grow it.
They want more people getting involved in accessories. It's a 1 billion a year industry but it could be more. By throwing some press at the accessory biz, they're really giving the other products in the same categories a lot more coverage. Of course, hard to see Steve Jobs as a benefactor but this may be a fortunate side effect.
The big question, of course, is if this will increase the exposure to high-performance audio.
Funny thing is that I kind of dropped out of hi-fi about five years ago, soon after buying nice ProAcs and a Naim CD player. I got into computers a lot, and doing all this great stuff on my Powerbook. When the iPod came out, I heard all the people dis the sound quality, but it was just soooo coool! And so, I got all into iTunes and building a huge library of music on my hard drive. My personal size/quality equation came out at 192kbps, for which I was proud not to have chosen to rip everything at 128. Did I think the sound was great? No, not really. I just was more into hooking up with more music then. Eventually, I forgot how good the stuff could sound, until a friend convinced me to get my stereo out and set it up. My wonderful Naim was broken (took ONE YEAR for Naim service to try and fail to repair!!!), so we spun up some vinyl, and since then, I'm a junkie again. Bought a new amp, had serious disagreements with the g/f about speaker placement (I bet she longs for the days of the Airport Express and JBL Creatures), and am looking at getting a new turntable. I use my iPod mostly for podcasts. Seeing this new product from Apple reminds me of my lost years of music listening.
Perhaps one day, I'll start ripping again, at a lossless bitrate, and get the Redwine treatment on my iPod, and synthesize my two selves. But now, I'm spinning black pie and I'm not biting at Apple's version of audiophile anymore. (Still love the OS, though!)
I stopped by an apple store to see this beast myself. I have to say, I was happily impressed. Was it hi-fi? Of course not. What did you expect for a $350 plastic box, ONE plastic box no less? What it did do though was musicality. It was meaty in the midbass with a little extra oomph to make you think it went lower, and the midrange was full and relatively clear. The top end was rolled off as it should be for all these people cranking up 128Kbps MP3s with a terrible top end anyway. But it didn't sound mono, and you can really crank it up. The guy at the store turned it way up, and it filled that 20' x 50' showroom with loud, fairly balanced sound. This thing will be revelatory for most of it's purchasers.
And I think this is exactly what hi-fi needs. People know that hi-end audio equipment exists, I think they just don't care. They don't know what good music reproduction can do for them. I would put one of these in my home, and enjoy it. The icing on the cake is that it's truly portable! Hell, I'm tempted to get one to take to the beach...
Heard it today - predicatbly it sounds pretty much the way that it looks - a boom box with a "hi-fi" logo...
having said that my concern isn't so much the fact that Apple is branding this as "high-fidelity" music, rather the fact that just like the fine folks at Bose, Apple will have you believe that it REPLACES a "big, ugly multi-piece" stereo... THAT is just simply not true... more later...
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