Personal Dork Assistant

Those Crazy Kids

Only at Stereophile would the iPod be considered the "Budget" Product of the Year. That's a pretty big concession as it is. The original review contained plenty of snide asides about fashionistas and beautiful people toting iPods in the streets of New York. And for that Stereophile touch of overkill:

For the purposes of the following comparisons, I ran the line-out from the docking cradle (thus bypassing the iPod's volume control) to a Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 300 integrated amplifier, which drove a pair of Amphion Xenon floorstanding loudspeakers. I used Shunyata Research Lyra speaker cables and a Kimber Kable stereo mini-to-RCA interconnect.

I love the iPod as much as anybody, but I don't think I'll be using one as the primary source to drive a $6K amp and $3.6K speakers. Although I did use it to drive the HT system at home during Thanksgiving, since I couldn't tote CDs with me. 192Kbps AAC didn't sound as good as Redbook, but that could just be the placebo effect talking. A little dynamics was missing, which is more likely due to deficiencies in the iPod's headphone output than anything else.

The iPod sure makes me a lot less tolerant of muzak. I've got my own muzak now, damn it.