I have nothing but admiration for you folks who can hear the difference between $1K and $10K equipment. ^

Not to go too OT, but do any audiophiles ever go to an audiologist to have their ears profiled? Years ago I had a rather exacting 1st class AF medical (long story, not AF) that showed a HF "notch" in my hearing of a couple hundred Hz or so. Wouldn't have been aware of it otherwise. . .

Ah. I see. Good that I qualified my post with an "If" in bold and italics.

My statement would still be true if the iPod had digital out... I guess having digital out would not be allowed by the higher ups at Apple (the execs of the music companies), as it would defeat itunes DRM.

However, I've heard (not verified), that the iPod actually has pretty good audio components for a portable player. If that's true, then the world is messed up. I can clearly hear the hiss in my headphones when the amp turns on (going from zero volume to minimum volume). This is w/o any music playing, just from the noise + low PSRR & dirty power, etc. in the DAC/amp.

stereophile magazine, about maybe four months ago. We can check online, I recycle them pretty much immediately.

Sonos systems are about 1000$, not 1500$ and can certainly be had for less. There is now also a cheaper version.

didn't know that slim did devices under differant names, but I don't really expect the market international to be BETTER than in the US.

It comes from the part of their brain compensating for the lost cash. I love it when I read articles by audiophiles who refuse to do blind testing and say that the difference between two different components can't be measured (translation: it does not exist outside of their brain).

This is not to say that there aren't really awful $10k speakers that are quantifiably worse than most $1k speakers.

Back to the original topic: How on Earth is this thing useful when you travel? Does one bring an amp, a UPS, and a pair of bookshelf speakers on the aircraft?

I'm not sure I believe that's the reason the ipod doesn't have digital out. Macs have one, as do the airport routers. I think Apple's just being cheap.

If you want better sound from your ipod (less hiss, etc.), the dock connector's output is much cleaner than the headphone output.

A quick video review is up: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-...our-199926.php

I'm on board with Willyroo... 'cept I'm even nuttier than he is. Vinyl? Feh... gimme 15-30IPS reels. Nothing beats a master tape (or a safety copy). As for "unmeasurable" differences... I believe all differences are quantifiable. I further believe we don't know how to quantify them yet, can't measure them yet, or simply aren't looking at/measuring the proper variable. There's more to sound than a frequency range and power measurements.

As for the audio-MP3 box... it'd be pretty useful! I'm not gonna drop $2k on it yet. I'll get one eventually though. I already have a decent library of vinyl and reels encoded at 96/24 for travel and it'd be nice to be able to play that back elsewhere in the house.

On why it doesn't have GigE... why does it NEED it??? 192Khz/24 bit is 4.6Mbps/channel. Even with SIX channels you'd not swamp a 100Mbps link. Two channels will work over 802.11g.

Feh... give me the live, unamplified performance.

Buddy if you find a way to resurrect Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, or Fritz Reiner I'll be HAPPY to go to that performance.

I think I'd pay $10k to attend a Miles Davis concert. $15k if it was the sextet.

Both Slim Devices and Sonos are my customers (for audio converters), and I can assure you that Sonos has much more business than Slim at this time.

The use model for the iPod is portable by nature, so Apple did not see S/PDIF output as important. It's actually pretty cheap to include a S/PDIF transmitter for optical output - not so cheap for coaxial. With the iPod and other portable music players now gravitating to home use in docks, a digital output can improve the sound quality by eliminating one or to conversion points. But I do think they are hung up on DRM issues.

With that kind of storage, why not just use PCM data, which is absolutely lossless? Even the best "lossless" algorithms limit dynamic performance to the 80dB range.

ETA: audiophiles are people who have more money than brains.

PCM isn't going to get around DAC and amp limitations. The iPod is a great device but it's a price/performance/packaging tradeoff. Doesn't matter how good the source data is, you're still outputting it through the same bottlenecks. The Slim Devices box is the first try at a 'no compromise' media player I've seen. Haven't heard it so I can't comment as to performance.

As for audiophiles; either you hear a difference, or you don't. Being an audiophile doesn't automatically equate to spending tens of thousands on speakers, cables, amps, etc. You can have great sound on a budget... you just can't do it with most mass-market brands. But if you think a Bose WaveRadio is as good as it gets... more power to ya.

A bit off topic, but with all this talk of "lossless" mp3 audio, hifi flux capacitor portable digilog audio systems and whatnot, i'm curious as to what you all are using to listen to it? I use the QCII but some guy tried to sell me some $500 earbuds saying that it far surpasses the QCII.