1. First comment FTW!

Also, Christmas.

Posted at 12:36AM on Dec 25th 2007 by epicelite

2. pretty neat idea, kudos for it!

i sure hope you are listening to just AIFFs or WAVs or something... because tapping the DAC like this might not mean anything with less quality. the headphone amp and the caps will make a difference, of course, but the resolution of compressed audio might render any DAC improvements irrelevant to the real listening experience.

Posted at 1:12AM on Dec 25th 2007 by emilio

3. "A richer, more seductive midrange"
A seductive midrange? Hmm...

"Superior treble extension and sweetness, as well as better decay of long held notes and delicate harmonics"
Sweetness? Note decay? So it actually *modifies* the music? Hmm...

"More detail retrieval and overall transparency"
Wow, detail retrieval? You mean I can 'retrieve' data where no data existed before?

TOTAL AUDIOPHILE BULLSHIT? SIGN ME UP!

Posted at 5:49AM on Dec 25th 2007 by octel

4. @octel - There was nothing about modifying the sound, with lower quality electronics, the passive components can lead to less than linear relationships when reproduced.

As for detail retrieval, I believe the author means that more detail is "retrieved" from the recording. If you've ever listened to high quality sound equipment you'll realize that there is a LOT of detail that was not audible before.

When I use a headphone amp with my HD555's I can hear all kinds of things I didn't even know where there on tracks I've heard thousands of times.

Posted at 12:38PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Citizen_Insane

5. Be interesting to see some double-blind tests on this. I've noticed the placebo effect is alive and well in the audiophile community, as evidenced by things like mechanically-tuned power cords.

Posted at 2:33PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Orv

6. Well, most of the cord stuff is complete BS, but things like this mod do actually make an audible difference as does using quality components. Audiophile transformers, buffered power supplies and capacitors do make for better sounding music, but to most people it's not worth the price to performance ratio.

Posted at 3:50PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Citizen_Insane

7. emilio - you could also use lossless AAC (ALAC)

Posted at 10:44AM on Dec 26th 2007 by hogiewan

8. Higher quality cables tend to last longer and give a better sound by reducing noise. However stating a cable is "tuned" is a bit much. Power conditioners are very nice, expecially in areas where the current is rather irregular (*cough* lights dimming because the sub amp is drawing so many amps) or outlying areas like camps where the power lines may be old or overdrawn.

For anyone that has listened to an ipod beside a good DAC know that there is a very large room for improvement. The first time I got my nano I had to get used to the "harshness" of the signal, which gets progressively worst above the 70% mark in the volume control. Some of that is probably do to the preamp not getting enough juice and outputting "square waves" which are incredibly harsh (on the ear and speaker) due to the added harmonics.

Posted at 2:04PM on Dec 26th 2007 by Matt

9. No matter how much polish you put on your turd, it's still a turd.

Cripes, this is MP3's guys, the audio quality sucks. Yet people are out there trying to make the amp inthe ipod better?

I have some gold plated, unidirectional, anti-resonant speaker cables Ill sell you for $599.99 a foot. Guarenteed to sound better than anything else if you let them burn in for 91 days. (burn in process is running 240 watts RMS through them with white noise, must be into speakers not resistors or it will not work.

They are warrantyied for 90 days.

Posted at 8:58AM on Dec 27th 2007 by fartface

10. interesting
i shall try it :D

Posted at 6:01PM on Jan 3rd 2008 by Ben Wagner

11. I created a tutorial based on this mod here:

http://ayl.nuwen.net/index.php/projects/diy-imod-ipod/

Posted at 3:02AM on Jan 15th 2008 by Aaron Lee