Sound quality of the new classic?

It's definitely DIFFERENT. Read here for my take on this:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1125839&tstart=0

Tony

The sound is so one dimensional & not musical at all compare to my 4th gen ipod. However, It is slightly cleaner & the bass is slightly tighter.

Comparing 80 gb from 8 months ago to new 160 gb, using Sennheiser 650's, don't hear much difference.

Played old Sleater-Kinney pre-KRS, some old Bryan Ferry and Bad Co., and even the Pasadena Symphony playing A.S. Zarathustra (the $40 gold CD). There could be some minor difference in the highs, since I don't have an A-B box to compare that way, however, my players say the difference is small enough that you'd have to be a Stereophile/Absolute Sound reader to appreciate it.

To change the quality of the sound try reimporting your music using AIFF instead of ACC which is what itunes 7.4 is set to...
1. In itunes go to edit and click on preferences
2.At the top go to the Advanced tab
3. Go to the importing Tab
4. where it says import using click on AIFF encoder
5. I also changed my settings to custom
I put the sample rate at 48.000khz
I put the sample size at 16 bit
and put the channel on stero
6. Dont forget to click ok

Hope this helps

But the same music used to sound great on my 4th gen ipod.

This is the reason why it *****!

Cirrus Audio Codec Designed Into iPod Classic, Displacing Wolfson.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2007/09/10/cirrus-audio-codec-designed- into-ipod-classic-displacing-wolfson-says-roth-capital/?mod=yahoobarrons

This is my question (note my previous comments how I tested the iPods):

I bought an 80 gb iPod about 8 months ago, and it sounds about the same as the new 160 gb iPod. Is that 80 gb a "Classic"? Is it supposed to have the old chip? I compared many tracks on some very expensive headphones, heard almost no difference.

which costco did you go to? I went there yesterday & found none.

I can't believe they changed the codec chip! The 5.5Gen sounded so good! I noticed a narrow-ness (is that a word?) of the stereo image in the Apple store, but I thought it was just the headphones they were using...

I just bought another 80GB 5.5Gen on ebay for $249... I fear that may be the last good iPod model for a while from Apple. 😟 can't have them screwing with the sound..

I've posted some observations/measurements regarding sound quality at http://www.hifivoice.com/audio/ipod/comparison/measurements/measurements.html

Marc

hope they fix this