By A Reader “Karl” (from North Bethesda, MD USA)

I had been looking forward for some time to an iPod with enough storage to hold a large number of high quality Apple lossless files. So it was a real disappointment that the sound quality of this new model was actually worse than before.

Many people were willing to put up with substandard sound quality from compressed audio files because of the convenience. Now that the newest music players have enough capacity to store high quality audio, there is really no excuse for the poor digital-analog converters that Apple is apparently putting in the new iPod Classic. When playing exactly the same uncompressed WAV data, $100 CD players from Sony sound a lot better when plugged into a good stereo than the iPod.

The irony is that the fix should really be pretty simple: a decent digital-analog converter (perhaps the problems with the new chip can be fixed via a firmware upgrade), and a better equalizer with the ability to save user-defined settings would probably be enough for all but the most demanding listeners.

By Nse Ette (from Lagos, Nigeria)

Ok guys, I just picked up my silver iPod classic 160gb from the Apple store on Regent Street in London so I can give an actual review on it.I’ve had an 80GB video iPod for a year and it’s already full, so I was really hoping Apple would make an iPod big enough for me. Presently I’ve got 110GB (and counting) of music, so this iPod is for people like me who have a large music collection, and who like to be able to take it anyplace.

The 160GB iPod is the same size as the 80gb, but costs less than the 80GB did when it first came out.

With a brushed aluminium front finish (similar to the 2 and 3G Nanos), it should be less prone to scratching, though the back is the same smudge magnet, and I don’t know how resilient the screen is. The front is curvier than that of the last 2 video iPods, with the screen slightly depressed from the rest of the casing.

Additional features are extra long battery life (40 hours for music, 7 hours for video; I’ve tested this and playing music non stop without much fast forwarding, etc, it’s about right), and cover flow (a fun way of scrolling through for music using album cover art, though it is a bit sluggish).

The new split-screen interface lists functions to the left half of the screen, and symbols (or previews of content such as cover art, videos or photos shown as a slide show) to the right as you scroll through the functions. Neat!!

During music playback, after being idle for about 80 seconds, the screen goes gray and displays a clock, and battery power. Viewing tracks in an album also gives you, at a glance, the track times. Same for video. A nice touch. To my hearing, the sound quality (without equalizers, mind you) is improved; more bass and a bit more treble. The iPod turns off in about 2 seconds, much faster than previous models.

It’s still got the other regular features; album track lyrics (new, nicer text font, and it also shows the album art), can play video and games, store photos, contacts, calendar, notes, stopwatch, and screen lock (which allows you to lock the screen with a password), and it can be used as an external hard drive. It shows up in windows explorer as an external drive. The search feature allowing one to type in album/song/artist titles (introduced in the last video iPod) is still there, but relocated to the “music” menu. I didn’t spot it at first. In fact, the menu has been reshuffled to make it better, and (under settings) one can now view number of songs, videos, photos, etc graphically just like in iTunes.

If you need loads of space for your music collection, you can’t go wrong getting this. Judging from the crowds in the store, Apple’s got another hit here. Now if only the iPod touch had this much memory…

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