Apple iPod classic 6th Generation Black (160 GB) MP3 Player

Back in 2004 I bought a 20 GB iPod "clickwheel".  It was made of a highly scratch-prone white, plastic in front and a highly scratch-prone chrome in back.  At the time, it held my entire music collection and sounded great through headphones or docking accessories.  It had a smallish though very readable monochrome screen and by far the easiest, fastest and coolest user interface of any mp3 player available

In contrast, the 160 GB iPod classic that I bought last October is about the same thickness as my old one, has the same scratch-prone chrome back and uses almost the exact same interface, though with the addition of album cover art and beautiful rich color.  Yes, the new unit is a bit wider and a lot heavier, but then it holds EIGHT TIMES more music, has a much-larger screen and clickwheel, has a beautiful and nearly indestructible charcoal gray matte metal front (Apple says its black) and now supports video, games and even through third party software, ebooks.

Where things have changed the most, however, is in quality, rather than quantity.  Quality rather than quantity?  Am I nuts?  Read on.

Quantity is an easy thing to measure, or is it.  My old iPod held 20GB and the new one 160GB, or an eight-fold increase.  Not so fast.  First off, advertised capacity is not what you really get, as formatting eats up a portion of any drive, and how much space you lose is loosely related to the size of the drive, so while neither iPod gives its full capacity once formatted, the new is still roughly 8X the capacity of the old one.  What affects capacity more is the fact that the new iPod Classic is so much more versatile than the old iPod, allowing far more than music to be stored.

Back in 2004 my digital music library was about 12 GB, and since the old iPod supported use as an external hard drive, I also stored approximately 2 GB of files on it (backup from my PC).  Fast-forward to 2010 and my music library is not 56 GB and my backup (documents only) about 4 GB, but what has changed is that the iPod Classic plays video and displays photos.  I don't keep photos on mine, but when I travel I'll load anywhere between 2 and 10 movies, as well as multiple TV shows.  In short, where my old iPod always had some 20% of its capacity free, on the new one I frequently have to decide what NOT to load, as my 480 GB video collection simply will not fit.

It's a sign of the times that most of us just have more digital "stuff" than we did six-years-ago, and while I would a 500 GB iPod Classic, 160 GB works fine.  Now, back to quality, which is where I believe the biggest improvements were made.  Build quality is the first thing I noticed when I looked at the iPod Classic.  Yes, its heavier, but it also feels more like Swiss watch or a high-end audio component in its solidity, where the old iPod felt like just about every other electronic gadget, which is to say cheap and plasticky.  The clickwheel itself is larger and feels more durable, but by far the metal front plate is the part that gives the new iPod most of its impression of sturdiness.  Sadly, the screen is still plastic and thus prone to scratching.  A glass screen like the iPod Touch (though smaller) would make the transformation from toy to instrument complete.

Nice as the new case is, it's the stuff on the inside that I refer to when I write about quality, specifically the preamplifier.  For those too young or otherwise not interested in audio components back in the 1970s and 1980s, there were (and still are) people who insisted on separate amplifiers and preamplifiers.  In short, the preamp is the component that sends the audio signal from its source, be it a turntable, FM radio or in this case, a digital file, out to the amplifier, which boosts the signal sufficiently to drive a pair (or more) of speakers.  The amplifier controls how much sound, while the preamp controls the quality of sound.  Put another way, all of the controls on a stereo that you can actually manipulate, bass, treble, volume, balance, etc., are preamp controls.  An amplifier, on the other hand, usually only has one control, which is the on-off switch.  Both are equally important, but in the iPods case, it's the preamp that has seen the most improvement.

Connect an older iPod to a high-quality stereo system through a dock and audio cables and you will hear the spinning of the hard drive through your stereo speakers.  This is the preamp's lack of shielding allowing it to pick up interference from the hard drive motor as sound.  Connect the new iPod to the same dock and cables (yes, the same accessories are used even after six years) and all you will hear is your music.  Better shielding equals better sound, but that is not the entire story.

The new iPod (and the old) has equalization settings, but it all just sounds better on the new one.  The ultimate test is to set everything at zero (flat) and listen to a high-quality piano recording (I use MP3 encoded at 256).  With the new iPod I cannot hear any difference between the digital file and the CD original, while with the old iPod it's very close, but just not quite there.  Percussion is tighter, bass is stronger, but most importantly, instruments just sound more natural.  Whether listening to classical, rock or even spoken word, the new iPod Classic simply sounds better through its docking interface, which bypasses the iPod's built-in amplifier.

So the preamp is greatly improved, how about the amp?  On an iPod, what comes out of the docking port is straight from the preamp, while the headphone jack comes out from the amplifier.  On quiet passages with good headphones you can still hear the preamp differences, but the amp itself is little improved.  The new iPod won't play softer recordings any louder than the old one will, and audio quality, other than the lack of noise from the preamp, is about the same.  Of course, it was already VERY good back in 2004, so there is very little room to improve such a small device when it comes to internal amplification, which consumes a lot of battery power and creates a lot of heat, two things that are to be avoided in a small electronic device.

Battery life, by the way, is MUCH better.  The old iPod was rated for 8 hours of music, while the new one is rated for 36 hours of music or 6 hours of video.  I haven't ever drained the battery on the new one, though I did use it continuously on a trans-Pacific flight for four hours of video and 5 hours of music, and it still showed roughly 50% battery charge remaining at the end of the flight.

Most of the time my iPod Classic lives in the glove compartment of my car.  I just bought a new car last September that included an iPod docking interface allowing full access to the iPod through the audio controls on the steering wheel.  This interface (Mercedes-Benz C class) connects to the iPod's docking connector, where most systems use the headphone jack and an AUX input.  It was this feature on my car that prompted the purchase of a new, larger and better-sounding iPod, and it makes a wonderful alternative to a CD changer or DVD Audio.

That's about all that I have to say about the new iPod Classic.  If you are looking for gee-wiz technology or the latest in techno-glitz, you will be sadly disappointed.  If, however, you want the best sounding, largest capacity music and video players on the market, look no further.